Back to Japan and Korea

[Matt_01]

Last day and heading back home this evening. We just went to Hongdae so MissM could get the last of her shopping in.

This was near our hotel.

Now at ICN in the newly opened OW Lounge

 

[fly2earth]

Last day and heading back home this evening. We just went to Hongdae so MissM could get the last of her shopping in.
View attachment 382994View attachment 382995View attachment 382996View attachment 382997View attachment 382998
This was near our hotel.
View attachment 382999
Now at ICN in the newly opened OW Lounge
View attachment 383000View attachment 383003View attachment 383002View attachment 383001

Wow beats OZ lounge out of the water! I thought OZ had crowdsourced all the other airlines and Korean Air as well since going to KA need to go down another set of train/walkway to reach their terminal. For your reference OZ only has Cole-slaw (yes those dreaded coleslaw) and on better occasions fried noodles? and fried rice. Comparable to the domestic J Qantas lounge I would say. However the runway view is very generous (considering it was the first time snowing when I was there four months ago) and the seats are very comfy. Too bad the food option is quite limited. Headed off to the SKL lounge shortly afterwards.

 

[Matt_01]

I will finish up the report. The flight back to AU was delayed by about an hour I only had the pork and the dessert. I was asleep before the movie I was watching during the service had ended. Due the late arrival in SYD the transfer time was only around 1hr, 10min, the airport was not that busy so we we able to get through quickly over to the J dom lounge to get a quick coffee. Then the final flights home.
Over all it was a good trip, we have all been to Japan before and we are familiar with how to get around. Mrs&MissM enjoyed Korea and it was their first visit.
The flights - all the QF and JL flights were booked using QF points and at the time of booking I was P1 (not any more) and was surprised when QF released 3 seats for us given it was during school holidays. The OZ flight was the cheapest revenue fare I could find.
Accomodation - I was not sure how Mrs&MissM would react to the businessmen hotel but they said they were fine and when selecting the accomodation the requirement was it had to be as close as possible to the train stations and on flat ground as I knew from the outset I would end up as the the pack mule pushing their luggage around. The only 'chain' we used was the Mercure in Okinawa which was opposite side of the road to the monorail. At the time of booking the Mercure had an offer which also included car hire and was cheaper than just a room booking. If in Okinawa it is a good idea to get a hire car.
Public Transport - This was the first time we have travelled to Japan without JR passes, they have gone up price and doing rough calculations before leaving I thought it would be cheaper just to purchase tickets while we were there. It was cheaper but not by much however in saying that we were travelled on the Nozomi Shinkansen which are not covered by the JR pass and on one of the trips we were in the green car. I have a Suica card, Mrs&MissM have Pasmo cards but had forgotten them and it took around 24 hours for me to get annoyed with purchasing tickets for them so they now have Icoca cards. In Korea we did not bother with getting a travel card and elected to purchase single trip ticket cards which adds 500KRW to the price. This is refundable if you put them in the refund machine which are normally located next to the ticket vending machines.
Other - We were lucky on this trip as blossom season was later than normal and although we were at the back end of it we still managed to experience it Hiroshima, Himeji, Kanazawa, Nagano and Matsumoto. It was something we have not seen before and I now understand why some will travel to Japan just to see it. Also on this trip I went from been a HLO traveler to a checked item traveller and it was not by choice. As I knew we were going to Japan I had looked up the Mazda Japan website as I wanted a couple of parts/ accessories for one of our cars, my plan was to go to a local Mazda dealership acquire the parts and post them home. Why did I do this, well one of the parts is available in AU however in Japan it was 40% cheaper and the other part is not available in AU. My plan failed as the box for one of the parts was 120cm long and the maximum length Japan post will accept is 105cm. I had picked the items up in Hiroshima so had to lug that dam box around on all trains when changing locations and checkin on flights.

End of report.

Next TR will start in around 4 weeks as I am ticking off a place on my bucket list 'Mongolia' I have had a few cracks at it in the past but timing did not work out. This year it it seems to be working out and will also tie in with the 2024 Lounge Crawl in HKG.