Day 1: SYD-HND
After a very busy week of work tidying up loose ends Thursday 1st Feb arrived and we were off. I could barely sleep, excited by the trip and also the prospect of my first direct SYD-TYO flight despite having been to Japan about 10 times now! I ended up at the gym at 4am, before returning home, finalising the packing and setting off. Shuttled by the old man we were straight through to QF F check in, ticketed and bags off in a matter of minutes, after the obligatory pit stop at oversize to drop the ski/snowboard bag. Without sounding too entitled, I don't quite understand why QF make high class/high status pax do this? SQ and JAL both take them off you at J and F check in and porter oversize themselves...
Through fast track we headed for TRS as we had bought some new ski outerwear and wanted to claim it. This took a little longer than anticipated with what seemed like a lot of unprepared people in line. We had pre-filled the forms online so once we reached the counter it was a quick process. About 40 minutes after passing security we were off to the F lounge and immediately enquired about spa appointments. This was 3rd time trying for us and the unfortunate first answer was 'nothing available until after you board'. We've become accustomed to this now not being CL or flying F but it always hurts a little!
Not to worry, an 8am mimosa, BLT, corn fritters and eggs benedict tied us over, until was it was an appopriate hour for champagne (9am...)
As we continued to enjoy the offerings I was paged at 10:20. A spa appointment was available! Being the one who road warriors to maintain this status (I have 6 work flights this week) I didn't feel so bad jumping at the opportunity to grab the 10:30am appointment and leaving my partner behind.
I selected the Baggage Drop shoulder, neck and scalp massage which was fantastic! After finishing at 10:50 i returned to our table to good and bad news... The bad, we were slightly delayed and boarding wouldn't be until at least 11:50. The good, another spa appointment had opened up and (thanks in part to the delay) my partner was off for a lift off facial elevation (which she also highly rated!). In the meantime, like all good AFF'ers would I ordered more champagne and some S&P squid as clock struck 11am.
The squid was quite good, albeit small serving sizes as expected. Our waitress was fantastic and ordered a 2nd portion for my partner to arrive at the end of her treatment. Right on cue the 2nd serving and a final glass of champagne arrived which we promplty finished to leave a little time to strecth the legs before boarding
We boarded QF59 at around 12:20, 60 minutes behind schedule, and pushed back at about 12:40. Old safety video still showed for those interested, the last time I think I will see it!
Drinks were served before lunch about 90 minutes into the flight. I went with seafood for both courses! To start I had the Salmon Crudo salad which was admittedly fantastic! Far beyond my expectations of QF catering although I do believe it is best out of Sydney!
For main I had the crumbed snapper. The texture was a little chewy but the flavours very good. Again surpassing expectations.
Dessert was brought around on a trolley which was a first for me.
I went with an ice cream sandwich and then settled in to watch Dumb Money which was quite interesting though admittedly not an award winning movie followed by a few episodes of Last King of the Cross. The staff on this flight were lovely and fairly proactive. We didn't have a pre-landing meal as we already had plans for food on the ground.
We arrived into Haneda about 30 minutes behind schedule and to quote a very similar experience to
@Seat0B enjoyed the long walk to immigration, a short queue there, followed by the other half of the skiing and snowboarding population of Australia also arriving into Haneda on either our flight or the Virgin flight from Cairns.
I should've taken this photo about 10 minutes later and certainly felt sorry for the poor ANA and JAL agents having to take ski and board bags off the conveyor in high heels and find a space amongst the growing pile which must have topped 60 bags! The rest of our luggage was out quickly but priority tags seemed to mean little at the oversize collection.
The next part of the trip was a bit of an undertaking. We booked the new Mercure Haneda for 'convenience' however the process of getting there wasn't particularly convenient. We first cleared customs, then collected our portable wifi, before boarding the shuttle to T1 as the hotel only has very strange collection hours from T3 (11:10pm-1:10am). We hopped on the 9:30pm shuttle from T1 and arrived about 10 minutes later. Beatiful new hotel and well placed as it's not far from the airport but does have some restaurants and bars nearby, unlike the Kawasaki King Skyfront Tokyu Rei Hotel we stayed at last year which is in no mans land.
Checked in and tidied up we headed out into the brisk and very windy Tokyo night for ramen.
The hotel staff suggested an 24 hour placed called IFU which hit the spot. The spicy miso was given the thumbs up by my better half and the tsukemen was fantastic, with the biggest serve of noodles I've ever had!
After a big travel day we were grateful for the bed and a bit of a later start for day 2!
!
) so we headed to Boot Solutions to see if we could sort it out. We had planned to head back to Rusutsu if the issue could be fixed quickly so we were dressed to ski but after waiting for 2 hours given we didn't make an appointment, we were told that the boot needed to be punched out and should be left overnight.
