Japan in winter…yes, again

[Justinf]

Been a while since I posted, but today is day one of my latest trip.
booked this ages ago with a good J deal with SQ. I think it was about $4000 return, the only catch being arriving at Haneda via Singapore, but that didn’t bother me too much.
rather than chasing cold weather and snow, I decided on focusing on places that I really wanted to see so the breakdown of the trip is as follows. It’s a bit of a whirlwind trip because I only had two weeks.
night 1: Tokyo. Decided on the Belken Hotel near Tokyo station as it was easy access to the Shinkansen the following day.
nights 2 and 3: Kyoto at APA Hotel Ekimae, close to the train station.
nights 3 and 4: Osaka at Hearton Hotel Nishi Umeda, again close to Osaka station.
nights 5 and 6: Shinkansen to Hiroshima staying at an Air B&B. I usually like to stay at an Air B&B mid trip as it allows me to do some washing.
nights 7, 8 and 9: fly to Aomori via Haneda with JAL, staying at Hotel Mystays Aomori Station.
nights 10, 11, 12 and 13: fly to Sapporo on JAL2806 staying at JR Inn Sapporo. The reason I wanted to do Sapporo again is for the winter festival, where they build ice sculptures as big as houses. I booked this hotel really early as I knew the place would be booked and prices high.
day 14: back to Haneda for flight home to Melbourne via Singapore.

hope to have you join me.
updates will be irregular, but I’ll get them done in time.

i normally fly QF but with my gold status expiring and already being the beneficiary of 12 months extension, i decided to seek out other airlines to try so I settled on this one.
little did I know that my QF gold status would be comped for another 12 months so I could have earned some good SCs with QF, but not to worry.
this would be my first ever time flying SQ.

 

[Justinf]

my flight to Singapore left at 12.30am from Melbourne on January 25.
flight was on time and the Silver Kris Lounge at MEL was rather small, which took me by surprise.
good selection of food and drink.
I imbibed in a few ‘cheeseburger spring rolls’. Interesting concept, but don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.
had a couple of Tiger beers to get into the spirit of Singapore.
boarding on time and seat very wide, which was great and tv screen huge.
the only problem I foresaw was the footwell which looked like requiring you to sleep on an angle. I hate that. I knew this beforehand and I’d done my research, but as someone who is 184cm tall and likes to get to sleep on my tummy with my arms cradling my head, I saw this is a potential problem.
the seat is either in flat mode or upright. No in between.
to put the seat into bed mode you must exit the seat and fold the seat down.
on my return trip, I think I’ll just put the seat into flat mode from the start and treat it like a sofa or a couch. It’s heaps wide enough to do that.
predeparture bubbly and we were airborne, but due to the time I was buggered.
i’d ordered Book the Cook, but hoped it could be delayed until closer to arrival, because all I wanted to do is sleep.
note that aircraft, an A350-9, is SQ’s medium haul version. They have three types of configurations for the A350, medium, long haul and regional. Long haul is obviously that. Medium haul is what you will find on MEL or SYD to Singapore and regional haul is for most routes in Asia. My flight from Singapore to Haneda would be in the regional haul class.



yes, that’s my portable little fan. The FAs loved it, although I’m sure they thought it was weird.

 

[VPS]

Always like following you TR - have fun

 

[RB]

Have enjoyed your previous trips so really looking forward to this

 

[NoName]

Love your trip reports @Justinf . Lock me in for the ride!

 

[Justinf]

Fortunately I was able to hold the food service off until two hours before landing, which given it‘s a 7-hour flight, and my maths is not good, that’s close to five hours for sleep.
unfortunately sleep was difficult because of the footwell.

I reckon I dozed on and off and got about an hour all up.
others might not find it as much of a problem, but this old body did.
contouring to sleep on an angle was tough and as a light sleeper, it messed with me.
laying flat on my back wasn’t too much of a worry, nor was the spoon position.
most of the cabin from I saw, went to sleep with only a few having a meal service.
when it came time eat, I was famished.
i didn’t really think this through.
for lunch that day, I went out for my wife’s birthday and had a burger. It was good.
for book the cook, also ordered the beef burger and guess what? For the next flight I had also ordered the beef burger with sauteed mushrooms.
why?
The second burger was deliberate, but I can honestly say that ordering the first one was a mistake. I just clicked on the wrong one and saved it.
so I almost literally had a burger for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
For the record, it was delicious.
The guy across the aisle had the lobster thermidor, which was what I thought I chose, and it looked good. I think I will change my selection on the way home to sample this.



Before long we started our descent into Singapore.
The soft product was good.
Service and food outstanding.
No amenity kits, but most of what you need in the bathroom/toilet.
The A350 is a lovely aircraft. Quiet and impressive.
we landed ahead of schedule around 4.20am at terminal 3.
my connecting flight to Tokyo Haneda also left from terminal 3…or so I thought.
Oh, and don’t worry, there will be beer pics.

 

[Justinf]

Off the aircraft and into terminal 3. I went in search of the silver kris lounge but couldn’t find it.
decided to look at the monitor and my flight had been changed to depart from terminal 1.
no worries.
quick walk and onto the terminal shuttle train and was there in no time.
with a departure time of 8.05am I had plenty of time so walked around trying the find the lounge.
i was dying for a shower by now.
But walking around I noticed an Emirates and Qatar lounge but no Star Alliance.
i also noticed that almost every gate had a Scoot Airlines departure.
this didn’t bode well.
Budget airline terminal?
There weren’t many SQ flights departing from this terminal.
As it was so early, the information desks weren’t open, so I sat for a while and contemplated things.
eventually I found out that the SQ lounges only existed at terminals 2 and 3.
by now it was around 5.30am so I decided to go back to terminal 3. With enough time to spare, I hoped to get a shower in the Silver Kris lounge and have enough time to get back to terminal 1 in time.
it is a fair old walk to the train stop and by the time I got to the terminal 3 lounge it was just before 6am.
Booked a shower straight away and was told it would be a 30 to 45 minute wait.
eventually pretty much right on 45 minutes my buzzer went off and it was time to refresh.
The shower room was impressive.


After a decent scrub I felt a million bucks again.
time now was around 6.45am and damn it I’d earned a beer.



Keeping in mind I had to get back to terminal 1 and that you have to go through to the ‘holding pen’, I left around 7.15am and got to the gate as one of the final few to go through.
Boarding commenced soon after and the buzzer went off as I scanned my BP.

 

[Justinf]

The alert was that my inflight entertainment screen was out of action.
that didn’t bother me.
I rarely watch movies on planes these days so I was ok with it when asked if it bothered me.
seat 15k, just like the first flight, and it became obvious that these seats were not as spacious as the previous, but there was no angled footwell.


and my non working screen.


However, for six hours I was ok with this arrangement.
feelinng the effects of the two Tiger beers in the lounge I was keen for a tipple, but alas, only juice or water offered.
And take off.

 

[Justinf]

FA advised that the meal service would be a few hours away but in the meantime we’d get some satay chicken sticks and chicken sticks we got.


my Tiger beer buzz was waning, but a quick Heineken later and it was back again.


I was up to season six of Peaky Blinders and yeah I know I am late to the party, but that was perfectlay fine for inflight entertainment, Plus free wifi, and my horribly short attention span meant that was all I needed.
I’d never had a Singapore sling. So I had one.


the short haul business product was clearly inferior to the medium haul, but I didn’t mind it.

 

[Justinf]

By now I was REALLY tired.
i napped for a while and was glad for the meal service because I was hungry.
didn’t expect a starter but it was nice.


and then burger No 3.


it was nice. Doesn’t look great in the photo, but it hit the spot.
managed to get some decent sleep with the bed being more to my liking being straight.
it was clear that this product was massively inferior the previous, but I kinda preferred it.
Sleeping, for me, was easier and the service was just as impeccable.
after about six hours, Tokyo came into sight.

 

[Justinf]

So they changed the arrival details on the Visit Japan app.
the stuff I filled out became invalid a few hours before I arrived.
it required new registration.
luckily I had read about this and thanks to the rather excellent wifi on SQ, I was able to to do a new application while airborne.
was just weird that I missed this window by a few hours.
we landed at Haneda a bit before schedule and to my surprise, it was clear sailing through immigration etc.
clearly this was, in part, due to the changes not being noticed by everyone and lots of passengers having to fill out their forms manually.
through to the terminal and I decided to top up my Suica card.
I’d kept this and I’m glad I did because apparently due to a shortage of the magnetic strips they are not issuing new ones.
they still honour existing ones though.
my plan was to get the monorail to hamamatsucho and then the train to tokyo station from where it would be a shortish walk to the Belken Hotel.
all went to plan and the hotel room was miniscule as is the case in Japan, but suited my needs well



slightly tricky to find, snd at around $95 a night it was fine.

 

[Justinf]

I opted to have points and SCs allotted to my Velocity account.
pleasantly surprised that with the return flights I will have easily risen up to the lofty ranks of silver and only 20 SCs away from gold.
it was quite chilly in Tokyo with a top temperate of 9 degrees that day and by the time I headed out it was well below that.
i walked quite a distance to a bar where two beers and a half serve of fish and chips came to ¥3300, which was a little on the steep side.



there was this hugely annoying and extremely drunk Canadian guy there. He had been living in Japan for 22 years.
he had been there (the bar) since 2pm and it was certainly showing. Not much RSA in Japan as I have found in previous trips.
to his credit he eventually asked if he was annoying me to which I replied ‘no’, but after the eighth time I eventually told the truth.
Within minutes he up and left, which I was grateful for. I like to think my level of toleration is quite high, but when you literally can only understand two words out of 10, then it becomes a problem. Honesty was the best policy in this situation.
however, he left his jacket which suggested he was going outside for a smoke or the ATM or whatever.
He never returned.
he hadn’t paid for the afternoon’s heavy drinking either.
the staff were both amused and yet highly annoyed.
the fact that he left his jacket behind suggested to me that he was in such a state of inebriation that he simply forgot and I hoped he would return the following day to settle his account.
by 7.30pm I was spent and headed back to my room having done close to 16,000 steps. Airport terminal hopping will do that.
by 8.15pm I was asleep and was grateful for an 11am checkout the following day.

 

[Justinf]

Slept absolutely brilliantly and forced myself to wake up at 8am.
today I was heading to Kyoto.
i checked out around 10.15am and made the walk to Tokyo station.
Bought my Shinkansen ticket. I opted for the Nizomi service which is the fastest.
with the massive hike in price for the JR Rail Pass, it meant this was not an option for this trip. So buying individual tickets was the way to go.
I also chose the Green Car for added comfort and made sure I got a seat on the right-hand side in the hope I would get to see Mt Fuji.
it was a clear day, but I have heard viewing Fuji-san from the Shinkansen is very hit or miss even when it’s good weather in Tokyo.
due to heavy snow days before, parts of the route were operating at a slower speed.
my departure time was 11.18am and I was in car 9 with a seat number 8D.


The train departed about two minutes late, but my first impressions of the Green Car was positive.
Having done the Gran Class on my previous trip, which I liked, but found horribly overpriced, this seemed like a better alternative.
cost was around AUD$195. The Shinkansen isn’t cheap.

 

[Justinf]

You order food and drink from a QR code. They have scrapped the trolley service.
However I had bought some snacks at Tokyo station.

 

[Justinf]

I was really hoping to get any kind of view of Fuji, but I didn’t expect this.
i was later told by a mate, that in his dozen times doing this trip, he had never seen better views than what I saw.
bucket list item completed.

 

[Justinf]

Into the mountainous areas and the snow was indeed heavy.

 

[Justinf]

All up the trip took close to two and half hours, which is a bit longer than the usual two and quarter hours.
top temperature for Kyoto today was 7 degrees.
i had a bit trouble locating my hotel and eventually arrived at 2.15pm, but was told check in wasn’t until 3pm.
i had read that they are not flexible on this even if your room is ready so I went for a walk around and checked in once the clock hit 3pm.
for the next two nights I was staying at APA Hotel Kyoto Ekimae. Cost for two nights was ¥15,030, which was a bargain.
room small as expected, but very comfortable.

 

[Justinf]

I went in search of an izakaya, but went to a whiskey bar first, and had three small beers there.



Hunger set in and some tempura and two more beers had me down and out and ready for bed.



Another early night and tomorrow I would be heading to the Railway Museum and some of the Kyoto temples and shrines and maybe a look from the observation deck of the Kyoto Tower.
Weather forecast for tomorrow is 10 degrees.
slept great, although the ‘beanbag’ pillows that I have had the first two nights are a bit difficult to get used to. You can ask for softer pillows.
Just under 11,000 steps for the day.

 

[Justinf]

Slept like a log, but forced myself to wake up around 7.30am.
decided to head to the railway museum.
it was good but exhibit explanations only in Japanese and no year of manufacture of any of the exhibits or rolling stock, which I found disappointing.

 

[Justinf]

After that it was off to the kyoto tower. I do love a good vantage point.
the pic with the skyscrapers in the distance is of Osaka.