Airport
Tokyo Haneda Airport (HND)
Haneda sits on the bay inside the city limits, and that single fact shapes every other one: the railways leaving the terminals reach the middle of Tokyo without an intercity leg, the taxi rank works on a fare fixed by destination ward, and a breakfast flight is a reasonable thing to catch from a city hotel. The complications are internal rather than external — three terminals, two of which handle international flights, and a last train that comes earlier than the airport's own around-the-clock schedule suggests.
Updated 2026-09-22
- CodesHND · RJTT
- Passengers per year (2024)85,900,617
- Elevation6 m
- ServesTokyo
- Official websitetokyo-haneda.com
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Three terminals, and “international” means two of them
The buildings are numbered T1, T2 and T3, and they divide by airline family first and by destination second. T3 is the large international building most long-haul arrivals meet, but T2 runs an international wing alongside its domestic gates, and T1 is domestic. That is why the terminal number on the boarding pass matters more than the word international: the buildings are far enough apart to turn a casual transfer into a rushed one.
Landside, a free shuttle bus loops all three and an underground walkway joins T1 and T2, so moving between them never needs a ticket. Airside there is a better trick: passengers connecting between the international wings of T2 and T3 ride a bus across the apron without re-entering the country, which keeps a transfer inside the sterile area. Both railways stop at every building.
Into the city: the monorail, the Keikyu line, the flat-fare taxi
Two railways leave the terminals and they serve different halves of the city. The monorail runs up the waterfront to Hamamatsucho, where the Yamanote loop takes over and the north and east of the centre open up. The Keikyu line reaches the same loop at Shinagawa, and its airport expresses keep going onto the subway line that threads Nihonbashi and Asakusa, which turns a stay in the older eastern districts into a ride with no change.
The rank outside arrivals uses a flat fare set by destination ward and posted before you get in, with expressway tolls added on top and a higher rate late at night; only cars queueing at the rank carry it. Limousine coaches serve the big hotel clusters and terminal stations, and earn their fare when you have luggage, a child or no appetite for stairs. Once the last train has gone the rank is essentially what remains.
Arrivals: one code, two gates, and the domestic trap
Japan lets arriving passengers file their immigration and customs details online before departure and turn up with a single code on the phone, which both the passport desk and the customs kiosks read. Foreign nationals still give a photograph and fingerprints at immigration, and the customs hall works through electronic terminals and facial-recognition gates rather than paper slips. Whether a given passport needs a visa before boarding is a separate question, settled by Japan's entry rules.
The trap is the connection that continues inside Japan. It means entering the country first — passport control, bags off the belt, customs, then checking in again, often in a different building — so a domestic onward flight needs far more slack than an international one. Departures have their own rhythm: the long-haul flights fill the evening, and security and the tax-free counters are at their worst with them.
A layover, an early flight and the hot spring upstairs
Haneda is an unusually pleasant airport to be stuck in. The international building keeps a replica Edo-period street of shops and restaurants on an upper floor, landside and open long after the city's kitchens close, with observation decks above the aprons. A hotel joined to T3 by a walkway keeps a hot-spring bath on its top floor, which beats an alarm clock in town before a dawn departure; cheaper hotels shuttle from the airport road.
For a long connection the city is genuinely within reach once the bags are checked through, and coin lockers and staffed left-luggage counters take whatever you would rather not carry. Sleeping in the terminal is tolerated rather than designed for; lounges with showers and small cabin-style rooms are the civilised alternative.
Onward: domestic Japan, the shinkansen, and the other airport
Haneda is the hub of the domestic network, which makes it the practical way to reach Hokkaido or Okinawa when the overland journey would swallow a day. For anywhere on the main island the trains usually win door to door once airport time is counted, and both airport railways feed the stations where the shinkansen begins. Car hire is off-site by shuttle, and no desk releases a car to a foreign licence on its own: bring whichever permit or approved translation your country requires.
Narita, Tokyo's other airport, lies well outside the city to the east, and crossing between them is an expedition in its own right: a through-running train service does it without a change, a limousine coach does it by road, and either way a large piece of the day goes with it. Decide that pairing when you book, not on the morning.
Practical: a signal, yen, and sending the suitcase ahead
An eSIM bought before you fly and switched on at the gate skips the arrivals counters, and the free terminal wireless will set one up on the spot. Cash still matters more than the country's technological reputation suggests, and the arrivals halls hold machines that reliably accept foreign cards — the rest of that story belongs to money in Japan.
The counter worth finding is luggage forwarding. Hand a suitcase to the desk on the way out of customs and it meets you at the hotel, or at the other end of the country, while you travel with a daypack — which is what makes an onward train ride with heavy bags painless.