Korea & Japan 2024 (10/10) – Misc. Japan

Return Flight

To smoothly wrap up the trip, I was initially hoping to fly home on JAL from Haneda Airport. Award availability in economy was abundant through early July, but entirely disappeared for the rest of the summer. Cash prices looked ridiculous, too. After months of stalking different options, we ended up flying ZIPAir home from Narita. It was a big downgrade in both airline and airport convenience.

ZIPAir turned out fine, especially considering that it was cheaper than all other options by a huge margin. Though we had no experience with this sort of budget airlines and were thrown off by its long list of add-on options. We figured we wanted carry-on luggage and had to eat something during the trans-Pacific flight, and ended up pre-paying for a package deal that also included an amenity kit. That splurge bumped up our flight cost by 25% and turned out mostly unnecessary.

We actually managed to eat two meals at Narita – one pre-security at a sushi restaurant, the other in an airport lounge. That in-flight meal was entirely unnecessary, but I felt obligated to eat it since we explicitly paid for it. All of us had been exhausted from the two-week trip and slept really well on the flight, so the lack of seat-back entertainment was not an issue at all.

Trains & IC Cards

The last two times Hong and I visited Japan, we relied heavily on JR Pass and JR Kansai Area Pass. JR was the largest rail network in Japan and had incredible coverage, so the passes were an affordable and convenient way to get around.

Thanks to JR Pass’s massive price hike in recent years, it no longer made sense to commit ourselves to a single rail company. Taking a step back, we realized how many more options there were to get places. Sometimes another train line with another rail company would be cheaper, faster, or more direct. During this trip, we rode on trains and subways operated by 14 different companies. It’s hard to imagine anywhere else in the world having this many transit choices.

There certainly were downsides to figure out and use these disjointed systems. Thankfully payment was not a (significant) issue, due to the convenience of the IC cards. Once upon a time, rail companies independently issued these IC cards and it must have been a serious nightmare to travel within Japan. These days, the major IC card systems had been consolidated to work (almost) seamlessly together.

Travel tutorials talk most about Suica (Tokyo) and Icoca (Kyoto/Osaka) cards since foreign travelers are most likely to enter the country from either of those cities and obtain IC cards there. We landed in Fukuoka and got the family Nimoca cards instead, issued by the Nishitetsu trains in Fukuoka. That felt really special. For Bah and Mah whose first city was Kyoto, we got them the Icoca.

Family Mart & 7-Eleven

We have always enjoyed convenience store snacks, but a couple things stood out this time around.

The first was ice. It came in ice cubes in a cup (intended for iced coffee), ice cubes in a cup (intended as just ice), and ice cubes in a sealed tub. The summer days in Fukuoka and Kyoto were so unforgiving that we resorted to just buying ice to cool down our walks in the sun. The first time we mistakenly purchased the cups intended for iced coffee and the lady yelled at us for walking in the opposite direction from the coffee dispenser… and we had to explain that we didn’t actually want any coffee. Those convenience stores also sold certain bottled drinks deeply frozen, which was doubly useful.

The second was the elaborate smoothie machines. Basically, you can buy these smoothie or frappe cups from the fridge and stick them into these machines to process the beverage of your choice. It looked neat but the actual result was underwhelming. The first time we even solicited help from the store worker, who proceeded to totally mess it up by adding coffee to our icy lemon dessert. Sigh.

Photo Sticker Machines

We’ve always enjoyed photo machines found all over Japan and Korea. The kids were now old enough to get a kick out of it, too. Though the latest trend has these crazy beautification effects built in to make our eyes anime sized. We wished to turn it off but couldn’t read the Japanese instructions.

We also got to witness how hardcore the local girls were in using these machines. They tended to show up in pairs dressed in matching outfits. Many of them dragged suitcases full of makeup kits and hair iron, which they’d apply on site. It seemed like a lot of work for a few 2cm photos. Respect, though.