ANA Lounge (International)
Narita Airport - Terminal 1
Before we knew it, our time in Tokyo came to a close. We asked for a late check out and the Westin gave us a complimentary 4 PM check out without any negotiation.
We debated whether to take the airport limousine bus or the tried and tested JR Yanamote Line back to the Narita Express. We thought that the bus might be prone to traffic delays and so we opted for the Narita Express.
We took the JR Yanamote line to Shibuya and got temporarily stuck. We couldn’t find a ticket office to purchase the tickets by credit card like we did on the inbound and the automated kiosks that allowed to book a seat reservation would not accept foreign credit cards (only accepting funds loaded from a JR Suica Card). I only had enough ¥ cash to purchase one ticket. MrsWT73 would not have been happy about being left behind here while I was on the way to the airport in comfort so I opted to locate an ATM or a JR ticket office.
In hindsight, we should have probably just ridden the train without a seat reservation (all Narita Express tickets seats are reserved) and paid for it at the other end. I eventually found a Shinkansen ticket office before I was able to find an ATM. This whole process made us lose our planned train connection and any time advantage over the bus. We vowed to take the airport bus next time for the simple convenience.
We arrived at the airport at about 2 hours before our flight. We checked in without anyone at the Business Class Counters. Narita has all Star Alliance Carriers checking in at “B” desks. Boarding passes issued and bags were tagged to Incheon. A useful map was given to the ANA / UA lounges which was helpful since Narita doesn’t have a very intuitive layout.
Narita was pretty quiet at this time of night and there were no waits at security or at immigration. There were two lounges available to us today. We bypassed the familiar United Club and headed straight over to the ANA Lounge which was closer to Gate 41 where our flight was departing.
Down the escalators past the connections desks and we were there.
The ANA Lounge is one of my favorite Star Alliance Business Lounges. It has a contemporary décor, a good food selection of food and wine (including sushi), a beer machine. Hey – it even has a noodle bar and sake / sochu wine bar (unattended). Two types of sake and two types of souchu; you can’t go wrong with that as far as I’m concerned. Although there have been a few complaints about how dark it is, it seems that it doesn’t bother me whenever I visit. Perhaps it’s because on my usual visits, I'm in transit so my clock is so screwed up I never even notice.
The seating is a bit compact. But of my three visits here, I’ve never actually seen the place completely full.
Food on offer today were the usual small sandwiches, salads, some simple sushi (kappa rolls and inari) and the noodle bar. Of more interest was the wine / sake / sochu bar which was amply stocked.
We had some quick snacks as we had missed lunch. I was a bit gluttonous and had two servings of Udon; Kistune udon and Katsune udon. Of course, it had to be topped off with our last servings of Sake and Souchu.
The ANA Million Miler display. Sample luggage tags - not actually assigned to any actual fliers (yet).
Overall, the ANA Lounge remains my favorite lounge at Narita. The sake / souchu wine bar and the Noodle Bar are my favorite features and make a unique way to fill up. The fact that you can try a whole slew of different wines that you normally wouldn’t get at home is a bonus. Make sure you stop by here the next time you are through Narita.