NH 8 NRT-SFO on March 16, 2018

Booking

This was the return flight for a roundtrip booking I made via Virgin Atlantic where we flew the first flight in May 2017. The points were transferred from Membership Rewards with the 30% bonus, and cost a total of 110k Virgin Atlantic miles plus $170 for the roundtrip. Divided equally between the two legs, that makes this flight 55k miles and $85. The value of the flight at time of booking was $9,920 for a cpm of 15.62. Since it is unrealistic to actually pay nearly $10k for a flight, the cheapest non-stop economy flight was $736.50 for a “real” cpm of 1.16. Prices for roundtrips are probably cheaper but let’s keep things simple for now…

I should also note that I upgraded my husband’s NRT-SFO flight because he was originally booked in business class and flew the first leg SFO-NRT in business class (it wasn’t a big deal, we were basically one row apart and the menus/experience were very similar). When I saw F space open up, I called Virgin Atlantic and upgraded for 10k miles and a change fee of $50. I am glad this worked out, as you’ll see later.

Getting to the airport

We stayed at Hyatt Centric Ginza in Tokyo, so we took the Asakusa line from Shimbashi station all the way to Terminal 1 of NRT (it turns into Sky Access at some point). The walk to the station from the hotel took about 8-10 min and the train ride took about 1 hour and cost around 1300 yen. I do wish Google Maps was a little more descriptive on how to get to the platform for the train bound for the airport, but fortunately there were signs that mentioned the airport train. The timing of this train was approximately every 30 min, and we arrived at the platform out-of-breath with about 30 seconds to spare. I would recommend checking the schedule ahead of time and giving yourself enough time to look for the platform while dragging your luggage…

A couple other options are the Keisei Skyliner or airport limousine (the 1000 yen one shown on Google Maps).

Food court tsukemen detour

Against my husband’s strong protests of cutting into our lounge time and free food stomach space, I dragged us to the Terminal 1 food court on the 4th floor between the two Departure Halls (landside) to eat tsukemen at the famous ramen shop Tomita (the original shop is #1 on RamenDB) that my friend Forrest tipped me off to as a relatively new and convenient addition to the NRT food court. I would highly recommend making a pit stop here if you are not flying premium class, or if you are but don’t care for lounge food. For us, good free lounge food such as that offered by JAL and ANA trumps the ramen, but I would not hesitate to drop by if I had been flying economy.

Tomita

ANA Suite check-in

ANA first class has a private check-in suite in the airport that is large and spacious. We didn’t know about it at first, so we went to the ANA portion of the Departure Hall where an agent told us to print baggage tags from a kiosk. We did so, only to find out later it was a waste of time. Then another agent told us to go to the business class line, and when we got there, another agent directed us to the first class check-in suite. Once there, I handed over our printed baggage tags to the agent, and they gave me wet towels and offered me hard candy (cough drops). I thought that was a nice touch. The check-in suite was simple but the little extra touches did make it feel calm and nice compared to the zoo outside in the Departure Hall with long lines and having to dodge tons of tourists rolling their giant bags into you.

ANA Suite First Class check-in lounge

Each check-in station looked like this. I appreciated the soft ledge to place my purse on while I dug around it for my passport. They also offer you a wet towel and candy.

Security and Immigration/Customs

From the private check-in, the agent leads you to the back of the check-in suite to a private security screening. I liked this because there is nobody in front of you, nobody behind you. No need to rush and nobody getting all up in your space. Relatively minor detail for most people, but I appreciated it.

The security led us right into Immigration/Customs, for which there were no lines for the Foreigners. Sweet! We stopped by the TTP booth to ask about our status, since we applied for the e-gate program more than 3 months ago, but they said that we’re still in preliminary processing and it could take another 3 months before secondary.

Lounge

We went to the ANA Lounge, which has a business class and first class (Suite Lounge) side. We checked out both and honestly, they were fairly similar in terms of spaciousness, crowdedness, food options, noodle bar and hot entrée options, and style. The first class side had a higher quality tea and Haagen Dazs ice cream, which I did not notice on the business class side. The bathrooms have Shiseido products you can use.

The food options were pretty good, but unfortunately I was already half full from the tuskemen earlier, so all I could eat was a curry udon, which was yummy. I also had a bite of the burger that my husband ordered, which was okay, but I chastised him for ordering American food when it’s our last few hours in Japan. 😛 I am a huge fan of gyudon (the beef bowl in the menu below – thinly sliced, marinated beef brisket over rice) and would’ve also liked to order the chicken curry, ramen, and sashimi over rice (chirashi bowl). But another thing I liked about this lounge is the number of small packaged snacks, etc. You catch my drift? 😉

ANA Lounge and Suite Lounge

Lounge seating

Noodle bar and made-to-order options

Alcohol options (wasted on me, unfortunately)

Curry udon and iced hojicha tea

Bathroom vanity booths with Shiseido products

Last-minute shopping

I usually don’t do any airport duty-free shopping, but this is Japan and I had so many Japanese snacks I wanted! I left my things in the lounge (fyi there are no lockers) and went out to the terminal to shop at Fa-So-La and the other shops. I realized I loved shopping in Japanese airports because:

  1. The products are about the same price as in the city anyways.
  2. There are no minimums for tax-free shopping; in the city most stores institute a 5000 yen minimum.
  3. No need to staple receipts into your passport or seal products up so that you can’t open them before leaving Japan. (I hear that most people take out the receipts and open the bags anyways; you’re not supposed to do that and they can make you pay taxes, if they catch you)
  4. Since this is last-minute shopping, you don’t have to carry your purchases around for a whole trip and the stuff you buy has a higher chance of making it home in perfect condition – important for things that come in boxes that are easily crushed.

Well, many other tourists also had the same idea since every shop had a long line full of [mostly Chinese] tourists with baskets overflowing with many multiples of the same product. I witnessed the same phenomenon at discount stores and drugstores; clerks often speak Mandarin and it’s always the Chinese tourists with the overflowing baskets. I often found it easier for me to ask questions in Chinese because the clerks were more likely to speak more Mandarin than English. Anyways, fortunately the Japanese are efficient and there were many sales registers, so lines moved quickly despite snaking around the store.

Flight experience

Due to my shopping, we were the last to board our flight, which was actually delayed by 30 minutes (which I was totally fine with! Wish it was delayed by 3 hours…but I’m sure others would not appreciate that :P). The flight attendants kept apologizing profusely for the delay.

We were given our pajamas, which are greatly improved from last year’s. They’re made of a thicker, less scratchy fabric, with a pull-over top with buttons at the collar, and a drawstring bottom. The bottom wasn’t quite elastic enough for me so I had to tie the string, which I found kind of annoying. They also give you a zip-up cardigan, which was pretty nice. I wore that for most of the flight, but the second half of the flight felt too hot for it.

The amenity kit was a nice blue Samsonite hardshell with The Ginza products inside and standard stuff like ear plugs, eyemask, toothbrush/paste. The Ginza products are worth mentioning because this is a high-end Shiseido skincare line sold only in Japan, and is extremely expensive. Due to this, I think it makes this amenity kit very valuable. One of my friend swears by this line and buys the full-size products, but I haven’t really tried it myself for more than a couple days. It makes my skin extremely soft, but so do other Japanese brands, so I’ll need to try it longer to make a judgment. I bet my friend would be happy to buy your amenity kits if you don’t care for The Ginza products! 🙂

The flight attendants were great and very attentive. I found it amusing that they would appear literally within a second of me pressing the call button, and then would apologize for keeping me waiting. Umm…as if I can’t wait one second?

The seat was very private and spacious. It felt and looked very much like a cubicle at work. I like the design of JAL F much more, but I appreciated the little details in the ANA F seat, like the water bottle compartment, the jacket compartment in the side of the seat, the eyeglasses compartment, the hook inside the headphones compartment for hanging their Sony noise-cancelling headphones, and the adjustability of the mini cocktail table and the dining table that made it easy to get up and use the lavatory during a meal without awkwardly trying to climb out from underneath the table or anything. Just push it forward until you have enough space to get out! I guess I found this seat very functional rather than attractive. Now JAL F was both attractive and functional (enough).

I never use in-flight IFEs so I have no comment on that. The wifi was very expensive ($20 for 100 MB!) so I didn’t use that either. However, I recall seeing ads in Japan that in-flight wifi on ANA will be free starting April 2018. Woohoo!

Samsonite amenity kit with expensive The Ginza skincare products

Plenty of stowage space

Many features

Water bottle compartment with mirror, charging station, seat adjustment panel, IFE remote…

Backlighting for the IFE and footrest lighting for when the cabin lights are dimmed

Headphones compartment with hook for hanging them

Glasses compartment (fits a phone pretty well too!)

Lavatory with Shiseido products and other useful inflight amenities. Automatic faucet and typical Japanese bidet toilet. I always felt like using cloth towels once to dry hands and then disposing it was wasteful though…

Bedding

After the meal, the flight attendant offered to make my bed. The mattress was a nice egg-shell foam mattress that I found very comfortable. She put an extra memory foam pillow (in addition to the regular cotton pillow that comes with the seat) and a very soft comforter on top of the mattress, and put the soft fleece blanket that comes with the seat on top of that. I found the bedding to be very comfortable, but halfway through the flight I felt like it got fairly hot. The air was also extremely dry and I experienced some miserable sinus congestion. I should have used the moisture mask from the amenity kit before going to sleep! All in all, I was only able to get about 2 hours of good sleep before I became very uncomfortable from the sinus congestion.

Bedding

Food and Beverage

I ordered the Japanese menu with one addition of the wagyu fillet from the Western (“International”) side of the menu. The Japanese menu didn’t impress me greatly except for the steamed abalone and sashimi. The grilled Hokkaido wagyu fillet was excellent though. Later on in the flight, I ordered the Ippudo soraton ramen for breakfast, as well as green tea over rice (yes, literally green tea poured over white rice) and plain yogurt with yuzu jam and honey. The wagyu, ramen, and yogurt were my most memorable and tasty menu items. I discussed with some friends later who had recently taken ANA F as well and they disagreed with me on my food choices, so I guess it goes to show how different our palates can be. I tend to eat what I like to eat, rather than trying to maximize value by ordering only the unique, expensive things, and I don’t really appreciate fine dining types of things where random things are wrapped around other random things resulting in a tiny one-bite thing that looks beautiful. I generally don’t like expensive delicacies like pate, uni (sea urchin), or roe. I’d rather have a nice simple bowl of delicious noodles or a wagyu steak! Maybe it is a waste for me to fly first class, huh? 🙂

I absolutely loved the beverage options. While most people would recommend that you fill up on Krug and Hibiki 21, I tried both and wasn’t a huge fan of either. Again, more expensive things in first class that are wasted on me. However, I drank them dry of their Mapple Juice Fuji, which is a fresh apple juice from the Nagano prefecture. It was incredible! I also had many cups of their delicious matcha, hojicha, and sencha (green) teas, and tried their ANA original blend “mitoco” (rose, jasmine flower, peppermint) and their ANA original aromatic kabosu (citrus and honey) soft drink. My husband also enjoyed their sake selection.

Beverages

More beverages and that delicious Mapple juice

Sake and shochu options

Teas and coffee

Japanese and International (aka Western) menu

Light dishes anytime (aka breakfast)

“Amuse” – cheese sticks mixed spice flavor, crab meat and shrimp salad rolled with smoked cuttlefish, pork paté with red wine gelée, prosciutto and yogurt mousse with mango.

“Zensai” – steamed icefish sushi with cherry blossom leaf, dressed scallop with sake lees-based cream cheese, Japanese tiger prawn rolled with lotus root in vinegar sauce, marinated ocellated octopus in soy-based sauce, salt-boiled broad beans, boiled fatsia sprouts rolled with uncured ham.

“Sakizuke” – steamed abalone with sake-based egg yolk sauce.

“Owan” – steamed sea bream roe rolled with kasugodai sea bream.

Sakizuke and Zensai

“Otsukuri” – seared flounder, seared Pacific bluefin tuna.

“Shusai” – Grilled black rockfish with soy-based sauce.

“Nimono” – fried steamed new potato, simmered cabbage rolled with bacon in kombu kelp-based sauce, spring onion sauce. “Kobachi” – Chinese mactra and Japanese cockle rolled with yuba bean curd, uzu citron red pepper-flavored miso vinegar sauce. Steamed rice, miso soup, and Japanese pickles.

Grilled fillet of Hokkaido wagyu beef with miso-flavored vegetable filling.

“Wagashi” – Toraya Omokage Yokan, a traditional Japanese confectionary (basically like a red bean/azuki jelly with very firm texture. Served with matcha tea.

My selection of breakfast – Ippudo Soraton (pork broth) ramen, ochazuke (steamed rice with sencha green tea poured over it), and plain yogurt with honey and yuzu citron jam.

Final thoughts

Now that I’ve flown JAL F and ANA F twice (SFO-NRT was very forgettable mostly due to lack of a good land experience), I would say that JAL F is significantly better in almost every way. However, ANA F is cheaper in miles and in a easier-to-earn currency (transfer from UR/TYP/MR to VS, or MR to NH). I thought the experience was fine, and certain little touches helped boost up the overall experience.

I felt like there was very little difference between J and F, but also very small difference in miles, so I will probably always opt for F if flying ANA, even though the differences are minor (on the SFO-NRT route, the differences are even less apparent, with the main exception being that only F passengers get a fast track pass for immigration, which is helpful when it’s a zoo). I am glad that I upgraded my husband to F for this return flight, so that we would be able to do the suite check-in and private security together, and both use the F lounge. And both get an awesome amenity kit with The Ginza products. 🙂 I didn’t find there was any need to upgrade him to F for the SFO-NRT outbound flight, as I was able to sneak him into the immigration fast track lane with me.

The bottom line is, if I have the AA/AS miles needed to fly JAL F, I would always opt for that, especially since it flies into HND, which is a much more convenient airport, and they have a better hard and soft product. Their flight attendants listen to what you say and even gave me gifts for my birthday. But if availability or mileage balances preclude me from booking JAL F, I can say I would be very happy with ANA F and the experience and savings.