Back In Japan Again

Well, it was a long travel day, but we made it safe and sound at the Blue Wave Asakusa Hotel. For the most part, international flights are like domestic flights, just longer and with better food. Flying JAL (Japan Air Lines), we also had better movies (I recommend "Hayabusa", an amusing movie about Japan's unmanned probe sent to a meteor to gather samples and return, making it the first time since the moon missions anything has been brought back from another "planet") and friendlier flight attendants.

For our second meal, they had some shrimp pasta dish for us lower class citizens in economy class. I told the flight attendant that I couldn't eat seafood, and she came back with a choice of beef curry or chicken and noodles. I chose beef curry. She came back a few minutes later, looking uncomfortable. You see, the meals she was offering me were the first class sections meals. Curry has a delicious, but rather strong odor. If she made the curry for me, everyone in the cabin would be smelling curry, and would probably be asking them why THEY couldn't have curry instead of their rather unappetizing-looking shrimp pasta salad. So she was explaining this to me and apologizing, and in her anxiety was doing it all in Japanese, which I found rather amusing, both because we always tend to revert to our native language when trying to convey strong emotions like regret (you really don't want to say it wrong and not sound as sorry as you really are) and because I really didn't care, as long as it wasn't seafood. An American flight attendant, if they even looked to see if they had an alternate meal, certainly wouldn't have gone through as much trouble as she did for me, nor would they have been as concerned about my happiness in the same way. Yup, we're on our way to Japan, all right!

Anyway, the flights were blissfully free of small children, obese people and delays. The best air travel experience I've had in over a year. We arrived at Narita at about 5, were through immigration, baggage claim and money changing in under 45 minutes, and in our hotel room by 7, including a 50 minute train ride into the city. Our hotel room is about the size of our bedroom closet, but is clean, comfortable, has a high tech TV as well as toilet and is on the top floor of the hotel, providing us a great view of the other tall building right next to us. All in all, an auspicious start to our vacation. No pictures today (sorry), since the inside of airports, airplanes and trains are pretty non-photogenic and uninteresting at best. Tomorrow, we brave the mean streets of Akihabara, guarded by Gundam figurines and Maid Cafes, in search of the elusive PlayStation Vita!