The Trip

This trip is just one giant birthday thing. I turned 30 on the 3rd of November! So, I’m going to spend 30 days in Japan.

As part of being a birthday thing, I figured I’d splurge a bit - business class flights!

…that’s kinda the only splurging I’ve planned on so far. I did a heap of shopping in my January 2024 trip to Japan, and figure I’ll do that again - so it’s not really out of the norm to shop a lot here, at least to me. Maybe I’ll splurge and make some big purchase at some point? Who knows - I’ve booked far fewer things this time around, found plenty of things to explore at my own pace and at a lower cost compared to the last trip.

And my grandma on my dad’s side is tagging along for the first week! That’ll be nice - wasn’t initially part of the plan, but I know I’m not the most-social person ever so if someone happens to be around, I’m happy to hang out!

Sydney Airport

I can’t stand airports. Can’t stand queues, can’t stand a lot of the security theatre, can’t stand the corner-cutting in the airports and planes, etc etc. A few hours after I left Sydney today, a chunk of the airport fell in. Silly.

With the business class stuff, however, a lot of those issues are alleviated or at least hidden from view.

Priority processing.

Comfy lounge access. (ANA gives access to the Air NZ lounge in the Sydney International Airport!)

Free food & drink in the lounge, and in the plane. (The plane experience is another section!)

Here’s a view of roughly a quarter of the free food & drink options from the Air NZ lounge:

The lounge was pretty busy, used by multiple airlines so a steady stream of people were coming and going - didn’t feel right to take more photos of people trying to rest and energise!

But anyway - business class makes a difference! The only downside was that the plane’s departure gate was at the opposite end of the terminal from the Air NZ lounge!

ANA Business Class From Sydney to Tokyo in 2025

Bigger seats in the plane.

Actual space to myself in the plane.

Nicer food & drink menu in the plane. Free food & drink, too!

The above one meant it was also basically-unlimited desserts in the plane. I had three chocolate-caramel mousses with raspberry sauce in my flight!

However, I am a bigger dude. Not quite American-level overweight, but I have Godzilla-esque thighs and am slightly barrel-shaped overall, on top of being tall. As great as the business class experience is - and it’s definitely an upgrade over economy and premium economy - I still barely fit into the seat.

Well, I say seat - I mean the nook to get to my seat. I got a window seat, which meant the business class table is on the inner side of the plane - and I can barely squeeze through that! The seat itself is fine - roomier than economy and premium economy, but not wide enough or long enough for me to lay down comfortably. Can’t really make full use of the business class seat!

Back to entering the nook, specifically: If this is the best space I can get on a JPN/AUS commute, I don’t think I’d get a window seat in future. The non-window seats did not have this problem, because the seat directly connects to the aisle.

But… the window view is definitely great.

Was kinda sad that we couldn’t switch off cabin lights and see some stars when we’re 39,000 feet in the air, but at least the day and sunset visuals were awesome. I look at clouds like those and think back to the various lil short courses I ran where we were making aerial combat games and flight simulators, and think about how cool it is to fly through those “structures” of clouds and various other epic visuals involving the skyscape.

Volumetric clouds, cinematic aerial sci-fi scenes, 6-DOF flight - so many cool things run through my mind seeing those skies. And seeing the big nothingness above! So close to space! I love it.

I got a bit lost in the clouds - took so many photos!

The flight attendants were great, as usual - ANA staff have always been fantastic, to me. I had two staff come up to me (one even before the flight took off) and say that there’s another staff member who wants to chat to me about Pokemon (because, as usual, I was wearing a Pokemon shirt) but was super busy in another part of the plane. That staff member eventually came over to chat, compare favourite Pokemon, and show me her phone case with Gengar and Crobat on it - real fun stuff!

Now, I don’t think it’s because of me making Pokemon float on the minds of at least 3 of the plane staff, but I do like that the ANA videos for pre-flight and post-flight instructions were the new (a year old, but newer than my last Japan trip) Pokemon-themed ones. Lil 3D CGI Pokemon characters filling out plane seats, doing various activities and tasks - cute stuff, slice-of-life things. I love all that in Pokemon.

The flight took roughly 10 hours. Apparently it was delayed, and we did fly through and around various bits of turbulence. But it all felt fine and much more tolerable than my last trip’s flights.

On my last trip, I did the overnight route - leave at 8 or 9pm, arrive at like 5am. That was rough. Trying to sleep in economy seats is not good, and arriving so drained early in the morning meant I wore myself out just trying to leave the airport last time.

Tokyo Haneda International Airport Terminal 2 and Welcome Suica

This time: daytime flight, landing at 8:30pm. Business class priority processing, Visit Japan Web digital processing, and prioritiy baggage claim made exiting the airport a breeze.

And! Going against the grain of so much advice found online - I skipped the Welcome Suica card this time.

Typically, visitors are encouraged to get a Welcome Suica card. A lil public transport (and more) contactless card that lasts for 28 days, and can be topped up as needed. These cards are super powerful in Japan - moreso than any Australian equivalents - because you can also use them for various other types of retail.

But my flight landed at a different terminal to the “Welcome Suica” vending machines and staffed counters. So I skipped it.

(And no, I do not have an iPhone. iPhone users can get a virtual Suica on an app! Android phones do not have this yet, sadly.)

I got a regular Suica card! Expires 10 years after your last top-up, and various other benefits over the Welcome Suica card. Vending machines for those are at basically every public transport gate - so I got mine right next to the monorail entrance gate, tapped on, waited 4 minutes, and was sitting on an express monorail to the station near my hotel.

Day 1 Complete!

At the end of the monorail line, it was another 5 minutes of walking to get to my hotel. The trickiest part here was getting from the monorail station down to street level, through various buildings and escalators.

Honestly, this day alone has been such an improvement over my day 1 of my trip from January 2024. Everything has been so much smoother, quicker, and easier to do.

But… the vending machine prices have gone up like 10JPY (roughly 10 cents AUD) since the last visit. I wanna pretend that that’s a travesty - it’s really not - a 600ml bottle of Coca Cola is still basically $1.89AUD here. Vending machines in Australia would be charging at least $4.50AUD for that same bottle!

Next?

Not super sure what Day 2 will be. Nothing is booked for tomorrow, and I was bracing myself to be super tired by the time I got to my hotel (based on the JAN24 trip) so I’ve given myself time to just do basically nothing, explore stuff within 5 minutes of walking distance, and gather energy.

I don’t expect to blog every single day, either, but as an idea of what’s next in the coming few days:

• grabbing birthday freebies from Pokemon Centers. There’s at least 2 event Pokemon to collect and a new augmented reality birthday card to see!
• starting my goshuin-cho by touring some nearby temples and shrines! Plenty of great comparisons can be made between Shinto and Australian Aboriginal culture here, I’m so keen to see what I can learn this time!
• catch up with Grandma! That’ll be at least a Wednesday-through-Friday thing, plenty of stuff booked to do together!

Really keen to grab more goshuin in particular - locally-made art and historic culture, mythology, and tradition all mixed into one! Only managed to grab a few last time, but gems like this are worth finding:

The above goshuin was from January 2024 - at a bare minimum, goshuins have different calligraphy (because they write the date on your goshuin), but many of them do different artworks at different times of year as well. Keen to see what I can find next!