Welcome to this week’s Quick Takes! In this issue, we have hotel news, hot spring right after your flight into Haneda, free Wifi in Hiroshima transit, and Mickey Mouse with Shinkansen. Let’s dig in!
- Hot spring hotel in Shinjuku: With the Olympics looming close, hotels are being built in Japan rapidly, and every day there’s another hotel opening. This time, a new onsen hotel will open in Shinjuku, of all places. While it is not the first modern onsen facility in Shinjuku (the first one is Thermae-Yu, near Golden Gai), Onsen Ryokan Yuen Shinjuku is a full function onsen hotel, with designs based on traditional Japanese aesthetics, and open-air onsens on their 18th-floor patio. Since Thermae-Yu is more like a day trip onsen, where visitors can choose to use the onsen but do not stay in for the night, Yuen offers all-in-one onsen service that is more traditional.
- Onsen right after landing at Haneda?: Speaking of day-trip onsen, what if you are flying into Tokyo on an early flight, and want to clean off the grime of travel? Or you have a late flight out of Japan, and want to have a relaxing bath before going to the “fun ride” of air travel? At Narita, you can go to Oedo Onsen Monogatari, and now there’s a similar venue near Haneda Airport. Natural Hot Spring Heiwajima (https://www.heiwajima-onsen.jp/ – in Japanese) had easy to use facilities, clear instructions in multiple languages, and free bus to and from Haneda for late night and early morning. Visitors can stay for either one hour or seven hours, the latter means you can actually get some sleep after a hot soak.
- Free Wifi for Hiroshima airport buses: Free Wifi service “Hiroshima Free Wifi” will be introduced to two airport bus lines in the Hiroshima area. The buses run from JR Hiroshima and Kure Stations to Hiroshima Airport, and all bus companies participating in the lines will offer the free Wifi service. To gain access to the service, user should login with either e-mail address or social media accounts, using the app “Japan Wi-Fi” as the access point.
- JR Kyushu X Mickey Mouse: To celebrate the 90th anniversary of Mickey Mouse’s debut, JR Kyushu will have a series of commemoration events in the name of “Go! Waku Waku Trip with Mickey” in May. Kicking off the events on May 17th, Kyushu Shinkansen will have special trains with Mickey paint job running both directions. Starting from the same day, JR Kyushu will also put up posters in the same design of the trains in all of their Shinkansen stations. There will also be Instagram photo contest, special goods when reserving for tickets, as well as limited good for purchase (including a toy train).
That’s it for this week. Following the wake of the incredible media event that is Avengers: Endgame, I am now recovering along with tons of Marvel fans back to reality. This will mean more articles coming up. I will see you all next week~