It's a first for me in that we have a week long Fall Break at my school. Last year, it was 2 days for the students (PD day was on the Tuesday after Remembrance Day). With a full week off, and great travel benefits, my girlfriend and I decided to book a trip to Asia back in September. She managed to get time off earlier, so she ended up going a week before I did. I was anxiously waiting for the break to start a few weeks back for I never travelled in autumn before.
After the last day of classes, and after dinner with some friends that Friday night, I headed home late for a restless sleep. Saturday morning came, and I started the day by teaching English to my regular student from China. I was tired from the lack of sleep, but the excitement kept me fully awake. After doing a ritual final clean before flying, I put Ollie into the car and headed off to my parent's house. I was fortunate to get a ride to the airport this time around.
After arriving at the airport, I immediately went through security and headed to the Aspire lounge. I got the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite card back in the summer for the 0% foreign exchange fee. I also wanted to try out lounges, and this card came with 6 complimentary ones for an annual fee of $150 CAD. I guess I overhyped myself up with airport lounges, for they didn't seem all to special, besides complimentary food being provided to customers. It was also quite busy. I found a place to sit, left my carry on, and headed to grab some bite-sized food to eat. After about an hour or so, I headed over to another location of the lounge, since I wanted to watch some pre-loaded dramas on my iPad. After completing an episode, it was time to head to the gate and wait to board my flight.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get an upgraded seat to premium economy, but I ended up with an aisle seat in a group of middle seats. I was sitting, with what seemed to be a bunch of five university students (if I were to guess... 2nd years since the guy sitting beside me in the middle seat was doing Organic Chemistry review). Maybe I've been spoiled with premium economy, but these economy seats seemed extremely narrow. I was literally touching elbows with the student, and he was quite small himself. And this is with me leaning slightly over to the side. To make matters worse, there were two babies crying throughout the flight in close proximity to myself. One of them was shrieking throughout the entire flight, making it nigh impossible to sleep. Fortunately, my AirPods do a good job with cancelling out as much of the crying as possible. I ended up watching some more episodes of my drama on my iPad before switching over to watching Doctor X: The Final Movie (I think that's the full title) on the entertainment screen in front of me. A good end to a long lasting series!
After what seemed an eternity, we finally made it to Japan. It was quite cloudy, with impending rain in a short bit of time. I got off, headed off to immigration and customs. Unlike previous times, I had no check-in luggage with me. Perhaps this was the reason why I was stopped before exiting the luggage area, with a security guard asking me what my plans were for Japan. After telling him that I was only in Japan for a day, before heading off to my next location, he asked to see my passport and let me go soon after.
I found the shuttle bus that would take me to terminal 2. It was quiet inside, with a group of three Americans travelling on the bus. I was eavesdropping on their conversation as we made our way to the terminal. Two of them were lavishing the third, on how it was her third time in the country, making her an expert. I silently laughed to myself, for this was my 9th time to Japan (1998, 2001, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2023, Aug 2025, and Nov 2025). I did stop myself thinking how other people probably went more, or for those of them that did less travel than me, were much more knowledgeable of locations/customs/language. After humbling myself, I continued to look forward, as we finally approached Terminal 2. I got off, and headed inside the terminal to look for something to eat. I found their 4th floor dining and shopping experience, and got myself some takoyaki. After eating and exploring for a bit, I headed back to the bus stops, and looked for a shuttle that will take me to my accommodations for the night: Sora no Yu.
Sora no Yu is a capsule hotel with an onsen attached to it. It's like Rox, but on steroids in my opinion. It was a relatively straight forward check in process, in which I headed to the capsule hotel location first to drop off my luggage. Unfortunately, I didn't read carefully, for I had troubles entering the capsule room only to find out, it was the Woman's capsules room... Luckily, no one was nearby, so I quickly scampered to the male room a meters down. The room had a lot of capsule rooms (I'm guessing at least 60 men's capsules), but it was well labelled. I managed to find my room, in which I chucked whatever I needed and headed off to the side to lock up my carry-on bag. Perhaps I'm being biased, but I felt quite safe leaving my carry-on bag attached to a thin bike lock cable (or whatever they're called). I headed to the changing room, which was located up a floor, to start relaxing in the onsen.
After washing myself, I stepped to their outside onsen. It was located on the rooftop of the hotel, with a magnificent view. Despite it being cold, the onsen was hot enough, making it quite relaxing and being able to stay inside longer than usual. Since the hotel was close to the airport, you can actually see planes quite close up. After spending a good 15 minutes or so, I headed back to the changing room to change into the shirt and shorts they lend to all guests. I was probably up for nearly 24 hours at this point (and it didn't help that I didn't sleep much on Friday), so I crashed out in my room. There were many other amenities to try out (stone sauna, regular sauna, massage chairs, manga library, the various different onsens, etc), but I ended up sleeping for a few hours, only to wake up at around 10 PM remembering that I didn't brush my teeth yet. With fatiguing sitting back in again, I ended up falling back to sleep.
That's it for the first night!
I would definitely come back here again, either before returning from Japan, or even during arriving in Japan.
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