Annie and I are spending a week in Japan! Dec 1st, to Dec 8th – as of reading, I will of course, have returned to Sydney. But this is it! I was a little scruffy from looking after Panko at my sister’s apartment for a couple days leading up to our flights!

For this particular trip; I decided to try a Business Class seat on ANA – return from Sydney to Tokyo (ie, there and back again) – to see if I could enjoy the flight and get some rest from it. I have a huge problem with economy flights where I found it hard to regulate my body temperature and relax when in such close proximity to so many people with very little privacy.

Spoiler: It was fantastic, and future travel is all ruined for me as I now have to book business class for the flights.

Checking in our bags and passing through security was honestly about a 15 minute process – Sydney International has ABSOLUTELY nailed it with the process nowadays.

The Lounge (Sydney Side)…

As a Business Class passenger, for ANA – you get access to the Air New Zealand Lounge, and honestly it was…. “ok”. Maybe a solid 6/10 given the food and lounge ambience.

The lounge had a lot of weird seating that wasn’t really easy to sit in, and for some reason – it was incredibly busy.

I managed to grab a bunch of drinks – of which the Coke Zero post-mix was completely flat, and warm. From all the machines – it was quite disgusting to eat. Round two of the food was just some fruit, a chocolate mousse (that was alright) and some bread. The non-alcoholic Hills Cider was nice and cold, but again, the Coke i got from another machine was also completely tepid.

Definitely not a fun experience in the Air New Zealand Lounge – they really could’ve done better😔

All aboard…! (NH879 Boeing 787-9)

Eventually we boarded. I was in Seat 2E right up the front of the plane, in the central aisle. The 787-9 I was on had a 1-2-1 setup in Business Class. Sitting in Seat 2E (the first row of the central aisle) – if you’re travelling with a partner or friend, is ideal – because there’s an extra space available between the entertainment units that can be used as desk space for extra storage/comfort.

I was fortunate enough that no one was seated next to me for this flight! 😍

Once you’re in the seat – there’s a standard entertainment unit in front of you with what looked to be like a 22″ screen (approximately). To the side (depending on where you are) is your table, control unit and power (USB + universal socket).

There’s a side table, with a folding out table that will become your dining/work table for the flight too. Along the edge of the side table are your seat controls – quite intuitive and easy to use.

The fold out table is actually surprisingly generous, it’s capable of holding both a 14″ Macbook Air (M3, 2024) and gaming mouse; or a full dinner washoku set for your inflight meal 😅

The inflight meal was really tasty. As was the Ippudo Ramen – “plant based” (which I’d hope so, don’t really think stringy meat noodles would be ideal) of course, the broth is what they mean.

I was stunned at how well my Macbook Air played Satisfactory, actually. And it’s kind of an idea to write something up in the back of my mind about “CrossOver” and the compatibility of games it can play across the setup.

We had some technical issues before we could take off that delayed our flight by about 2 hours (in fact, we were the last flight out on the day) — the towing truck that helps pull the plane out of the gate, actually snapped somewhere on its towing aperture; they had to get a new truck out to try and subsequently all safety checks had to be re-done.

If I was in economy, I don’t think I’d be in a positive headspace at all. It got hot on the plane, until our pilot was allowed to turn on the engines and it took a while before cabin crew could serve us drinks or help us cool down.

After a couple hours, thankfully though, we were given an exception into the Sydney Airport curfew and allowed to take off after hours. Once the flight started, it was a good time 🙂

All in all I had a fantastic time flying from Sydney to Haneda. I made one little mistake though — they give you a seat topper to act as extra padding for a mattress if you sleep. I failed to use that even in a seated position. On my return flight, I used it – and it was LIFE CHANGING. The flight became EVEN MORE tolerable, but that’s for a later post 🙂

I managed to catch about 3 hours sleep on the flight – probably in due part to not using the seat topper and having a fitful sleep.

But 100% this Business Class flight saved the trip for me. It meant when I landed, I was more rested, in a better mindset about being in Japan, more tolerant, more relaxed and physically more ready to take on the 20,000 a day steps I was about to attack my body with during this vacation!