Japan/Singapore Day 8: Tokyo to Singapore

November 15, 2019

Our flight to Singapore today is from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, and fortunately it’s very convenient to there from our hotel. We were able to get up at a reasonable hour to catch the subway to the airport for our 10:55 am flight. Even though we did some advance work to locate escalators and elevators, we did have to lug our bags down a couple of flights to the platform.

Since we needed to leave for the airport at about 8:30 am, it was rush hour, and for the first time we had the opportunity to experience a truly crowded Tokyo subway train. “Standing room only” doesn’t begin to describe it: we and our baggage were tightly packed into the subway car, but after a few stops we got to the airport and it was over.

Check-in and immigration formalities were uneventful, and we were off for our 7-hour flight to Singapore. This was my first flight on ANA, and the service was excellent, with (of course) a Japanese touch. As with many airlines that have customized flight safety videos, they had an entertaining Japan-themed safety video, as well as a Flight Safety Video – Behind the Scenes that they showed at the end of the flight. We enjoyed both greatly.

When we arrived in Singapore, we quickly made it to the subway (MRT) station. Since we are staying a little over a week, we opted to get refillable MRT cards rather than to buy a ticket each time. This cost a few dollars for each card, but on my previous visit I found it to be worthwhile in terms of time and hassle avoided. We headed for our hotel, the Fairmont Singapore, which is right at the City Hall MRT station.

We checked in and got to our room, and had not yet been out of doors while in Singapore (the closest being a very quick connection at the Tanah Merah MRT station, so we did get to feel the humidity a little bit). Our room, especially compared with the rooms in Japan, is spacious and comfortable. Somewhat tired from travel, we decided not to venture out for dinner this evening, so we had a nice if slightly pricey dinner of tapas at the Fairmont lobby bar before retiring.

This article is part of a series about our recent travels to Japan and Singapore. To see the introductory article in the series, click here.