Thanks! Here's the beginning of the Tokyo trip report:
11/11/2019 - Juliano's World Frenzy, Tokyo, Day 1
This trip was FINALLY here! I had booked it about 6 and a half months before departure, using the excellent BA Holidays service. I've now used this 4 times (Vienna, Toronto and Tallinn were the other occasions) and I will do so again in the future! Normally I prefer to book flights and accommodation on my own, but the crucial part here is the deposit scheme. That has made this trip possible, without it I'd have been unable to fund the entire trip at the time of booking. I would have possibly also spent more money, or made it cheaper but with inferior accommodation. That's how I did Australia for less than £650, settling for hostels. I didn't fancy that this time!
Why Tokyo? I love busy cities, and Tokyo is definitely one of those. Japan is also home to the world-famous Bullet Trains, and I must confess to always wanting to trying some of the unusual Pepsi and KitKat flavours that don't exist outside of Japan! I did make a bit of an error in booking this one though, booking to come back the day before I intended to. So I would only have 2 full days in Tokyo, but I had a feeling that would be enough anyway.
I couldn't turn down the trip when I got the suggested flights, which were London Heathrow to Frankfurt with BA, then Japan Airlines (a required airline for me) to Tokyo Narita. Coming back was all the way to London Heathrow, but from Tokyo Haneda instead. Yes I would have to endure an older Airbus
319/320/321 to Frankfurt, but I was booked on a 787 with Japan Airlines onwards and a 777 all the way back to the UK. Yes, yes and triple YES to those two!
I must confess to having a bit of a dance in the armchair at that idea! Three required airports as well, as well as more labels for my collection, oh yes that will do nicely. Oh, and despite the main flights being over 11 hours each (I think Haneda to Heathrow is scheduled at 12 hours 40 minutes) that's still classed as nothing compared to that flight on an A380 from Sydney to Abu Dhabi in March
2019. That was about 14 hours 40 minutes after all!
Well before the day of departure, I was more than excited! There was just the matter of getting to London Heathrow Airport first. Originally I had booked onto National Express on the day of the flight, but a few days later I got worried about possible traffic jams delaying me on the way to London, so I ended up paying for a trip to London via Birmingham and a night at easyHotel Croydon for the day before the trip. I'd been getting ready for this trip for quite a while before it came about, and it's fair to say fighting Holiday Mode at work was not easy! However, I finally got through that and it was straight home to pick up my holdall, passport and so on before racing back out to the station for my booked trains.
As that was all about trains and such like, with nothing really to do with the trip, let's skip over that bit. After a de-rance and so on at easyHotel, there was plenty of time to get to Heathrow so I didn't rush. Indeed, while enjoying my coffee from Pret I typed up a trip report on RailUK for the previous day's travels. Breakfast was a bacon sandwich from Sainsburys, after all 100 bonus Nectar points were not to be sniffed at! There was some buzzing noise coming in from somewhere, and a noisy air-conditioning unit, disturbing the sleep during the night so eventually I was up a little after 5am. By the time I'd done everything, it was nearly half 7 and nicely light outside. I still had 5 hours at that point until I wanted to be at Heathrow, so it was then time, before leaving the room, to decide which route I wanted to take.
It was decided eventually, once I got another coffee, to walk to West Croydon Bus Station and do the X26 to Heathrow Central Bus Station. Only £1.50 after all! A visit to a nearby Tesco Express was also done for a meal deal, which was devoured before the end of the bus journey. I just missed the
0800 departure, the next one at
0835 felt like a eternity away! Eventually it arrived and at
0837 we were off. Lots of reading got done, and the journey goes through some nice areas, providing rather useful links from Croydon to all manner of places that would take a while by rail.
By the time the bus got near Hatton Cross, the excitement for departure was getting quite major! The trek along the Northern Perimeter road got me two USA craft as they landed too, happy days! To think I was going to arrive at Heathrow from central London by rail...
At
1040 the bus finally arrived at Heathrow Central Bus Station, having been caught up in traffic quite a bit along the route. Following an essential move, it was to the trains where I joined dud
332002 for the trip to Terminal 5. I'd forgotten it's a bit of a march from the bus station, but that was most welcome after so much sitting around. Heathrow Express goes over to 387s soon, so the opportunity to say farewell to the 332s on this trip was welcome.
Upstairs in Departures, it was time to grab a coffee from Nero as I was still a little early for bag drop. I did get to score one of BA's short haul crafts, of which the A319s and A320s I'm doing rather well on so that was a bonus. Eventually it was time to get my Favourite Flying Tunes playlist going, then I headed to bag drop once I also collected my boarding pass for the connecting flight. By some way my holdall was the lightest bag I've ever checked in, at 4.7kg!
Security staff were also really friendly, a credit to the mighty London Heathrow T5, the best lot I've ever encountered in the world. With bag drop and security passed in just 10 minutes, it was time to get to Pret for a coffee and take a seat by the huge windows. The huge craft over the apron, such as the 747, were teasing me, less than 2 months until I will finally sample a Queen of the Skies! Eventually I got up for a wander around, and after much deciding I ended up in Wetherspoon for lunch/tea.
£
13.15 for the BBQ chicken burger, with chips and 2 onion rings, but that burger came with a very nice size piece of chicken, some maple bacon, a slice of non-processed cheese and BBQ sauce. I certainly didn't take long devouring that, and it is a highly recommended meal!
After some more spotting the gate was revealed as A23. Not that far from A9 really, I was there in just a few minutes. More planes noted, but the highlight was BA's A319 G-EUPJ in retro BEA colours. This was done as part of a 100th anniversary for BA, so while it was before my time I appreciated seeing what came before me. Soon enough it was down the airbridge, where I discovered I had an A320neo, in the form of winner
G-TTNJ, on BA910 to Frankfurt. Happy days!
I was at seat 24F quite quickly, and the small windows make one appreciate the large ones on 787s even more. Pushback was 3 minutes late at
1518, and it took until
1548 for us to taxi and queue up behind others before it was into the air. I did get a good few more planes scored for sight though, including some of BA's larger craft, so not too bad. After a while, the on-board catering made it to my row, and £4.45 later I had a can of Brewdog's Speedbird 100, a 4.8% IPA brewed specially for BA's 100th anniversary. Quite reasonable a beer too, for my own taste I'd have preferred a bit more strength but it was still good.
By
1742 (GMT+1 as we were now in the relevant timezone) descent was well underway and the seatbelt sign on. Just as well, as it got a little bumpy for a few moments! I was by then 250 pages into the book I had started a few days ago, and this was one of Linwood Barclay's best ones. Hard to put down for long! Of course, by now I was prepared and ready for a short connection in Frankfurt, transferring to Japan Airlines' JL
408 1940 Frankfurt-Tokyo Narita aboard one of their 787s. That flight is scheduled for 11 hours and 20 minutes, much longer than the 'blink and it's over' sort of flight like I had done with BA!
It was back on the ground at
1759, with brakes on at the terminal at
1808, 8 minutes late. It took seemingly ages to get off the plane, but there was no reason to worry after all, as I had arrived at gate D2. The next flight was from D8, so happy days!
En-route to the gate, I took advantage of a filter water point. Then I discovered there's security screening next to the gate, so I took advantage of some WiFi to catch up on Twitter and WhatsApp, as well as obviously drink a litre of water. Fair to say I was refreshed!
Security took longer than expected, nowhere near the expected efficiency of Germany. There were seats with power nearby, so I took advantage of these to charge up, just in case I had none on the 787, and put my Favourite Flying Tunes on. It's a nice and clean, modern and smart, area to wait but very dull too. At that point, I just wanted to get on board and get back in the air! Quite, I was already planning the next adventure for after Krakow!
Boarding was very efficient, and the crew very welcoming. The cabin was beautiful, and just WOW at the legroom! The pillow and blanket at all seats were brilliant too, and the headphones didn't look too bad for Economy. For such a modern aircraft like the 787, for the record this was winner
JA863J, a
787-9, the seat comfort was pretty impressive. The recline was not bad, especially as I was in seat 59G, an aisle seat right at the back. So far, I was exceptionally impressed! Customs papers to be filled in were handed about before departure, and pushback was 1 minute early at
1939. The distance to the runway was not much either, and it was roaring away into the air at
1956. Oh, and a quick flick through the movies selection revealed a great choice too, now the only concern was the catering, but I could foresee myself using Japan Airlines again very happily.
Shortly after takeoff, I got onto movies, as there was one I'd been wanting to see for ages, Toy Story 4. Glad I saw it at long last, and service began with a nice refreshing cold wet flannel. Eventually the drinks service on my side of the plane arrived, and I had been contemplating my choice since I saw the drinks menu in the seatback pocket before departure. I settled on trying a classic Japanese drink, sake. This is a
15-16% alcoholic drink, which also came with a packet of rice crackers. They were far better than expected, I'll gladly have more of those some time!
As for the sake, it was interesting. I can't say I'd rush to have more of it though. With the movie nearly over, meal service had finally made its way down my side of Economy. On the other side it got there much quicker, and the only option was the fish dish. Thankfully it was cod, and fair dos with the fruit salad, coleslaw thing, a small and slightly tough bread roll, the cold noodles which just smelled weird and a pot of salad, not to mention the Milka chocolate wafer round, or the Hagen Dazs raspberry sorbet, there was quite the nice bit of food. I didn't eat all of it of course, I just can't get on with coleslaw or salad. Oh and I got a can of Kirin Ichiban too, a beer I've had before from Asda and it was excellent now too. I sure recommend it.
What's also worth mentioning was it came with actual metal cutlery, which I have only otherwise seen on Etihad so far. Quite impressive! The green tea I had two small cups of, it was actually quite nice. The small coffee was reasonable too, better than what BA served in
2018 on my Canada trip and what Etihad served earlier this year. After Toy Story 4, I saw another movie I've wanted to see for a long time too. Say what you will about my desire to add it to my list, but I finally watched Disney's Frozen. A bit slow to begin with, but otherwise a well-written story. That put me on 257 logged movies, which memories tells me is something like 60 movies scored in 8 months!
I then figured it may be a good idea to try and doze off for a bit, but dippy duck me forgot to pack his earplugs and eye shades! The eye shades I'd have managed without, but the earplugs no. Besides, there was excitement about visiting somewhere new, sleep was going to be hard to come by!
