What’s Hot in Japan: An Introduction
What’s Hot in Japan: Onboard the SQ A380 SIN-NRT
What’s Hot in Japan: ANA Pokemon Jet to Sapporo Chitose
What’s Hot in Japan: Cross Hotel Sapporo
What’s Hot in Japan: Furano and Asahikawa
What’s Hot in Japan: Lake Toya Onsen
What’s Hot in Japan: A Day in Hakodate
What’s Hot in Japan: Domestic IOJ Service between HKD and HND
What’s Hot in Japan: Ramen in Japan
What’s Hot in Japan: Red-eye on the A330 KIX-SIN
NH854 Hakodate HKD – Tokyo Haneda HND
STD-STA: 1240-1410
Actual: 1250-1357
B777-200 JA702A
Seat 27D
This portion of the trip report will be relatively short since it was more or less the same experience as my flight from Tokyo Haneda to Sapporo New Chitose in December last year. The purpose of me doing this report was because it would be my first time departing from Hakodate airport. As mentioned in my previous post, our party of 5 took the airport bus right outside the Chisun Grand Hotel which allowed us to wait in the hotel lobby in comfort before the departure. The trip by bus takes about 35-40 minutes as it winds through the city centre and JR Hakodate station before passing by the coastal road into the airport.
Hakodate has a much smaller airport than Sapporo and we were dropped off outside All Nippon Airways’ check-in desk which was quiet and relatively empty. This meant within 15 minutes we were checked-in and ready to explore the rest of the terminal. There is a large gift shop on the second floor beside the departure gates providing a convenient outlet for visitors to get last-minute Hokkaido specialties.
Before entering the boarding gates, there was another security screening and passengers can grab some coffee from the small eatery in the waiting room itself. Besides the ANA Boeing 777 that would bring us to Tokyo, there was also an Airbus A330 operated by Trans Asia, a Taiwanese-based airline.
Boarding the widebody was very co-ordinated as usual as passengers formed a line and while boarding I noticed a small basket of ANA candies on the galley and instinctively grabbed a couple. They were some of my favourite after getting them on the ANA lounge. When my parents wanted some from the attendants after being seated, the crew actually wrapped some on a small ziploc bag. Such is the attentiveness that I enjoy from a flight with All Nippon Airways! The flight today was definitely quite light with many empty seats and this meant we could truly stretch out. In addition, as I was seated in the middle section aisle seat, I enquired if I could get a window seat for take-off and was given the bulkhead window seat.
The wonderful clear weather and the afternoon flight meant I had very nice view upon take-off. Once we reached cruising altitude, I returned to my aisle seat and took some more photos of the cabin since it was relatively empty.
This Boeing 777-200 aircraft has blue seat covers with the ‘Inspiration of Japan’ tagline on its headrests to indicate the slim-line seats. For comfort, the older Economy class seats are definitely preferred even though the new seats give the cabin a sense of space. The blue seat covers was clean and seems more inline with ANA’s corporate identity as opposed to the gray seats I had on my flight in December.
Other than that the service onboard the flight was more or less standard with a complimentary beverage service. Though I noticed many passengers just choose to snooze on the one hour flight to Tokyo Haneda. I got myself a beef consomme and a cup of juice as well as purchased more of those buy-on-board snacks to munch on as I entertain myself on shows I had pre-loaded on the iPad mini.
As I mentioned, it is a short flight and before long, we were descending into clear weather in Tokyo as well. We were parked beside a 787 Dreamliner in Haneda and as we disembarked, I could really feel the heat and humidity of Tokyo as compared to Hokkaido. The next few days was definitely not the best of time to visit Japan. There was some wait for our luggage but it was not that bad and from there we were soon on our way through the Tokyo Monorail transferring to the JR Yamanote to reach Ebisu station where the Westin Tokyo is located at.
QUIRROW 
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