Tokyo Day 14: Last Day & Haneda Airport

I want to take the time to talk about the hotel we stayed in during our time in Tokyo. It’s called ICI Hotel, and we stayed in the Ueno/Shin-Okachimachi-based one. The building itself looks a bit like a domino, and we stayed up on the 8^th floor.

The entire hotel was perfectly clean and tidy at all times and has great facilities which include washing machines, vending machines, really good WiFi, and some lovely air conditioning. In the lobby there is a self-serve kitchen and seating area, billiards table, Gachapon machines, and a small selection of snacks and drinks to buy. You can also borrow hairdryers and hair straighteners from the front desk, and there are communal reusable shopping bags and umbrellas that hotel guests can use as needed. The staff always greet you as you come in or leave the lobby, look impeccable, and are always ready to help with anything (there is also a bowl of sweets on the front desk which I thoroughly enjoyed).

I’ve already mentioned how much I loved our room, so I won’t go on and on. But it was seriously nice – wonderfully clean, bright and modern. The beds were a nice size and ridiculously comfortable, there were plenty of USB ports and electrical outlets, the whole bathroom was just divine, the pyjamas and towels provided were super comfy, and everything was in perfect working order. The view from our window was one that we loved waking up to every day.

Housekeeping was also 10/10. For the duration of our trip, we had the same lady working on our floor which was really nice as we built up familiarity and greeted each other every morning. If you stick the ‘please clean’ sign on your door, a ‘proper’ full clean of the room will be done while you’re out, but even if you don’t housekeeping works a bit of magic. They’ll pop in and straighten up the room, make the beds, change out used towels, replenish toilet paper, empty the bins, etc. It was lovely to come back to a tidied up space every day. You could also put a laminated paper on your bed if you wanted fresh bedsheets. It was just brilliant. As I touched on earlier, all of the halls, lifts, and communal spaces were spick and span.

I really, really recommend the hotel – apart from everything I’ve already said, the hotel is in a quiet and safe area, so it’s really nice and peaceful when you come back to chill out in the room. I can’t remember which day, but my lounge pants went missing, and I worked out that they must have been scooped up with my pyjamas and used towels. I called the front desk and muddled through a conversation about them, and asked them to keep an eye out for them in the laundry. Not only did they find them, they had them sent back up to my room and folded neatly on the bed! I thought I’d lost them forever so this just earned the hotel so many more kudos.

This morning, we sorted out the last of our packing before turf-out time, at which point Caz realised she needed a second suitcase. Neither of us were surprised, her side of the room looked like the contents of an arcade claw machine (which it basically was). We packed all we could, put the rest in shopping bags, and I looked up luggage shops. The closest one was near Ameya Yokocho in Ueno, about a ten-minute walk.

I had a bit of a panic when I went to get my things out of the room safe (which included my house keys, British bank card and British money!) and it wouldn’t open. It didn’t appear to even be on, as no lights were showing. I ran down to the front desk to ask for help, as I thought it’d be easier to tell them about it face to face. I asked that someone come and have a look at their earliest convenience. Instead, the girl I was talking to grabbed an enormous set of keys and came up with me straight away! The Japanese really do pride themselves on good service and convenience at all times. She manually unlocked the safe for me and I retrieved my things, thanking her profusely.

Before we left, I had time to write a note in my basic-ass Japanese, thanking housekeeping very much. I left it on the desk where it would definitely be seen, and we did one last sweep of the room to make sure we had everything. Then we said goodbye to our lovely room, our home for the last fortnight.

We went to the front desk and asked to check out, which was a smooth and easy process. I enquired about their luggage holding facility and explained that we had to make a quick errand before we left properly. They put numbered tags on our suitcases and gave us tokens matching the numbers to hand back in when we returned. They also very kindly agreed to take Caz’s extra bags of things, and laughed when we explained that our errand was to get another case.

The hotel had posters up saying that you could earn a gift if you made an Instagram post about your stay at the hotel. We’d noticed them earlier in the trip and Caz had made a post, so she showed them at the front desk. The gift was a pair of nail clippers with a girl wearing a kimono on the design. Caz picked out the white one with pink flowers, and then they asked which one I wanted! I said I hadn’t made a post yet, and they said that I could also have the gift because we were in the same party. So I chose the one wearing black because it reminded me of my yukata.

We set off for the luggage shop and were immediately distracted by Family Mart. We loved having konbini everywhere in the city, and we’re going to miss them when we get home. I decided we should pop in one last time. We got some snacks and things, and I finally bought something I had been eyeing all holiday. It’s called a ‘sandcake’ – it’s two sponge cakes with jam and cream in between them. So it looks like a sandwich, but it’s a cake! I was so happy to have finally tried one, on my last day here.

Ameya Yokocho, or Ameyoko as it’s known locally, used to be the site of Tokyo’s black market after the Second World War. It’s now a legit marketplace, but still known for its bargain prices. It’s a little higgledy-piggledy set of side streets next to and beneath the railway tracks in a layout similar to Omoide Yokocho. The narrow roads are lined with market stalls selling everything imaginable, and it’s apparently a very good area to find cheap sweets. I would like to explore it properly when I return to Tokyo – the walk through it today was interesting, but we couldn’t stop because we had a time limit and a mission to fulfil.

We soon located the luggage shop I’d found on the map and went inside. It didn’t take long to find a decently sized and reasonably priced suitcase. We took it to the proprietor of the shop, a man who looked like a Japanese version of Iggy Pop, who was really friendly and helpful. He also gave Caz a small discount for no real reason. We decided he couldn’t be bothered to count change, so rounded the price down for us. Whatever the reason, it was so kind!

As we exited the shop and walked back toward the gate to Ameyoko, a light rain had started and the sky was grey. This is literally the only rain we saw while in Tokyo, and I joked that the city was weeping because we were leaving.

We decided to have one last Lotteria because their burgers are to die for. The Ueno one wasn’t far, so we stopped there for an early brunch. As we sat and ate, we both talked about how ridiculously tired we were. We’d had big dreams about cramming in some more sights in before we left, but now we didn’t think we had the time or energy to do so. I wondered if there was somewhere we could nap and started researching on my phone. I’d heard about so-called ‘nap cafes’ in Japan, which is an exquisite idea, but all of them were out of the way of where we were eventually heading. Then I checked out capsule hotels, but they were a bit out of our price range. I even looked up the notorious ‘love hotels’ to see if we could get a room for a couple of hours, just to sleep in. No luck.

In desperation I searched for hotels near Haneda airport and came across First Cabin. It’s a capsule-style hotel that you can book for however many hours you need for a fair price, and is mainly used by people on layovers between flights. We decided we’d stop there for a few hours when we got to the airport and have a rest.

After our final Lotteria (which was just as good as the other times we went), we headed back to the hotel to pack up the rest of Caz’s stuff. The staff were amused by us scrambling to get it all done and out of the way, and my scolding of Caz the whole time. We traded in our tokens to get our other suitcases back and were given a warm farewell from the staff in the lobby. I packed up Sushi into his little pouch and put him in the return mailbag. We found a local postbox to post him in, and actually felt a bit sad about it. I’m going to miss our little gadget – I recommend Sushi WiFi, it served us so well for this trip.

The street that we called home for two weeks.

Our next port of call was Shin-Okachimachi station. The journey to Haneda took about 45-50 minutes. First we took the Oedo Line to Daimon station, and then got the Tokyo Monorail to Haneda’s international terminal. I made the most of looking out of the windows and around me at the train car as it was our last ride on the Tokyo subway. I spent a lot of the journey concocting how to get back to Tokyo as soon as I possibly could. I seriously love it here.

Once we were at the airport, we had to go over to the domestic terminal to get to First Cabin. I shambled up to the desk and asked for two capsules for three hours. The staff were very efficient and had us sorted in no time. We were given key cards to access the rest of the hotel, and they gave us tokens for our luggage, which they stashed away securely. The facilities were really good, though we weren’t planning on using them. The toilets were really clean and fancy, with huge mirrors, toiletries, hair styling electronics and products. There was also a bath room if you fancied having a mini onsen experience!

The sleeping room itself was huge, but luckily our rooms weren’t too far away from the door. The tiny, bed-only capsules weren’t currently available, so we had the slightly larger ‘deluxe’ ones (which are still tiny and cute). It was wonderfully warm and quiet in the sleeping area. It was hard to be silent as we always get the giggles in these scenarios. We soon found our adjacent capsules and said ta-ta for now.

The room was small and cosy, with light and heating controls. I bumped up the heat just a tad more to get really cosy, and shut the door, which was actually just a sliding screen with no lock. I didn’t feel worried or insecure about that though, Japan has proven itself to be such a safe place and no one could get into the sleep area without a key card. The bed felt really hard when I first got onto it, but I soon warmed up and felt comfortable and managed to get a couple of hours sleep.

I felt so much better when I woke up, and there was still a half hour left of our booking. After having a nice big stretch, I curled up in the bed again for a little while. When I was ready to collect Caz, I got my backpack and put my boots back on before creeping next door. I went in quietly in case she was sleeping, but she was sitting up on the bed playing on her phone. She hadn’t managed to go off to sleep but also said she felt way better after having a quiet couple of hours to just rest and be alone. We both felt really ready to take on the airport process, and the long journey home.

We got back to the international departures terminal and were blown away. It was huge and spacious and had ample seating. There was soft blue mood lighting with projections of leaves, which reminded us of onsen, and it was so quiet. Airports are usually loud and bright and stressful, but Haneda was like an oasis of calm. Japan is so awesome.

We still had a little while to wait for bag check, so we found some seats and I decided to wander off and explore the airport. Usually in airports, most of the shops and things appear after you get through security. In Haneda, though, there’s quite a bit to look at. There are three main sections of shops and eateries – one is old Edo-style, one is called ‘Hot Zone’ and looks like a jungle setting, and the last is the ‘Cool Zone’ which is space themed! It’s such a cool airport, and I wandered around for some time just taking it in.

There was a mini Don Quijote and I couldn’t resist having a look. I found a little lollipop that was neon green and shaped like unko (a poop). I simply had to buy it for Ethan because he’d find it hilarious. In another souvenir shop, I found an onigiri-shaped decorative plate with a ‘walking tour’ map of Tokyo and cats on it. I bought that for Caz’s mum because she loves decorative plates and cats so it was perfect. I found some stickers for the scrapbook I plan to make, and a notebook that looks like a Japanese passport. I also got another hamster-themed Gachapon prize – this one is a yellow squishy one.

When we had checked our bags, we went through security. It was a total breeze, and by some miracle neither of us set off machines this time! Airside, there were more shops and things that we wandered by and idly looked in. We spent a long time in the duty free shop, making last-minute purchases. I got a bottle of umeshu wine, some Hello Kitty plasters, a tin of baked cinnamon and chocolate Yatsuhashi, and a box of Tokyo Banana flavoured KitKats.

It was about dinner time, and it’d been a while since we’d had our Lotteria brunch, so we stopped in a little food area. I got a lovely big ramen bowl, which was warming and filling. Caz had a soba noodle bowl, which was so huge she couldn’t finish it, and some prawn tempura. We felt a bit sad again because this was the last meal we were going to have in Japan (until next time).

Seriously, I just want to reiterate how brilliant Haneda airport was. It was such a stress free experience. The whole place was quiet, warm and spacious. The staff were all really friendly, helpful and efficient. By the time we got to the gate for our flight, we felt so relaxed and ready for the long journey we were facing. I’ve never had an airport experience like it. I can’t wait until I’m able to return to Japan!