Originally Posted by
drvannostren
I honestly thought (prior to researching it) that HND was like the "low cost" older airport of Tokyo, like Orly to Paris or Luton to London or something like that. This is what GMP ended up being. I got a good price on ANA to go YVR-HND-GMP and while I loved HND and the transportation on the Keikyu line and onwards was super easy, even speaking no Japanese. GMP was equally lame. It's clearly older and wasn't really designed to be much of anything. It's great for transportation, because it sits atop a Seoul metro station (though from INTL it's a bit of a walk), and it's closer to Seoul than ICN is by probably 15 minutes on the train. But customs were a bit slow, the airport is VERY drab, it's old, I didn't get a chance to check out the lounge because I didn't show up early enough, but I'd be curious to see what Asiana has done to make the lounge nicer than the rest of the terminal.
I actually really wanna fly to NRT one day, cuz I'm an airport nerd lol, ICN to a lesser extent too.
HND was kinda generic, to me it just didn't "feel like" Tokyo. I kind of expected it to be bustling and busy and crowded, I was looking forward to it. To my disappointment? it was a breeze. It's like flying to Burbank or SNA instead of LAX. You're in the same city, but the airport doesn't feel like LA. That can be a good thing and it can just be a little lame because like NRT sounds, I was hoping HND would be kind of a shopping mecca, more representative of Tokyo.
In any case, I would gladly fly to HND again and if I was any kind of Japan regular, it would be HND hands down unless NRT was significantly cheaper.
HND is an excellent airport, and not just because of proximity to Central Tokyo. Contrary to what a previous poster has suggested, the retail there is actually of a higher quality than NRT (if you are able to rip yourself away from Hermes scarves) and food offerings are superior. I also like the fact that the security and immigration formalities (at least on outbound - inbound immigration can be a bit of a pain) are reasonably efficient. The only downside is that onward connections ex-Japan are not as varied as through NRT, though domestic connections are much better. Plus, who doesn't love monorails ?
GMP is still a bit of a work in progress, unfortunately, but overall trip time to cities on HND-GMP routing is at least 2 hours time saved as opposed to NRT-ICN.