I visited the JAL Sakura Lounge on Saturday 12th March 2011.
I arrived around 3pm, and it was quite empty - probably only half a dozen people in the lounge at the time. In all, I probably spent around 7 hours waiting for my flight, enjoying the hospitality.
After you come through security and immigration at Haneda, the shops are right in front of you. In order to get to the JAL Lounges, you need to take a left and take a short walk.
The lounge entry is just a small doorway before the Akihabara style shop - you walk through to 2 escalators, which take you up to a glass doorway where there is a large front desk. The Sakura Lounge for the commoners is through to the right side (I was travelling J, and my lounge pass specifically mentioned "+1 guest"). When you are walking to the right, there is a small locker area (lockable cabinets that are big enough to hold a rollaboard case, plus some extra stuff). To the left of the passage, there is the shower area. It's somewhat confusing initially, but then I realised it was "futuristic" as they have the sliding wall style door - walk up to it, and the wall slides to open the doorway.
Anyway, through the main passageway, and the first thing you see is some lounge chairs, desks, and the standalone drinks bar.
If you keep walking to the right, you come to the next section where there are dining tables/chairs and the main kitchen offering food and drink. A corridor to the right between the sections leads you to the bathrooms.
In this first counter, there are 2 hot servers. The first held a variety of steamed dumplings (prawns, pork, etc, but they kept running out!), and the 2nd was stewed pork belly (yummy, but greasy). They had a mini toaster oven, for heating up the quiche and pizza on offer. There were some sweet biscuits, then some cold foods - potato/pasta salad, etc. On the 2nd counter further down, there was steamed rice, miso soup, and other proper Japanese foods.
This was the drinks counter - cold beer machine in foreground, soft drinks to the left, fridge with water and cold glasses just to the right of the picture (and far left). The vegetable + fruit juice combo from the machine wasn't too bad. Skyjuice? (Or whatever their citrus sky drink thing is called) isn't a bad refresher either.
At the end of this area, there is a corridor to a telephone area (you aren't supposed to take calls in the main area as it's considered rude by the Japanese - this did not stop many people though!). If you keep walking through, you get to the sofa lounge area, and there is a small room to the right where there are some massage chairs (probably about 6 in total). There were some people camped in there quite selfishly. I did not try out the machines as I couldn't be bothered at the time.
View of sofas
Each single seat sofa (about 1 1/2 wide) had a small table and a powerpoint. There were 2 cushions, and it all seemed to be a nice soft leather.
There are plenty of TV's around, and magazine racks with lots of Japanese newspapers and magazines.
One thing to remember! Bring your power adapter with you - I had checked mine into my bags, and although there are plenty of power points, they are ALL Japanese (2 straight prongs).
Even when it became busier, the ladies would still come around and politely clear your table of plates and glasses. During the earthquake alarms, the announcements were in Japanese, but the ladies would always walk around and give you a short interpretation "please protect your head".
I did not actually get to try out the shower, but I did visit one of the cubicles - they are small-ish, a shower and a sink, and do not have a toilet.
All in all, it's a lovely place to kill a few hours if you have time.
I arrived around 3pm, and it was quite empty - probably only half a dozen people in the lounge at the time. In all, I probably spent around 7 hours waiting for my flight, enjoying the hospitality.
After you come through security and immigration at Haneda, the shops are right in front of you. In order to get to the JAL Lounges, you need to take a left and take a short walk.
The lounge entry is just a small doorway before the Akihabara style shop - you walk through to 2 escalators, which take you up to a glass doorway where there is a large front desk. The Sakura Lounge for the commoners is through to the right side (I was travelling J, and my lounge pass specifically mentioned "+1 guest"). When you are walking to the right, there is a small locker area (lockable cabinets that are big enough to hold a rollaboard case, plus some extra stuff). To the left of the passage, there is the shower area. It's somewhat confusing initially, but then I realised it was "futuristic" as they have the sliding wall style door - walk up to it, and the wall slides to open the doorway.
Anyway, through the main passageway, and the first thing you see is some lounge chairs, desks, and the standalone drinks bar.
If you keep walking to the right, you come to the next section where there are dining tables/chairs and the main kitchen offering food and drink. A corridor to the right between the sections leads you to the bathrooms.
In this first counter, there are 2 hot servers. The first held a variety of steamed dumplings (prawns, pork, etc, but they kept running out!), and the 2nd was stewed pork belly (yummy, but greasy). They had a mini toaster oven, for heating up the quiche and pizza on offer. There were some sweet biscuits, then some cold foods - potato/pasta salad, etc. On the 2nd counter further down, there was steamed rice, miso soup, and other proper Japanese foods.
This was the drinks counter - cold beer machine in foreground, soft drinks to the left, fridge with water and cold glasses just to the right of the picture (and far left). The vegetable + fruit juice combo from the machine wasn't too bad. Skyjuice? (Or whatever their citrus sky drink thing is called) isn't a bad refresher either.
At the end of this area, there is a corridor to a telephone area (you aren't supposed to take calls in the main area as it's considered rude by the Japanese - this did not stop many people though!). If you keep walking through, you get to the sofa lounge area, and there is a small room to the right where there are some massage chairs (probably about 6 in total). There were some people camped in there quite selfishly. I did not try out the machines as I couldn't be bothered at the time.
View of sofas
Each single seat sofa (about 1 1/2 wide) had a small table and a powerpoint. There were 2 cushions, and it all seemed to be a nice soft leather.
There are plenty of TV's around, and magazine racks with lots of Japanese newspapers and magazines.
One thing to remember! Bring your power adapter with you - I had checked mine into my bags, and although there are plenty of power points, they are ALL Japanese (2 straight prongs).
Even when it became busier, the ladies would still come around and politely clear your table of plates and glasses. During the earthquake alarms, the announcements were in Japanese, but the ladies would always walk around and give you a short interpretation "please protect your head".
I did not actually get to try out the shower, but I did visit one of the cubicles - they are small-ish, a shower and a sink, and do not have a toilet.
All in all, it's a lovely place to kill a few hours if you have time.
