Fly Japanese Airlines. Seriously.

So this post might sound like a JAL commercial, but holy cow, our flight was amazing!

International travel is rough. Sitting for four hours is bad enough, try twelve or thirteen. Add in several layovers and you are mostly sitting ducks for around a full 24 hours. From experience, the biggest problem is boredom and inability to sleep.

Well…JAL helps a lot. My flight was absolutely amazing.

JAL (Japan Airlines) comes from Japan (surprise!!) and they follow the Japanese traditions of customer service and utmost respect. Japanese customer service is something you have to experience to believe. Seriously, NOTHING in America can compare. They say the customer first, but in Japan, it’s like the customer is the ONLY thing. They go to great pains to give you the best experience possible.

So this is what I stared at for 12 hours. And this is an economy seat. Go first or business class and I’m not exaggerating, you get a full sized flat screen.

This piece of magic has everything you need to entertain you for twelve hours and more. This touch-screen is loaded. There are enough movies and TV shows to last at least a month, and it’s all good stuff. I watched “Allegiant” and “Finding Dory” and a really good Japanese drama called “The Kodai Family”. They also had a good selection of oldies-but-goodies. I also watched the BBC World News, played Mahjongg (with excellent graphics), and listened to Zen music – but I could have listened to just about anything I wanted, their music selection is at least as big as their movie menu.

Also, the headphones they provide you with are extremely high quality. Power in the details.

I also like to watch myself fly over the world. They have a wide variety of interactive maps that let you do just that. You can watch day and night move over the world as you do (we stayed in daylight the whole flight!), calculate your distance from anywhere in the world, and zoom in to watch yourself pass over cities and ocean trenches that you have never heard of.

Silly me for thinking we’d fly in a straight line…

I was surprised to find that we flew over much more land than expected.  We flew over a big chunk of Alaska, a Russian peninsula I never knew existed, and the entirety of Hokkaido (Japan’s northern island). Even so, this was the normal view for the flight:

Pretty, but only for about two hours.

You can also view real-time flight data. Very cool, but less practical. My guess is that this screen is a warning to keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times – just in case anyone was tempted to go sky-diving.

I can’t decide whether these numbers are awesome or terrifying.

I packed an arsenal of things to do on the plane, but didn’t break into it once. There was so much to do and see on that console.

So now to food.

It starts with a VERY hot, wet towel to wash your hands, still steaming from the heater. Cleanliness is happiness on a long flight.

So I’m going to post pictures of my Japanese meals side-by-side with my American Airlines meals from three years ago. Guess which is which.

No comparison. Holy cow if this came from a microwave I need that microwave. True to Japanese tradition, they serve lots of little dishes, which is absolutely delightful. Kei had a main dish of Karaage (Japanese fried chicken) and I had this amazing stew beef in a sauce they called demi-glacis or something. FRESH fruit. FRESH Salad. Kitsune udon noodles and soup. REAL butter. Their meals change to utilize what’s in season, so for fall we got a mushroom medley with a piece of chashu pork – the culinarily superior cousin to bacon. REAL silverware. Piping hot miso soup. 

Oh, and not pictured, dessert. A full half-pint of gourmet ice cream to be exact.

Did I mention this was the economy seat’s meal? I don’t even want to know what those rich guys up front got.

I didn’t get a picture of the second meal – but it was mushroom macaroni and cheese (mushrooms are in season!), with more fresh fruit and yogurt. I think that was supposed to be breakfast. It was really good.

So long story short, Japanese airlines are the way to go. They turned a long flight into an experience that was comfortably bearable at worst and delightful at best.