Review: ANA Lounge Tokyo Narita Airport

Introduction: Finding my Seoul-mate
Review: Cathay Pacific Lounge Singapore Changi Airport Terminal 4
Review: Cathay Pacific Business Class B777-300ER Singapore – Hong Kong
Mini-Review: Cathay Pacific Business Class A330-300 Hong Kong – Seoul Incheon
Review: ibis Styles Ambassador Seoul Myeongdong
Review: Conrad Seoul
Review: Millennium Hilton Seoul
Review: Asiana Airlines Lounge Seoul Gimpo Airport
Review: ANA Regional Business Class B787-8 Seoul Gimpo – Tokyo Haneda
Review: Hilton Tokyo
Review: United Club Tokyo Narita Airport
Review: ANA Lounge Tokyo Narita Airport
Review: EVA Air Business Class A321 Tokyo Narita – Taipei Taoyuan

After checking out the United Club lounge (spoilers: meh), I made my way over to the ANA Lounge which was located right at the tail end of the terminal. The ANA Lounge, and the ANA Suite Lounge for First Class passengers, was located near gates 45 and it was a long walk from immigration.

Thankfully, the travelators made it a much more bearable journey over to the ANA Lounges.

The ANA Lounge is located on the 2nd floor of the terminal while the ANA Suite Lounge is on the 4th floor. To access them, you could either take the lifts or the escalators.

The lounge entrance was pretty sterile but it did have a huge model of ANAs Boeing 787 decked out in the Star Wars livery.

Access to the ANA Lounge can be had if you belong to the following category of passengers:

• Star Alliance Business Class passengers
• Star Alliance First Class passengers (+1 guest)
• Star Alliance Gold member holding onto a same-day Star Alliance boarding pass (+1 guest)
• ANA Premium Economy Class Passengers
• ANA Million Miler Lounge Cardholders
• ANA Super Flyer Cardholders

Once you enter the lounge, the friendly lounge dragons will scan your boarding pass to verify your eligibility and that’s it. Near the reception, there are pigeonholes with newspapers for your consumption.

The ANA Lounge was gorgeous in my opinion. Although the white paint made it feel very sterile, I still found it to be pretty nice to chill in. The lack of natural light can be slightly depressing though since its located in the “basement”.

The ANA Lounge was split into a few sections and there was plenty of seating available. When I was there midday, the lounge was fairly empty and I simply left my bags in a corner and went off shooting pictures. On hindsight, this wasn’t a very wise move cause well, unattended bags. To the right of the lounge entrance was the Sake Bar, as well as an island with power ports available below it. There were also plenty of single sofas arranged in a manner to maximise awkward eye contact with fellow passengers.

No, this isn’t my camera playing tricks on your eyes. It was really quite dim in certain parts of the lounge.

Two-pin (US-style) power sockets and USB-A charging ports were available pretty much everywhere in the lounge.

Over at the Sake Bar, most of the hard liquor can be had here but it was unmanned the whole time I was there.

There was a buffet area in the middle of the lounge between the two seating zones. As you might expect, sushi was readily available and so were some fried yakisoba (i think),

A currency exchange machine was also available but I didn’t check the rates that were on offer.

Self-serve coffee, soft-drinks are available as well but I had very much hoped there was a barista in the lounge.

Of course, the ANA Lounge experience would not be complete without having a glass of Asahi or Kirin beer. Asahi was my choice of hydration that day and also the reason why I didn’t manage to take nicer photos.

The food which was on offer that day was pretty decent. As mentioned earlier, fried noodles, mapo tofu(?), some finger food and all kinds of sushi were available. Sadly, no sashimi was present in the lounge.

Towards the end of the left side of the lounge, there was a mini-restaurant-ish area serving up made-to-order food. Having read countless reviews of the famous lounge curries, I just had to order myself a curry. I also sampled some fried noodles and came to the conclusion that you should avoid them.

Showers are available in the lounge as well and they can be found in the toilets which are just behind the mini-restaurant area.

Individual shower rooms are available here and they were empty when I stepped in for a photo. I could feel the shower attendant giving me weird looks as I whipped out my phone to snap several photos in the shower area. Oops. Since I already had my shower in the United Club, I didn’t take a shower here and instantly regretted showering in the United Club.

If you wanted to experience the joys of the Japanese bidet one last time before leaving Japan, you could do so in the comforts of the shower rooms privately.

Shower amenities were Thann branded, one of my personal favourite brands of shower gels (hint).

The toilet was also spotless and bidets were also installed here. (duh)

The area just behind the corridors to the toilet had more seating and a strange phone booth for making phone calls. Apparently it was noise-shielding so you would not affect other lounge goers.

The toilets was my last stop before heading to the gates where massive drama ensued due to a delay of over an hour of my departing flight.

Stay tuned to the next instalment to understand why you should always plan your flights to adhere to the MCT set by the airlines.