tentseller

You're lucky that double shot of Sake didn't blow the lining in the intestine. Now me and the mad scientist gotta rip apart the stomach and replaced the squid rings you fried tempura style!

Thunderroad

Fun TR! Thanks for posting it; looking forward to the rest.

Did you check out the outside terrace at the LAX *A business class lounge? I've read nice things about it.

Also, a stupid question: Thanks for the pocket wifi device recommendation, but what does it get you that the typical wifi-equipped phone would not? In either case, you can access wifi, but I would think the real obstacle is that wifi in many locations requires a password/sign-in. I guess I'm missing something here...

Anyway, I guess I'm more wowed than you by the SQ suites product, its privacy and its double bed (which my wife and I flew once and will do so again next year LAX-NRT-SIN) and the fine service that goes with it. But I can't knock you for your own fair assessment of it.

Keep those great comments and photos coming!

Gripevo

Hahaha love it. Well done

sfoactuary

Since I rarely travel for business, I only have entry-level hotel status through credit cards and relatively small account balances, as my earning efforts are concentrated on airline miles. So while I'm not always able to leverage hotel status for free breakfasts and suite upgrades, on the flip side, it means that I don't feel obligated to stay at a certain hotel in order to receive free breakfasts and suite upgrades.

So without the chains of loyalty forcing me to a particular property, as a hotel free agent I'll simply stay where I want to. But when "where I want to stay" happens to intersect with "where I have points and status", well that makes me one happy camper.

Within Hilton's array of brands, my favorite of the bunch is the Conrad. We've enjoyed recent stays at the amazing Conrad Maldives Rangali Island, as well as the Conrad properties in Hong Kong, Macau and Dubai. Our first 2 nights in Tokyo were booked at the Conrad Tokyo and as an added bonus our stay was gratis, courtesy of the free nights from the Citi Hilton Reserve card which I applied for specifically for this trip.

We jumped onto the Narita Airport Express (NEX) train which took about an hour to reach Tokyo station from Narita airport. From there, we could have walked to the hotel but it was late and we had our luggage with us so instead we jumped in a taxi, and the short 10-minute ride cost about $15.





The taxi pulled into the Conrad's covered rotunda and we got our first taste of the amazing Japanese hospitality that we subsequently enjoyed throughout the trip. As soon as we jumped out the taxi, a bellman ran over to collect our bags, and another hotel attendant greeted us. She asked for our name, which was then relayed to the lobby upstairs so that all of the paperwork and room keys would be ready by the time we arrived a few minutes later.



These bad boys were stationed outside where they seemed to stay parked for the entire duration of our stay. Perhaps they were on display for some sort of Fast and Furious convention.



The Conrad Tokyo occupies the 28th to 37th floors of the building, which means that you need to take 2 sets of elevators to go from ground level to your room. On the ground floor we got our first glance at the beautiful cherry blossoms that were starting to bloom all over the country.



The lobby is located on the 28th floor, along with the hotel's main restaurant and lobby bar/lounge which featured great city views.









Check-in was a breeze since our paperwork and room keys were already waiting for us and even as a lowly Hilton Gold, we were upgraded to an Executive room on the 37th floor. While Hilton Gold status may not mean much in the US and Europe, I've found that it's almost always delivered when traveling in Asia. We were escorted up to our room by the same hotel attendant that greeted us downstairs.



The hotel decor was typical Conrad which I'd describe as sleek and modern.





The room was essentially a carbon copy of our room at the Conrad Hong Kong. It featured stylish yet elegant decor, along with all the technological bells and whistles such as electronic curtains, iPod-compatible stereo, and a work desk equipped with plenty of electrical outlets.

Waiting for us on the bed were a couple of stuffed animals that we could add to our collection. We were less than 24 hours into the trip, and our stuffed animal count was already at 4, counting the Singapore Airlines bears we had received on our flight.





Also on the bed were pajama shirts which is something I hadn't seen before. I tried it on just for fun, but the material was too thick for my liking.





There was a huge double day-bed along the window, and a welcome gift of chocolates and pralines on the coffee table.





The bathroom featured double vanities, bath tub, and separate bathroom and shower stalls. I was too intimidated to use all the functions of the Japanese toilet at first, but by the end of the trip I had learned to love it.





With Aromatherapy Associates-branded toiletries, and a new duck to also add to our collection. At this point, I had more stuffed animals in my luggage than clothes.



We immediately took advantage of the Executive Lounge access and ran over to catch the tail end of cocktail hour. The lounge is on the smaller side, but featured nice city views and had a sexy fireplace in the center of the room





The spread was fine, although more on the sweet side than I'd prefer. I wouldn't plan on making a meal out of this and besides, you're in Japan! So you shouldn't be taking up precious stomach capacity with cakes and finger sandwiches anyways.







OK, a couple bites never hurt anyone.



We entertained the idea of heading out for some late-night fun, but I essentially pulled an all-niter by not sleeping on the plane, so my enthusiasm was short lived and ended up passing out mid-sentence during that conversation. We did make plans to wake up early at the buttcrack of dawn to head over to Tsukiji Fish Market, but alas, a 4AM awakening was just too ambitious.

We ended up sleeping in until about 6AM, and I threw on my typical jet-lagged-hotel-breakfast-attire which consisted of a t-shirt, basketball shorts, and flip flops and headed downstairs to the restaurant. Talk about being under-dressed. I quickly learned that men in Japan really don't wear shorts, like at all, and certainly not any footwear without socks.





The breakfast buffet contained a delicious mix of Western and Japanese options and most importantly, fresh fruit and veggies which were generally tough (and expensive) to find in Japan.







The highlight for me was the sticky rice in the bottom-left corner below which was absolutely delicious. Other than smoked salmon, fish isn't exactly the first thing on my mind at breakfast time, but there were no less than 4-5 different fish options at the buffet and of course I had to try them all.



In addition to the buffet, there was an a la carte menu with a wide range of choices. The first day we tried the Croque Madame Conrad which was freakin' amazing, and the next day we both ordered the Japanese breakfast. Across the 4 hotels we stayed at on this trip, the Conrad had the best breakfast of them all.







The first breakfast buffet after starting a vacation is always the worst, and I probably ate about 3 plates more than I should have. Feeling guilty, we stopped by to take a look at the fitness center facilities since watching people work out is basically the same as working out, in my opinion.

The hotel has an indoor pool that overlooks the city, and in general, we found the hotel swimming pools in Japan to be quite impressive. Another cool feature was that the hotel provided complimentary swimming gear and gym clothes. Even though we had packed our own stuff, it's nice not having to carry your used, sweaty gym clothes in your luggage.





Another item that we found in every hotel gym we visited - we probably should have measured our blood pressure before stuffing ourselves with eggs and bacon.



On the final morning of our stay, we were departing for Haneda airport and chose to take the limousine bus which conveniently picks you up at the hotel. We had some time to kill, and wandered over wedding chapel where there seemed to be some wedding dress showcase.





The bus ended up being just 1/3 full and was a comfortable 45-minute ride to the airport.



Overall, we had a great stay at the Conrad Tokyo and are happy to add this to the list of Conrads where we walked away as satisfied customers.

sfoactuary

Haha I'm loving this, well done Hey Mods, can we please open a sub-forum for food-related adaptations of Fast and Furious quotes?

Thanks, Thunderroad! We didn't make it to the *Alliance terrace in the LAX lounge, but did try the terrace at the Korean Air lounge which I'd imagine is quite similar. It was definitely the nicest area in the lounge to sit and relax.

The main benefit of the pocket wifi device is that it serves as a hotpot, meaning that you have your own dedicated wifi access anywhere you go. So you're never relying on wifi access at public locations. You'd then access the hotspot through your wifi-enabled device (phone, iPad, computer, etc.) This was essential for us when using the Google maps navigate feature, since we needed constant internet access to tell us exactly when to turn.

The other benefit of the pocket wifi device over a pre-paid SIM card is that 1) you can connect multiple devices at once and 2) even if you hotspot your phone using the SIM card, you'll eat up battery really quickly.

dat4life

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who went to breakfast at the Conrad Tokyo in shorts. I got plenty of looks and stares. As usual, wonderful report, sfoactuary. Look forward to the rest!

Jimgotkp

Interesting entree name... "egg slut".... hmm

sfoactuary

This makes me feel better as well, dat4life. Definitely got some stares from other guests, but the staff couldn't have been nicer even though I looked like a homeless person by Japanese standards.

I'm sure something was lost in translation, but it's still fun to think about if a soft egg is an "egg slut", then what's a hard egg?

Jimgotkp

"prude egg"

Thunderroad

Ah, I see. Thanks very much!

DaveNCL

From my trip I found the Japanese to be very well dressed, especially in Tokyo. I was wearing jeans, t-shirt and trainers at breakfast then during the day and I felt the same.

sfoactuary

Enough airplane and hotel food - we had landed in Japan and it was time to really chow down.

After failing to wake up at the break of dawn to visit Tsukiji Fish Market, we decided to delay our visit until the end of the trip when we returned to Tokyo. With a full day now at our disposal and a more-than-full stomach from the hotel breakfast, we needed to walk around to work up an appetite. And walk we did, covering about 10+ miles all around the Ginza district. The main strip in Ginza is just a short 10-minute walk from the Conrad Tokyo.





It appeared that most buildings only had a single occupant, which must be quite the status symbol to have a brick-and-mortar store on Ginza Street.



An hour before the Apple store was scheduled to open, a line had already formed halfway down the block.



Many of the buildlings featured cool designs, including the Mikimoto building.



And we ran into this guy, who was absolutely loving the attention. But as much as I enjoyed this scene, right meow all I could think about was eating again.



Even though the US Dollar was extremely strong at the moment, neither of us had any urge to buy anything at the name-brand stores. So after some light window shopping we started our department store crawl since we heard that these were some of the best places to find great food. First up, Mitsukoshi.



In the basement level of basically every department store is the food court. And we aren't talking about your run of the mill food court in your average shopping mall. You know, the ones that have a Sbarro, Auntie Anne's, and if you're really lucky, a Panda Express.

No, the food courts in Japanese department stores are an attraction in their own right, and feature some serious gourmet eats. After taking the escalator to the basement floor, first thing we ran into was a beautiful display of colorful mochi that looked too pretty to eat.



Japanese people sure have a sweet tooth and also like cute things. Marry the two together, and you get buns shaped like pigs. We quickly fell in love with the melon buns just to the left of the pigs, which featured a crisp and sugary exterior with a pillowy soft interior. In particular, I really liked the melon buns that were also filled with melon-flavored cream.



And these cakes which appeared to be a bee flying around a honeycomb.



On to the savory stuff - a delicious assortment of yakitori.



And on to the fish section.



We grabbed a couple things here and there, but in general it's actually really hard to find a place to sit down to eat at the department stores. And we had been told by people that eating on the street in Japan is considered to be rude. So we just had a few quick bites before heading back to street-level to find a proper meal.

We stumbled upon a huge line that spanned an entire block leading up to a "Soba" sign. We surveyed the people in the line and they appeared to mostly be locals. Long line + locals = DELICIOUS FOOD, which is not to be confused with long line + tourists = RUN AWAY.

With nothing but time on our hands we decided to line up, and eventually one of the workers came out to distribute menus.



I got distracted by this guy and followed him around the corner to take a closer look. He had a matching yellow ensemble on (both pants and jacket) and would have been completely camouflaged against his yellow Lamborghini if it weren't for his glasses.



The vending machines in Japan are no joke, and I quenched my thirst with a Pocari Sweat.



The entire menu was in Japanese, but lucky for us I had taken 4 years of Japanese language in high school. And I remembered that #1 stands for the first thing in a list, and in the context of a menu, in Japanese culture it usually represents the restaurant's most popular dish (OK I made that up, but 95% of the time it's true, right?).

My wife took this opportunity to chastise me for being useless at Japanese, at which point I reminded her how "useful" her French was last time we were in Paris.

About an hour later we were next in line, and I was excited for my bowl of Soba. Or so I thought...



The restaurant only had 8 seats, but since our order was taken in line, as soon as we sat down our food was placed in front of us. Gotta love Japanese efficiency.

Hmm, I thought soba was dark in color? Must be some special type of light-colored Soba, I thought to myself. I didn't care since whatever I was eating was off-the-charts delicious. It's considered a compliment to the chef to slurp your noodles, and my slurps could have drown out the sound of a crying baby.

We walked away fat and happy but after some investigating it turned out that our meal was actually Tsukemen, or Japanese dipping noodles, and the restaurant was a ramen shop called Ginza Kagari. I considered reporting them to the Japanese noodle authorities for false advertising, but because their food was so amazingly good, I decided to let it slide.



After lunch we were on the hunt for sweets, and once again I can't overemphasize how awesome it was to have the pocket wifi device. My wife was on a mission to eat a lifetime's worth of green tea- flavored desserts on this trip, and her matcha radar (aka Yelp) brought us to Patisserie Sadaharu Aoki where we ordered a green tea croissant along with the Valencia cake.





Not sure if it was food coma or jet leg, but by early afternoon we were absolutely shattered. We went back to the hotel for a quick nap before heading over to Ebisu to meet up with some friends for dinner where we had a great time at a Izakaya restaurant. In my jet-lagged daze, which wasn't helped by all the beer, I forgot to take pictures of the meal other than this shot of some sashimi and the tastiest draught Sapporo I've ever had.



Not a bad first day in Japan, but overall I'd grade my day 1 eating performance as a solid "C". I needed to step up my game, and what better place to do that than in the udon noodle capital of the world, Shikoku.

sfoactuary

Same here, I definitely started to dress-up after that incident. It was actually quite hot in Tokyo during our last few days, so I really wanted to wear shorts.

chongl

The food centric view of this report is so awesome

tentseller

What is the point of travelling if you don't try all the different new food experience?