Japan Airlines

Did I ever tell you about the time I had going to Korea? Northwest Airlines? Economy class? Middle seat? Desiccated, reheated omelet? Stuck between two silent Japanese people the whole way? No?

Well, that's how it was. Now, I'd like to say a few words in defense of Japanese Airlines. 

Before getting on the flight I was talking to this one elderly fellow from Palm Springs who had been vacationing in Japan. He mentioned something interesting to me. He'd been on international flights with American carriers before, he said. Japan Airlines flight attendants, as opposed to those on the American airlines, remained fresh all through the flight. Hair perfect, makeup fresh, smiles genuine. American flight attendants, he said, were good for maybe one or two hours. But the Japanese stayed at the top of their game all through the flight.

Whether I was genuinely interested in this heretofore unsuspected notion or whether it merely stuck with me for some unknown reason, I kept an eye out during the flight. The gentleman from Palm Springs was correct. All through the flight the attendants' smiles were fresh and bright, their voices energetic, their service prompt and their eyes not haggard in the slightest.

I will also say, on the subject of energetic voices, that it was strange to hear all this Japanese going around the intercom after having spent a year in South Korea. I think I'm now able to tell the difference between the three within three seconds or so, something that I wouldn't have been able to do in a million years before all this. More impressive yet, the announcements were all bilingual: the flight attendants (all female) spoke Japanese and English. I'll bet you they knew enough Korean to get by, too.

The biggest problem with JAL's economy class was that it was no more spacious than Northwest had been. I was still crammed into a tiny seat (the middle one, to add insult to injury). I still had no legroom. I at least had a blanket and a pillow, though, even though I needed neither. (It was too hot for a blanket and my seat didn't recline far enough to make a pillow feasible.)

The food was inherently superior. For dinner the evening of our takeoff from Narita, we received our own personal bento. What's bento, you ask? A Japanese lunchbox, for short. They're little partitioned boxes. Each compartment has a different food in it. Normally they're made of wood, but for expense's sake these on JAL were made of fiberboard. Even so, they were absolutely delicious. The fish was fresh; the rice came in quite a few varieties. I'm afraid I can't identify much of what else was in that bento. I've been in Korea, not Japan. But it was all tasty. For dinner we had some braised chicken in sauce that actually tasted like chicken, a delicious (tiny) salad and some other awesome stuff. The point was, it was real, or at the very least it had the appearance of being real. Far, far different from the soggy cardboard I was served on Northwest Airlines, that's for dang sure.

Another thing I had on this flight that I didn't have on Northwest was entertainment. Contrary to my fears, my 747-400 did have a personal TV screen in the back of every chair, and not only did it have movies, it had music and games too. Not exactly good games, you understand...possibly the most exciting was Space Invasion, and all that involved was shooting missiles between asteroids at increasing numbers of enemy spacecraft. I tried a couple of games of chess, but was soundly whipped by the computer. I tried listening to a little music, but they either had Japanese pop music or some rather annoying American contemporary.

The movie selection wasn't much better. I had to choose, basically, between some Clive Owen/Julia Roberts flick, a Chinese war movie, Monsters vs. Aliens, and Valkyrie. I think you can guess which one I opted for. Much as I hate Tom Cruise, he's tolerable when he's short one hand and is wearing an eyepatch. It's hard to be mad at anyone trying to kill Hitler, too. The only problem was, his expression never changed. He was always either staring off into space or yelling at somebody or looking aghast or grave or stolidly, silently determined. Got a bit wearing after a while. I think that was the main problem with the film itself: despite the gravity of its subject matter, it was a bit superficial. I came in about halfway through the film, fooled around a bit during the credits, came in a little after the beginning, watched it most of the way through again, fooled about a bit during the credits, then didn't catch the beginning the next time around. Oh well. I didn't even reach for my book (The Three Musketeers). I was enjoying it so far and didn't want to tarnish the image of it which I'd built in my mind by reading it under memorably unpleasant circumstances. (Reading it on the toilet isn't off limits, though.) So there I sat, alternately attempting to sleep, eating delicious bento, losing at chess, and watching one-eyed Tom Cruise running about with an intense look on his face trying to coordinate his pet assassination project. I was, however, still sandwiched between two irritable-looking Japanese guys. For nine hours.

Oh well, you can't have it all your way.