Travel To Seoul

Alexis and I had a few hours this morning before our flight, so we picked up some breakfast at a nearby café, and then we walked over to the Takashimaya building across the train tracks. Inside the Takashimaya building is the Takashimaya store and a store called Tokyu Hands. Takashimaya is a high end department store that sells luxury goods from clothes to food. Tokyu Hands is a department store that sells normal day to day goods. Alexis and I went to the store primarily to look at the stationery and kitchen departments. The kitchen department had all sorts of cool stuff including a lot of bento containers, a rice washer, siphon coffee makers, etc. I considered purchasing a siphon coffee maker, but I think it would have been too hard to bring it back to the United States. After Tokyu Hands, we went over to Takashimaya. We were short on time at this point, so we only looked at the handbag floor and the food floor in the basement. The food floor in the basement was full of high end food, and it looked so tasty. They even had an outlet that sold food from Kikunoi, the kaiseki restaurant we enjoyed in Kyoto. We wished we could have stayed longer, but it was time to head to South Korea.

We went back to the hotel and picked up our bags. Initially, we wanted to take the limousine bus from our hotel to Haneda airport, but the times were not convenient, so we decided to take the subway. We only had to take 1 subway train and a monorail to get to the airport, but it's a little difficult when you're carrying over 130 pounds of luggage up and down stairs. Fortunately, the subway was not crowded, and we made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Our flight to Seoul was on ANA, and we had a bit of a scare when we checked in because the airline told us that our tickets were cancelled. For some reason, ANA did in fact cancel our tickets, but the ANA representative helping us could not find our new ticket numbers. We waited at the counter for about 10 minutes, and she was able to clear up our issue.

Haneda airport is much smaller than Narita, but it is much more convenient. It's much closer to Tokyo, and it's a lot faster to get through security. In addition, it only has one food court in the International terminal. We went to the food court to enjoy our last meal in Japan. Alexis had a katsudon, I had curry, and we also had sides of chicken karaage and takoyaki. After lunch, we did some duty free shopping before we headed over to our gate.

This was my first flight on ANA, and overall the flight experience was nice. Even though the flight was only 2 hours, they served a meal on the plane. However, the meal was quite odd. The entree was rice with a side of fish and small shrimp covered in a thick cheese-like sauce, a tiny container of soba, a side salad, and a custard. The entrée had a unique taste to it, and it did not pair well with the soba and the rest of the food. The custard was by far the best part of the meal.

Our flight to Seoul was very smooth, and our friend Bori met us at the airport. She navigated us through the subway system, and we reached her apartment in about 30 minutes. After dropping our stuff off at her place, we walked to a restaurant very close to her apartment. Bori ordered for us, and the food was served immediately. The meal was served with rice, tons of the Korean side dishes, fish, tofu dish, miso soup dish. The server brought our food on a large piece of wood that matched the table. Instead of placing all of the food onto our table, the server slid the entire piece of wood onto our table. It was an interesting and efficient way of transferring the food to us. I enjoyed this meal because it was tasty, and there were so many different things to enjoy.

After dinner, we walked back to Bori's apartment. We talked some more and went to sleep early because we had to wake up at 6AM the following morning.