One of the great perks of having Oneworld Emerald status it that gives you access to many great first class lounges around the world. Prior to a late evening Finnair departure out of Haneda I was able to enjoy a couple of hours in the JAL First Class lounge at Haneda (HND) in Tokyo.
The design feels very Japanese. Practical, but elegant and refined. The lounge has several areas, spread out over quite a large space. It’s nice that they have maps located throughout the lounge to help you find your way.
Contents
- RED Lounge (Lounge & Game Room)
- JAL’s Table (Dining Room)
- JAL’s Salon (Lounge & Bar)
- Shower and Relaxation
RED Lounge
The RED Lounge is at the very far end of the lounge. It’s a relaxing space with arm chairs, sofas, and even a separate game room. There’s both Champagne and Sake available self-serve. The space is decorated with various memorabilia, definitely worth exploring. This part of the lounge was basically empty while I was visiting.
JAL’s Table
The main dining area is a large open space with many seating areas. There are also counter seats along the windows with nice views of the planes below.
There’s a large selection of self-serve drinks. For food, you’ll have to use the QR table at each table where you can order plenty of food options.
There are plenty of good options available. Having not had any dinner yet, I built my own three-course meal, consisting of sushi (which was fantastic), JAL’s famous curry rice, and a butter and red bean daifuku (stuffed mochi). Everything was absolutely delicious!
JAL’s Salon
There’s another semi-hidden area of the lounge, which turned out to be one of the highlights of the entire lounge visit. When you enter the lounge, instead of taking a right to the main lounge area, you instead take a left and take the stairs up one floor.
Here you’ll find two more large lounge areas, a massage chair area, another self-serve bar, and a proper bar. This floor of the lounge feels much more intimate compared to the large open space downstairs.
To my surprise there was absolutely no one around, except a very friendly bartender. At first I was only planning on looking around and take some photos, however I noticed some whiskey bottles on the back wall behind the bar. I asked the bar tender what type of whiskey they had, and to my surprise that had both Yamazaki 12 and a Hibiki Blenders Choice. The Yamazaki 12 is one of my absolute favorite whiskeys, and is pretty hard to come by these days.
I couldn’t resist a small whiskey tasting session.
Shower and Relaxation
Through the app you can also book a shower room. Through the app you can see how many people are currently waiting for a shower room. There were 5 in queue, but I only had to wait about 5 minutes before it was my turn.
The shower rooms are comfortable, but quite basic. Having visited ANA’s First Class lounge as well, they definitely have a larger selection of amenities available. As mentioned, the upper floor of the lounge also has several massage chairs.