Here's a friendly warning: when you want to know the route to take to Itami airport, don't enter "Itami" into the hyperdia website! That's because it will take you to the nearby town named Itami instead.

You have to select "Osaka airport" to get the right choice.

Guess which one I did....

And it's almost always better to do the last leg on a bus; there are frequent limos from a lot of places -- most notably Osaka and shin-Osaka, but also the backside of Kyoto station. The only rail transport that goes to the airport is a creaky monorail that runs on average only once every 10 minutes.

It's an aging airport but you gotta love the large signs at the JAL check-in area that say, "You MUST check-in no later than 15 minutes prior to scheduled departure time." Take that, LHR!!