Review: ANA Arrivals Lounge Tokyo Narita Airport

For how amazing of a country Japan is (I lived there for 9 years, my wife is Japanese, I am fluent in the language), their lounge game is awful. The lounges at Narita are barebones and Haneda doesn't even have a single lounge at all. It's unbelievable.

I used this lounge last year and found it quite boring and depressing.

Looks lousy to me even before reading the comments
Yet I’ve heard good things about their inflight experience
I stopped flying Singapore Airlines in First Class out of Sydney as I really enjoy the Qantas
First class lounge in architecture Dining Spa and amenities
I try and go First with a One World Partner
Good Lounges make a difference between dreading the airport experience or looking forward to it

Lucky, they're rice balls / onigiri, not sushi. They contain no vinegars, common portable lunch items to work / school.

You didn't mention, and you probably didn't realize, but you can bring through your liquid in domestic flights in Japan: subject to inspection. I was instructed to open my water bottle.

I agree, the lounge is barebone, especially for pax who just arrived in f. Luckily there are many places to eat landside including a good selection of fast food, mostly in city prices.

For a country that is so high-tech they need to step up their lounge game. Take inspiration from London, Dubai and others.

Japanese living elsewhere here. I have spent countless hours in that lounge during my connection for international arrival to domestic. I agree food selection is quite lousy but most people are primarily there for the shower and drinks. Narita as Lucky pointed out has quite an extensive food offerings on the land side which the lounge is located. There are also countless take out “bento” options where you can grab food (or beer) to go. Consequently I feel as much of Japanese population doesn’t really have high expectations for lounge food rather we will go hit up places we know are good food in the terminal.

Wait, no mention or photos of the showers/bathrooms? Arguably, those are the most useful features of an Arrivals lounge, so why are they missing from the review?

This lounge is “okay?” Wow! You’re becoming overly charitable with lounge reviews if your past reviews are any indication. I recall a scathing review of the Alitalia JFK lounge back in 2017 when you called it a “dump” and “depressing,” and “embarrassing,” and it was solidly better than this one.

@ Donna -- I dunno, I was in the Alitalia JFK lounge a few weeks ago, and this looks significantly better (not even factoring in that this is essentially a domestic lounge, rather than an international lounge on a flagship route).

@Lucky
It's an onigiri not a sushi.

Careful if NH sees you posted "To my surprise, they didn’t even ask to check the size of our carry-ons,"
They might send you an apology letter and give you some extra miles for not doing their jobs properly.

For the 3 documents, it is much more useful than you think. For people with real jobs involving bunch of transaction, having paper trail helps a lot.
1. Your boarding pass, we all know what it's for.
2. You did passed through security. Imagine how easy to sneak pass TSA, and they probably have to review hours of tape to verify that.
3. You did board the plane. Think of those countless times FA goes down the aisle few times with a clicker then go on PA asking for ..... to ring the call button. Not easy for on time departure doing that.

Missing one of those should flag you for extra scrutiny.
If you still think it's not necessary, go ask Marilyn Hartman.

@Donna

AZ JFK lounge is pretty bad. I would say on par to slightly worse than this. Another fact from the AZ dump, In the past few years I tried to use their shower, they always said they don't have towels. Then the few times I brought my towel they said it was broken. Now I believe it doesn't exist anymore. All I can say is over dozen times visiting that place over the last 5 years I never saw their shower.

Not sure that is better than the JAL arrival lounge situation and that’s saying something. At Haneda your business (or first) class boarding pass gets you a free shower at the showers next to the tully’s Coffee in arrivals. There’s always a wait in the morning.

At Narita they send you to the capsule hotel in the basement of the car park for a shower ( and a nap if you want).

Both are welcome, and I guess at least with NH you can get some coffee and an onigiri.

If flying domestic on JAL you have to wait till the domestic lounge to get a shower. The showers are good but the lounge is similarly basic, although the JAL curry pan is quite good.

This is almost as depressing as the Cathay arrivals lounge in Hong Kong which is now (mercifully) closed permanently. It was certainly not up to Cathay standards.

I used this lounge a few years ago and I was connecting Narita to Haneda. The showers are really the redeeming factor of this lounge. Everything else was very dull. Pretty much after the shower I decided to head to Haneda for my flight to Sydney, and got to enjoy a much nicer lounge

Lucky: "light depravation" is totally, totally different to "light deprivation" ! LOL!

My guess is the security guy didn't speak any English. While Ford's bag was too big, without the ability to communicate this, he probably decided it was better to let you all through than risk offense in trying to overcome the language barrier.

I've seen more attractive waiting areas at government offices! Grim beyond belief. At least at NRT you don't have to take a ticket and wait for your number to be called. Or do you...?

Good review Ben. I was in the ANA lounge at Heneda last week flying to Germany it was excellent including the self pouring beer and noodle bar.

A bit of background about Narita. It is primarily an international airport. Star Alliance airlines depart from Terminal 1, and there are only 26 domestic flights departing in a regular day (mostly ANA), due to limitation on of takeoff/landing slots. Most are for major distant airports (particularly Sapporo and Fukuoka); many more domestic flights from Haneda, a 90 minute express bus ride. With so few flights, the domestic departure area is not large (space is at a premium at Narita). In addition, no need to arrive early, since security is typically very efficient (5 min or less domestic via the fast track route, less than 10 min for international in my experience, half a dozen per year for 30 years). And there are at least 3 express trains each hour from Tokyo, fast and on time. No reason to hang out in domestic departure areas (which are mainly for those connecting from intl flights).
Similarly, at Haneda airport I schedule to arrive 1 hr before a domestic flight (at least 15 arrivals an hour on train or monorail), walk from train to and thru security area to ANA lounge in 15 min, and then 25-30 min before departure walk to the gate; 767 and 777s board in 20 min at most (really). ANA Gold lounge at Haneda domestic is pleasant, with large windows; hot drinks, juice, draft beer, sake, and crackers. Japanese domestic lounges are not big on food, in part because one spends so little time there.