I don't have much to say about the tourist attractions themselves, so I'll just drop some pics here.

Shanghai:





I must say, this is some impeccable logic.



Got rained in for most of my time in Shanghai.

Went up the TV Tower for my first time.





Walked around the Bund





Beijing:




Huge chunks of the Forbidden City were covered in scaffolding when I went.






You need to make a reservation a day in advance via Wechat now to visit Tiananmen Square. I did not know that. Ended up squeezing in a visit the morning of my last day after I found out.






Tianjin:




How is there a near-identical sign with a slightly different English translation here? How many versions of this sign did they make?




Next stop, Tokyo.



A quick subway ride later, I ended up at Binhai International Airport.



Trekking through the cavernous and empty underground path, I popped out in the domestic terminal, where a short skybridge connected me to the international terminal.



It was like 85 degrees (30 C) in here. It was a huge stunning terminal but as far as I could tell, there was only one flight checking in.



As I got in line for checkin, I saw the ground agents manning the entrance to the line struggling to say something in English to another guest. Since I spoke some Mandarin myself, I had offered to help them translate if needed, which they seemed really grateful for. Unfortunately, it very quickly became obvious that my offer was useless as the guest they were speaking to not only didn't speak Mandarin, but did not speak English either. Whoops.

Still the agents were thankful for my help and offered me a free extra legroom seat, which was remarkably generous of them given I literally did not actually successfully do anything. Very nice people here in Tianjin.

I did pay for a checked bag, which I used to check my carry-on. Spring Japan only allows 7kg, I think, and that's cumulative between both your carry-on and your personal item. My backpack alone is over 5kg at this point in the trip (it gradually accumulates more junk I buy) so I checked my rollerboard.



A quick and painless security and immigration line later, I was stamped out of China.



I used my Priority Pass to duck into the nearby lounge, which is one of the only things in this terminal wing. It's pretty barren.




The offerings were quite dire, consisting of beverages and cup noodles.




Good plane spotting, though.



Look at how many gates the international (sorry, "international, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan") wing of this airport has.



And yet look how few flights they have. So many gates just sitting there.



The Tianjin Airlines plane parked at the jet bridge next door apparently bussed passengers over to it? I assume it was an international inbound, so it parked at the international terminal, and then the airline just didn't want to tow the plane over to the domestic terminal for the next flight, so they just used a bus gate to bus passengers over here instead. That seems like a reasonable theory, right? It was weird seeing people get off a bus and then climb up to a plane parked at a jet bridge.



Soon, my plane landed and taxiied to the gate.



Despite the plane getting here mostly on time, we were inexplicably delayed around 30 minutes or so. When they called boarding, the gate agent who was working the checkin desk earlier recognized me and enthusiastically waved me forward during preboarding for families with young children, scanning me onto the plane together with a family pushing a toddler in a stroller. I really milked my 3 second semi-good deed this trip, huh.




And so I stepped onto the jet bridge as the general boarding announcement began playing behind me in the terminal.

Spring Airlines Japan IJ 254: TSN – NRT
Boeing 737-800, JA04GR
6/13/2025 16:35 CST – 20:55 JST
Economy Class (extra legroom), 3A (window)




With extra legroom, these seats seemed perfectly fine for a hop of this length, although looking at Aerolopa, the pitch seems truly dire behind me.



They said inflight purchases were cash only, which sucked as I had no yen or yuan on me. But then I looked at the picture of the food they were selling (tortilla A with meat) and decided that actually, I had all the cash I needed.



The jet bridge pushed back as the safety demonstration started, in Mandarin and Japanese only. I have never in my life seen a safety demonstration not include English. I ended up Googling it and it turns out there's no international requirement to include English, so I guess Spring Japan just doesn't. I know that neither of the two countries this flight touches are English speaking, but I've flown from Beijing to Frankfurt before on Lufthansa, for example, and they still had an English briefing. This discovery was probably the most exciting thing that happened to me this flight.



And soon we were off, leaving Tianjin and China behind.




They handed out vouchers for a free bottle of water on the ground at Lawson, which was... nice, I guess? Would've preferred water onboard tbh.




Lavatories were standard 737 lavatories. Still no foot pedal on the trash lid.



Soon the sun set.



Flight attendants made a few passes to sell things.



And soon we were looking at Tokyo.




Oh boy. This is my first time at Terminal 3.



Still, I'll never complain about getting to see the plane up close.



And then immediately after taking a set of stairs down from the jet to the ground, we had to go up another set of stairs from the ground back up to the terminal level. Darn, if only there was some way to bridge the similar height of the terminal with the plane itself.




Immigration was painless with my Visit Japan Web QR code, but wow, Terminal 3 is kind of a dump, at least compared to the rest of Narita.

After an uncomfortably long wait by Japan standards for my bag to come out (still faster than any AA flight I'd ever taken) I cleared customs and entered Japan.




There was a shuttle to Terminal 2 waiting right outside, so I jumped on it.




And was soon heading towards the train station.



With my Suica topped up, I decided to be cheap and take a main line train instead of the Skyliner.



And then my transfer onto JR was inexplicably 5 minutes late.



On a serious note, I really hope "Personal injury accident" isn't a euphemism for something terrible.



My hotel this time is the Moxy in Kinshicho. I'd stayed here before, but I'd never walked along the street so late at night (it was close to midnight by the time I arrived). It was sketchier than I expected, with scantily clad people holding signs seemingly advertising something I couldn't read. Luckily they ignored me as I hauled my bag down the sidewalk, and this being Japan I wasn't particularly concerned about getting mugged or anything.



Here we are. The cheapest Bonvoy property in Tokyo by almost a factor of two. I don't particularly love this hotel, but it's so cheap that I keep ending up coming back to it.



Part of what bugs me about this hotel are the games they play with elite benefits. The $10 USD food and beverage credit they only convert to 1300 yen instead of the 1470 that a fair mid-market rate should be. Also they upped the price of their breakfast every time they update their conversion (last time I was here breakfast was only 1300 yen, but they were offering $10 USD to be 1050 yen when the market rate was 1 to 135). This feels like the type of games a US Bonvoy property would play, not a Japanese one. I ended up skipping breakfast at the hotel and buying food elsewhere. 700 yen gets you a lot of very good food in Tokyo, and frankly the breakfast at this hotel isn't among that.




The rooms were fairly standard Moxy fare. The otamatone that was in my room last time I was here was nowhere to be found, which was sad.

My biggest gripe with this hotel is the poor noise isolation, as I could hear every car go by outside all night. I always end up having to sleep with earplugs in.



There was a light under the bed that refused to turn off no matter what I did. In other Moxy properties I'd stayed at, the light under the bed usually turns off by itself after a few seconds, but after over an hour, I enlisted the help of the front desk, who also had no idea how to turn it off. After multiple back and forths between the employee and their group chat, eventually we found a switch under the side of the bed.



So for your reference, that's how you turn it off.



This hotel does offer coin-operated laundry machines, which was a lifesaver at this point in the trip.

So all-in-all, a fairly standard Moxy property. Not my favorite, but it is really cheap, especially if you have access to corporate rates through your employer.