Return to the Japan Alps May 2024

[rbjhan]

May I interrupt with another question? The places I've been staying in Hokkaido, provide one towel and 2 hand towels in the room (for a single person). They all say take the towel and a hand towel to the onsen etc. There is a basket in the onsen change room for used towels, but then what would I use in my room? I just take mine back to my room and hang it to dry, but most people seem to put theirs in the onsen basket. Do they call down for a fresh room towel?

If that's the only 3 they give you, I'd take back to my room and only left in the bath after last visit, ie morning. In many ryokans you will find a hanging rack for towels in the room so that's certainly a normal thing!

In this case there were 4 sets in my room so I just took a new one every time

 

[rbjhan]

Back to Tokyo!
Very much is "back", I've been to Tokyo so many times...

Booked Hotel Ryumeikan, less than 5 mins walk from Tokyo Station Yaesu North Exit, top location!

Forus A room - I have no idea what that means...but it was spacious by Tokyo standards!


You could totally roll from the tatami to bed, excellent design!


Bathroom, shower only - rare in Japan.
Nowadays you don't see them putting amenities in the room anymore, it's almost always DIY in the lobby.
I'm glad Ryumeikan hasn't done that!


Only problem, I was the furthest away from the lift! last thing I needed was more steps you know?!


* but it did look like my room was slightly larger than the other Forus A type...

Other than the lack of a public bath, I gave this hotel full marks.

 

[rbjhan]

My go to place in Tokyo Station, Rikyu, had shut down!
Oh what horrific news...
Luckily I found a new place looking promising....



Few more Tokyo food pictures...

Yakitori


Ugani Hitsumabushi


Lobby Lounge at Shangri-la Tokyo


And their seasonal special Kumamoto beef bento


Nakamura Tokichi

 

[rbjhan]

I don't do much sightseeing in Tokyo these days, mostly just shopping and food
So I tend to fast forward this part of the TR.
But! This trip there were several things I want to write about, that's for a nice change!

First was the lunch at Esterre, Palace Hotel.

ESTERRE – Tokyo - a MICHELIN Guide Restaurant

ESTERRE – a One Star: High quality cooking restaurant in the 2025 MICHELIN Guide Japan. Free online booking on the MICHELIN Guide's official website. The MICHELIN inspectors’ point of view, information on prices, types of cuisine and opening hours on the MICHELIN Guide's official website

guide.michelin.com

Booked via pocket concierge.

View was amazing.


Menu


Vegetables from Kamakura.


Salmon


I chose the pigeon for entree, it was delicious.


Main was local beef.
This was probably the weak point of the whole meal.


Soba bread! Used all my will power to not had another one


Dessert was excellent again!


Wonderful food, and excellent service as you would expect from such a place. One guy was French and we chatted about my long (and excruciating!) journey of learning French...

Only downside had nothing to do with the restaurant: it was full, two tables from mine there was this American guy, his voice...oh boy, he would have been a great public speaker! (maybe he was?) The voice just penetrated the whole dining room....No, not because he spoke English, half of the diners were foreigners speaking English, including the people with that American guy....but his voice truly was something else, and didn't know how to tone it down!

 

[rbjhan]

JAL Sky Museum Tour

https://www.jal.com/ja/kengaku/reservations/

Both JAL and ANA run factory tours near Haneda airport. JAL dates/times worked for me better so I booked this one.

Bookings open one month in advance at exactly 10am Japan time. Sounds familiar? Well yes...
Good news was, after the torture that was JR Kyushu, I had become a master of it! No problems at all grabbing the booking with JAL Sky Museum.

So I took the monorail to Shin Seibijo - that's the stop after Haneda T3 but before T2, note only slow trains stop here. (There's also a stop called Seibijo, that's not it!)


The Sky Museum was located inside JAL maintenance building. Security checked my email (very carefully!), and issued a visitor's pass.


Got out of the lift on level 3.


Tour started with a 30 mins lecture (Japanese only), a video was shown (with English subtitles) about JAL and Haneda. Pictures not allowed here.

After the lecture there was break time. Free to look around the museum and shop - very important as we would not be coming back to this area after the hangar tour.

Interesting that the uniforms used to be very colourful!






Sadly they haven't set up the new J seats yet...


Visitors can enter the coughpit.




Oh and the shop was cash only ( plus some Japanese things like paypay) - This was near the end of the trip so I only had about 10K Yen on me....


Cup noodle was cheap though~!

 

[rbjhan]

Now the all important hangar tour!

We were divided into 3 groups. My group was led by an older gentleman, apparently he was a retired 747 pilot - that's about all I got from his self introduction.

First hangar was for heavy maintenance I think.
We were only allowed to view it from a platform.


On the right side was a 777?


Then we walked to hangar No.2, took stairs down to the ground.
There was a 737.


J-Air apparently is a subsidiary, running smaller planes to regional airports, based in ITM. Similar to Qantaslink I guess...
This was an Embraer? I'm sure someone will tell me!



What you see depends entirely on the maintenance schedule, I guess we were okay - have seen reports when people saw nothing in the hangars...

The hangar was right next to runway A (?)
So we saw a lot of take offs and landings.


Total time:
Lecture 30 mins + free time 30 mins + hangar tour 45 mins

 

[rbjhan]

Overall this was a great experience, language barriers notwithstanding.
Highly recommend to anyone visiting Tokyo!





I think I'm going to book the ANA tour next time

 

[trendwhore]

Oh that tour is cool, I'll add it to my to-do list (which seems never ending)

 

[rbjhan]

Sento銭湯 is a communal bath house.
Onsen is wherever the bath uses natural hot spring water.

So what is a super sento?
As the name suggested, it's one level above a normal sento! They are generally larger, multi-story, with baths and saunas and many other facilities for you to stay the whole day in it, cafe, library, lounge, SPA, etc. They are more expensive of course, while a sento might only cost 500 Yen, I've not seen a super sento in Tokyo for less than 2000, the new one in Haneda I think it's close to 5000?

Anyways, since there was no bath in Hotel Ryumeikan, I decided to visit a super sento.
Edo-yu Ryogoku

両国湯屋江戸遊

両国湯屋江戸遊は、入浴・お食事・リラクゼーションがそろった温浴施設です。6種類のお風呂と、サウナ、露天風呂、専用リクライニングエリアなど様々なサービスをご用意し、皆様のご来館をお待ちしております。

www.edoyu.com

So I walked in, put my shoes in the shoe locker.
The shoe locker key also had a keycard on it which is your pass for everything inside.


As it was 8pm already, I chose the 3 hour course which cost 2400 Yen. Full day course was 2970.

Front desk gave me a big bag, with bath towel, small towel and lounge wear inside. Also there's another set of clothes and a large towel for bedrock bath specifically.

This one had 5 floors, see picture.



Bath pictures all from their website.
There are quite a few different bathes.


My favourite was probably this one when you can lay down using the head rest.


I especially liked the bedrock bath!
So relaxing just laying on it...

 

[rbjhan]

Many different lounge area to choose from too!
These are all from the female only floor.






I remember people were skeptical about JAL's new J seats with built-in speakers.
But really, these things had been around like forever....every super sento I've been to have loungers with built-in speakers like the below.

 

[rbjhan]

On level 3 there's a restaurant/cafe, vending machine etc - all paid with the keycard.


Level 3 was mixed gendered.


I love super sentos!
Damn wish they are more popular elsewhere. I know in S Korea there's something similar...

Most of these you can even stay overnight with additional charges. Some of them even have capsules/hotels attached!

After I finished, went back down to front desk area, put all the towels and things into a big box, and paid at a check out machine - cash, credit card, Suica, whichever way...then exit using the keycard and back to the shoe lockers, feeling very refreshed of course!

 

[rbjhan]

Wow just saw this....in what world is that a sale fare? !
Worst time to visit as well!

 

[rbjhan]

Last day!

I managed to squeeze in an early lunch ha ha


The tofu was sensational!


Hida beef hitsumabushi.


Yummm


So with hitsumabushi, first you eat the meat on rice as it is.

Then with condiments


Lastly chazuke.


As per usual, my favourite was the 2nd one.

 

[rbjhan]

Off to Haneda...

The ANA lounge near Gate 110 was filled to the brim!
If you want to shower remember to take a numbered ticket first thing!

Found a seat near the buffet area.


Ramen was good.


In less than 20 mins the weather turned...


A friend who was in Takayama that day told me Kamikochi was closed off due to heavy rain!

Almost thought I wasn't gonna get the shower but it finally came through, took about one hour.
Tokyo was very humid that day that's why I was desperate for a shower!



Saw my plane came.

 

[rbjhan]

Well the flight started alright if a bit late...




*I deliberately chose a seat closer to the aisle because I didn't like the narrow opening of the true windows seats. With the big wraparound headrest the privacy was not a problem.

This was a mocktail, quite nice.


Satay.

 

[rbjhan]

Now here's when things started to unravel...I actually checked the time stamp of all pictures to make sure I wasn't imagining things!

So the flight schedule departure was 5.05pm, we were probably 20 mins late.
Satay was served at 6.35pm.
Then bam! Turbulence hit, seat belt sign on, everyone back to their seats, including flight attendants.

The next picture was taken at 8.19pm.
I remembered they were serving entrees but got interrupted again just one row in front of me.


Then main came at 8.49pm.
BOC unagi.


And then more turbulence. I remember waiting for a long time after finishing the main - I was dying to use the loo!

So this picture was taken at 10.18pm.


Yep, no exaggeration. FIVE hours for the meal to be finished.


Lucky for us HND - SIN was a 7 hour flight.
Not sure what would happen if it was only 3 hours?

I mean, everyone was very understanding considering the SQ321 incident...but holy cough this knee jerk reaction was not the solution. The flight wasn't even that bumpy!

If they insist on doing this then maybe we need a one plate dinner...but then, wouldn't it also be very dangerous with the all the china and cutlery flying around...? Are we also getting paper cups??

I don't know what's the answer but this thing they are doing sure as hell is not it.

 

[rbjhan]

To add insult to injury, the descend down to SIN was the worst I've ever experienced
My eardrum hurt so bad I thought they ruptured...

Had only about 30 mins in SIN since we were late.
Grab something to eat in the lounge before running to the next flight.
It was already past mid-night so decided to go straight to bed.



Told them my BOC lobster was gonna be breakfast. Sure but that would be 2 hours before landing...
Hmmm China Airlines could do 40 mins...but I was already fed up so didn't argue.





Finally home!


Oh yeah, the 2nd descend my eardrum hurt again! Slightly less painful than the first but took 2 days to feel normal....

Fxx_ next trip I am also flying SQ...let's hope they get their sxx_ together in the meantime...

Edit, the 2 CI flights my ears were completely fine so this had nothing to do with my surgery.

 

[rbjhan]

Hooray! Finished another TR

Thank you all for reading!

 

[Wanderlust_tim]

Hooray! Finished another TR

Thank you all for reading!

Thank you, I really enjoyed this TR and got plenty of ideas for a future adventure

 

[VPS]

Thanks again for another great TR - always enjoy yours