Haneda

Haneda Airport has been repeatedly awarded top ratings as the cleanest airport, according to the industry group that awards such things. I agree it is very clean. Today we moved between terminals on the free shuttle. There was no graffiti, no stray papers blowing in the wind and the insides of the terminal buildings were spotless. Overall, I was impressed with the cleanliness and quiet.

We stayed last night in the Royal Park Hotel in the International Terminal. It was very quiet in our room. This morning I discovered one reason. The window was double glazed with about ten inches of space between the outside pane of glass and the one on the inside. I couldn't tell how thick the outside glass was but the inside piece looked to be about one-quarter inch thick.

While waiting to check into our hotel for tonight we wandered around the terminal buildings. The central atrium of the International Terminal is open with escalators to the six floors.

Photo taken from the fourth floor with two floors above us. 

The second and third floors are devoted to arriving and departing passengers with shops around the edges. The fourth and fifth floors have restaurants and souvenir shops, and the top floor has more shops and restaurants but also has an enclosed observation deck.

The plastic representations of each restaurant's specialties are getting more realistic.

We checked in to our new hotel at 1400 and got settled in. It's always a struggle the first couple days adjusting to the time change. Three o'clock in the afternoon here is eleven at night back home so the eyelids get droopy and if we aren't busy the temptation is to take a nap, but that's not the way to defeat jet lag. We need to stay awake during the day until our bodies can make the transition across time zones.

To help stay awake, I decided to make a cup of coffee in our room. I found a new way to brew real coffee instead of the usual instant. To keep it fresh, a packet of ground coffee was sealed in a metallic pouch. There were instructions in Japanese, of course, but I could follow the diagrams.

By following the instructions, a single cup brewing system unfolds.

The packet had cardboard handles that unfolded into an ingenious filter that fit onto a cup. Water heated in the quick electric pot and poured over the grounds resulted in a pretty good cup of coffee.

Filter brewing an individual cup of coffee

Dinner tonight was a good western style meal. From tomorrow, we'll be eating kaiseki, the traditional multi-course Japanese meal. More on Kaiseki later.