🇯🇵 Japan Trip 2026

We left home at 8.50am for the bus to Leicester. Both of us were excited about the trip. We had planned everything in advance, so we were both pretty relaxed and ready for our long journey ahead. The bus was a little late, but we had built in plenty of time, so it didn't cause any stress.

Journey to Heathrow

We caught the 10:40 National Express coach to Heathrow T2. We have used the coach to Heathrow before and it’s always been a reasonably smooth experience. The journey takes around 3 hours, so this only works well if you have a later flight and can afford the journey time. It is definitely easier than travelling to London the day before and staying overnight.

We arrived at Terminal 2 at 13:45. Check-in was straightforward, but we had hours to kill. We wandered around airport shops and mostly just sat around reading and listening to podcasts. There is a pretty good podcast about Fela Kuti that ended up being an accompaniment on the whole trip.

No.1 Lounge

Maria had pre-booked us into the No.1 lounge at Heathrow, but we could only access the lounge from 16:00 till 18:10. So we had to wait until then. But once we were in, we found some comfortable seats and enjoyed a late afternoon lunch and a couple of drinks. Nothing says "we're on holiday" quite like airport lounge access before a long-haul flight.

Taking Flight

Our ANA Flight NH212 departed at 19:15. The plane was really warm when we boarded and we were a little frustrated to see that there wasn't any air conditioning control. The entire flight remained hot, which meant no blankets needed when napping, but it was a bit uncomfortable at times. I guess it prepared us for the warm weather we would experience in Japan! One thing we found amusing was the flight briefing video, which featured a very enthusiastic and animated safety demonstration that starred Pikachu and other Pokémon characters. As usual on these flights nowadays, the USB ports were broken, but we had battery packs to keep devices charged. Food on the flight was pretty reasonable, and our vegetarian meals were better than we expected. I tried a Japanese drink called Kobosu, which was a citrusy juice that was quite refreshing but very sweet.

The flight took about 14 hours. We both managed a bit of napping during the flight. We enjoyed the views of South Korea when we flew over it, and we were excited to see Fujiyama as we approached Tokyo.