October 2025: If it wasn’t for my good friend and fellow Japanophile Ken, with only a 90-minute layover, I would not have made my connecting flight from Haneda Airport Terminal 3 (T3) to Asahikawa departing from Terminal 1 (T1). The information below represents my experience on Japan Airlines connecting from an international flight from Honolulu, Hawaii to Haneda at Terminal 3 to Terminal 1 (approx. 4 km away) where I made my connection to Asahikawa within a 90-minute window. I will forgo any discussion of the free airport bus, the Keikyu line, or the Monorail that connect the three terminals until after the essentials.
Here are the essentials:
• Make sure you logon to Visit Japan Web, fill out the necessary info, and receive a QR code for each traveler in your party. This will save tons of time when passing through Japan’s customs and immigration. Best to take a screen shot on your phone, a paper printout image is a bit more difficult to capture on their monitoring screens.
• After completing the arduous task of navigating hundreds/thousands of tourists at customs and immigration (only took about 20 min thanks to our QR codes and specially directed queues) with all of your luggage in tow, exit into the arrivals lobby where an information desk can easily be seen, bypass this for now into the heart of the terminal and stay focused. TURN Right and walk to nearly the end of the terminal.
• On your left side you will see the Domestic Check in counter…..maybe 50-75 yards…just guessing….only took 3-4 minutes when walking briskly. Assuming you have domestic boarding passes already in hand, you can drop off your luggage and free yourself of having to lug them to T1. Hooray!!! One caveat! Presumably you need to arrive at the Check In counter one hour prior to your departure time or they will tell you to skedaddle to Terminal 1 on your own on one of three options….free bus, Keikyu Line, Monorail. Obviously, I did not test this limitation, but Japan is not known for its lax regulations.
• After completing your business at the Domestic Check In counter, turn to the right (between a quarter and a half turn) and you will see a security check point on the opposite side at the far catty-corner of T3 – Security Check point for Domestic Flights….only about 150 feet from the domestic check in counter. Navigate through this security check point and an escalator will take you down to the ground floor to catch a dedicated, free bus that takes you directly to either terminal 1 or 2. Buses come every few minutes to shuffle you directly to your gate without having to navigate through any further checkpoints or security. Wow, this last feature is what is missing from most of the previous descriptions of how to get from T3 to T1. You only need to get to your gate - the latest 10 minutes prior to departure.
• Refer to this excellent map of T3 shared with me from Ken. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tokyo-haneda.com/en/floor/terminal3/2nd_floor.html__;!!PvDODwlR4mBZyAb0!StstouITJdUovGbTifST2Q55vA_ujvzu36NBOer8uOHP0lETVnFHO9J30g-pwoBQjS-MuWWEf4p6nRm1rw$
The Saga:
When I booked my flight to Hokkaido, I jumped at a business class fare that included a legal 90-minute transit time to catch my domestic flight from Tokyo to Asahikawa. I did not fully comprehend what was needed to accomplish during that 90-minute period until after the fact….exit the plane, find your way to immigration and customs, navigate the long queues, present your QR code, get through to the maze of confusion, find your luggage at baggage claim, one final checkpoint, pass into the arrival area, decide how best to navigate to T1 – by free bus, Keikyu Line or Monorail, check in your baggage at T1’s JAL check in counter if outside the one hour window prior to departure, go through security, find your gate, and pray that you have made it in time before the doors close and you are left hopelessly defeated in this marathon endeavor. This caused me unnecessary anguish during the preceding months prior to my journey. I won’t reveal the extent of my musings or actions, but they were considerable including trying to change my connecting flight on several occasions, informing the JR Inn in Asahikawa that I might not make my first night’s booking, etc.
Looking for help on the internet was no help! The pros and cons of the different methods to transit from T3 to T1, how to get a free shuttle bus ride (often long queues and longer transit time than other options) on the Monorail (need to change trains) or Keikyu line to T1 and T2 (lets you off between 1&2, need to walk a few hundred yards to either terminal), rushing to the Domestic check in counter to deliver your luggage prior to the one-hour deadline, and ruminations on Reddit from others with short layover times resembling my dilemma. It all seemed at best a crap shoot. There were just too many options. But none of them made any sense in terms of coordination until JAL had the good sense to make it easy on those transiting from T3 to T1 with their short, but legal layover times that they offered. This new sequence is a welcomed improvement, one that should have been available in the past, but one that will make life more pleasant for countless others in the future.
The Lesson Learned
• Don’t worry about things that you don’t have any control over! Easier said than done!!!
• Do your homework regarding connecting flights and terminal changes and distances between terminals and security clearance and preparing for immigration and customs before booking flights with complex or domestic connections. As a default allow 2 hours between connections.
• Review the layout of terminals that you will be travelling through – For example, You Tube is replete with videos of Haneda Airport terminals. The map referred to above is the best one to refer to.
Postscript
Why am I publishing this in my blog that only a handful of friends read? I could answer some Reddit post or find some other widely read forum to use to get through to the largest audience. I do want to help people but I’m also curious about how many hits I will get from this post.
No comments:
Post a Comment