Truth be told, we made two fairly large mistakes in planning our itinerary. The larger of the two was making a major itinerary change – i.e. making Hokkaido instead of central Japan our main focus – after we’d bought our plane tickets, which meant that our Singapore Air flights would be departing from Tokyo. We did briefly check the cost of amending the flight itinerary on the return leg, but as with Singapore Air, they charge you an arm and a leg for any kind of changes, whether it’s to the date or the flight place itself. With the SQ flight details locked in, we had to work the itinerary backwards from that – which meant that our departure point from Hokkaido would have to be the return domestic flight from New Chitose Airport.
The larger bloop was booking a late afternoon flight back to Tokyo. The original plan sounded good on paper: spend the morning leisurely in Hakodate, then take a train back to New Chitose Airport, with plenty of buffer time in-between. You know, for flight delays, blizzards and the like. This was at the expense of being able to spend any more time in Tokyo on Day 14, as we’d arrive in the early evening. As it turned out, we had so much free time on the morning of Day 14 that in retrospect, we should have headed out of Hakodate on the first train out, taken a late morning flight back to Tokyo, and at least had the afternoon and evening to continue exploring Tokyo.
Oh well, lessons indeed learned – especially about being absolutely sure about our broad itineraries and especially departure cities before making flight bookings! The flights between Tokyo and New Chitose were at least very easy to find: I read somewhere that the 1.5 hour flight connection is one of the most heavily flown paths in Japan, with flights taking off every hour.
Not much happened on Day 15: our SQ flight was at 8:50 AM on Friday morning. Thanks to Hotel Mystays Haneda’s complimentary shuttle bus service, we got to the airport with plenty of time to spare – almost three hours early. Customs declaration at departure was a lot quicker than arrival. The flight itself was buttery smooth with little turbulence to speak of. Tokyo was covered in a light layer of fog in the morning, so the couple of pictures I attempted to take at takeoff and as our plane ascended above Tokyo look fuzzy, even with whatever post-processing I could do on them. There was also a fleeting glimpse of Mt. Fuji in the distance as the plane banked, and I managed to get a few quick pictures before the plane turned well away from it. Oh well. Next time we fly to Tokyo, I’ll recce the flight path more closely and choose the right window seat specifically just to take pictures of it!
I have a number of posts lined up to close off this trip: including two that will present a summary of our 15 day itinerary, three posts on the properties we stayed at, a post on equipment comments followed by another on post-processing images this trip, and a fairly long retrospection post. Stay tuned!
Recent comments