We flew from Dulles to Haneda on United, arriving in the late afternoon. We went right to Shinagawa Station to take the Shinkansen over to Kyoto. We then checked into the Courtyard, which just opened in August, and ended the long travel day with Tsukemen for dinner.
Dulles
We started this trip the same way as most of our international trips by driving over to Dulles. We left at 6am in order to avoid the weekday rush hour traffic. Unfortunately, we didn’t leave early enough as the trip still took 50% longer than it should have.
After checking in, we passed through security and headed right over to United‘s Polaris Lounge.
We started out with breakfast in the lounge’s restaurant.
We had plenty of time before our flight to use the shower facilities. While the lounge is often extremely busy in the late afternoon for flights to Europe, it is pretty much always deserted in the morning.
We then grazed a bit while waiting for it to be boarding time.
Our aircraft for this trip is a Boeing 777-200.
We were aboard by around 11:30am and ready to depart!
The menu for today’s flight.
United has a Japanese meal selection for flights to Japan. Interestingly, it came with special chopsticks. Its not something we’ve noticed before.
Other than the Japanese meal, we also opted for the beef. The food on United is generally pretty hit or miss with beef often being the least bad option. Typically, the ice cream is the best thing served.
Mid-flight, we smelled instant ramen which made us want to eat again. So we had the kimchi instant ramen, the only option available. Offering Korean instant noodles is perhaps a bit odd given we’re traveling to Japan and the ample selection of Japanese instant noodles.
We also tried the gnocchi. Kind of a sad little plate. The instant noodles were better.
For the arrival meal, we had the Japanese option as well as the eggs. Again, mediocre.
Tokyo
It was sunset when we arrived at Haneda. After deplaning, we saw the Sun was just about to go down below Terminal 1 behind our aircraft. We noticed other passengers photographing the sunset as well!
At just after 6pm, we were at Shinagawa Station about to board a Shinkansen bound for Kyoto. It took us less than an hour and a half to make it here after landing. We made pretty good time!
Kyoto
After arriving at Kyoto Station, we took the Karasuma Line two stops north to Shijo.
We then checked into the Courtyard by Marriott Kyoto Shijo Karasuma. This property just opened a few months ago in August. It isn’t actually new but is a rebranded property operated by JR Central. The main features of this property are that it is modern, right above a subway station, and comparatively cheap for a Western style hotel. There were actually quite a few new options that have opened in Kyoto recently. This was one of the most convenient.
Information about the property was provided.
The room was simple and modern. It wasn’t huge, but big enough for our short stay.
The bathroom was also modern with a mix of Western and Japanese design. And it had a tub which was appreciated!
We were originally thinking of perhaps simply skipping dinner, or just visiting a nearby konbini. However, we ended up visiting Maho-Tsukemen Yukichi Honpo instead. This small restaurant was just three blocks away from the hotel. It is just across the street from Nana’s Green Tea and the Ogaki Bookstore, both of which we’ve visited before.
As the name suggests, this is a tsukemen restaurant. We ordered the kamaage tsukemen, one regular and one special.
The special adds an egg, which was already in the dipping borth, as well as some additional toppings on the side.
Both included the same noodles. Unlike tsukemen that we’ve had before, which is typically served with cold noodles, ours were served with hot noodles.
The tsukemen was nice and flavorful and very satisfying. One of the two staff was actually from Shenzhen, China, and just arrived 5 months ago. The other was Japanese. They seemed to be a couple and the shifu didn’t seem to be present. Maybe one was an apprentice and the other an assistant?
We also got the Wagyu donburi with egg. The beef pretty much melted in the mouth. Why don’t we have this more often?
They had an option to add rice to the remaining broth after finishing the noodles. The Japanese often have some funny use of English, here, they choose to translate this as risotto. It’s nothing like risotto! We choose to get one with cheese and the other with curry. Most of the tsukemen that we’ve had have been salty and this was no exception. Having it with curry made it even saltier. The cheese, possibly mozzarella, worked pretty well though.
This ended up being a bigger meal than we had originally planned. However, we wanted to have the full experience, particularly with some items we haven’t had before.
After dinner, we headed back to the Courtyard to head to sleep.