Packed and off. Yet again, the delights of OLCI and IT that works remain a surprise (LX compared to BA, of course). It would appear that I’ve remained a SEN for one last journey (as technically I dropped to FTL on 1 March).

Goodbye lovely hotel (our comparison is still Tiny Room in Hakata).


A very quiet Saturday morning at the nearest station to our hotel.

A very local train to the airport despite the “express” billing

We arrived just as the desks were opening


A JR train plus one change to get us to NRT. I’m genuinely perplexed as to the variety of ways of getting to NRT. From our hotel location Google offered us about six different options. We selected the most convenient and reasonably price. The broad choice appears to be Y2600 for “Skykiner” and “Keisei Express” vs Y1250-1550 for normal routes. We chose the latter which was still a limited express but took an hour from central TYO. All fine and easy enough - which has been a feature of all our domestic travel here.

Oh and thanks to Google telling us the price, when we used our SUICA card to leave the station at NRT, we had a very pleasing Y0 balance. ((You can’t refund an Apple wallet credit from a SUICA card.))

And into the ANA lounge, which is a tad disappointing if I’m honest. Having become used to the hotel buffets offering at least 20 items of Japan’s food items for breakfast, it’s a let down to have a limited choice and fairly westernised to boot.




Pretty limited drinks (ok it is 10am here)

As I’ve often said about lounges, they aren’t all they are said to be. It’s perfectly fine but it has the ambience of a waiting room. Which is what it is, of course. I just expected more from ANAs home.

But the main course is still to come and we don’t yet know if our 14 hour LX flight on a 9-year okd 777 in the mini J cabin is a polar express or not.