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!!

FWIW, there is a city bus that goes from Itami Station (at least the Hankyu one, possibly the JR one as well; they are kind of far from each other) to Itami Airport, just in case someone else makes this mistake in the future. It's kind of an interesting ride, as the bus has to take the tunnel under the airport, the terminal being on the opposite side of the airport from the city of Itami.

I only know about this because I lived with a host family in Itami for a few months back in my student days...

Hankyu very much for that tip!