OnWednesday Ikuko and I caught a Delta flight at 0805 from Seattle to Los Angeles.
In LAX we met up with Dean and Kartina (our younger son and wife) and caught another flight to Haneda, the old main airport serving Tokyo before Narita came on line in 1978, after years of protests and what today would be called terrorist actions, but that's another story.
While waiting in the Seattle terminal I struck up a conversation with an older traveler who had been in the US Air Force before accepting a job traveling many places around the world. He was an interesting guy who called 'em as he saw 'em. I took a photo of his backpack.
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| Backpack of an outspoken traveler |
Our flight across the Pacific was smooth and we landed at Haneda late Thursday after losing a day crossing the International Date Line.
Dean had made reservations for us at the Royal Park Hotel, The Haneda, which is located right in the terminal at Haneda. The hotel had its own restaurants but if we wanted to patronize any of the airport restaurants we just walked out of the hotel lobby and crossed above the security lines of departing passengers to find a restaurant we liked among the thirty or forty available.
The new (2010) international terminal building is well designed with the hotel, restaurants and shops, and monorail and train terminals constructed right into the overall building. Also there are parking facilities for short-term car parking and bus and taxi loading areas in sheltered areas within the building.
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| Escalator from the arrival lobby to the train platforms |
On Friday Ikuko and I decided to go to Kawasaki, a nearby city, to do a little shopping and look around. From our room we took the elevator to the lobby, walked a short distance, took an escalator down one floor, walked through the departure lobby, took another escalator down, walked thru the arrival lobby and then another escalator to the train platform and caught a train to Kawasaki. All this took place within the main Haneda International Terminal.
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Station guide showing the layout of that portion of the Haneda Airport International Terminal
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Back in our hotel room, I noticed the complete lack of airport noise. One reason was the way the windows were constructed. It's the first time I've seen such a large noise isolation space between plate glass window panes. I must say that in our room I could detect NO outside noise.
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The space between the sheets of plate glass was about ten inches
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On the way from our room to the restaurant and shop areas there was an interesting large-scale rendition of an old castle with a stylized bridge.
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| Massive timbers were incorporated into this project |
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This is a functional bridge leading from one floor to another
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