Los Angeles to Tokyo

We finally left Los Angeles airport. The flight left 2 1/2 hours late. To clarify, the news reports said that a guy claiming to be a terrorist and having a bomb was arrested. His backpack was suspicious though and that is why they closed the terminal only, not the entire airport as we first heard. A water cannon was used to "detonate" the backpack. Nothing happened. Evidently, the guy was just looney.

We flew Singapore Airlines to Tokyo. The flight lasted a little over 10 hours. I had been looking forward to flying on The Airline (the name with capital letters is how they refer to themselves on all their literature!) because I had heard so many "wow" comments about it. I flew Business Class (or Raffles Class as they call it) on a 747. a 747 has a small second floor which is the hump you see towards the front of the plane. I was lucky enough to sit in the upper section of the plane which is very quiet since several business class seats and all economy class seats(350 passengers) are in the lower section. In the upper section, there were two large seats on the left side of the plane and two large seats on the right side, and there were about eight rows. All seats are leather-bound and very comfortable. Each seat was provisioned with a pillow enclosed in a real cloth pillow case (no doubt a high thread-count cloth). and a blanket sealed in plastic. My seat was on the right side in the second row. Once everybody in the upper section had boarded, there were several empty seats. The attendant asked me if I would like to move to a row that was empty. Of couse, I said yes. I moved to the first row with a large area between the seats and the bulkhead to provide lots of leg room. And these seats were closer to the two restrooms.

As soon as I got seated, an attendant gave me a hot towel to refresh myself. Cool! Then I was offered a drink (champagne, wine, beer, or mixed drinks) at no additional charge. I asked for and received a Diet Coke. I was then offered a selection of newspapers to read. I declined. All of this happened while the plane was still boarding.

Each first class and business class seat has an individual monitor to watch Movies and TV shows on demand. I have been told that this is the same in the economy section but I never made it to the lower section of the plane to verify this.

One we were in the air, that's when the real service started. I was offered a menu to select from three options for food. There were fish, chicken, or beef choices. I chose beef. Before I received my lunch, my empty drink was refreshed without me asking for a refill. At that point, the attendant opened up my little table that stows in the arm rest of the seat. She then placed it in front of me, and put a table cloth on it. Then she put a tray on the table. On the tray were very nice shiny metal utensils wrapped in a cloth napkin, a toothpick, water in an etched glass, a ceramic salt shaker, a ceramic pepper shaker, a small ceramic bowl with a couple of butter balls, and a small empty ceramic plate. Also on the tray was a salad in a ceramic plate. Not rabbit food, mind you - this was a real salad. It has some fresh fish, on top of a small bed of romaine lettuce with a sprinkling of sliced carrots. The were wedges of tomato too. The attendant poured some sauce over the whole thing. It was delicious. While I was eating that, another attendant came by with a bowl full of rolls and bread sticks for me to select from. I declined. If I had wanted bread, the attendant would've picked my selection out with metal tongs and placed it on my empty plate.

Once I finished the salad, the empty plate and the used utensils were removed. My water was refilled and so was my Diet Coke. Then the main course was delivered. I received a meal containing beef tips with noodles, large mushrooms, and I think some seaweed on the side. The attendant then poured a delicious sauce over everything. Again, the meal was awesome. The attendant came by several times to ask if I wanted an alcoholic drink with my lunch. I declined again.

When I finished my meal, the attendant came by again and removed the entire tray and its contents except for a large spoon. The the attendant delivered dessert. It was a very rich vanilla ice cream drizzled with a cherry sauce and a couple of cherries. She asked me if I wanted coffee or tea with my dessert. I declined again. The dessert was excellent. When I finished it, the attendant removed everything from my table. I then stowed the table. She then brought by another hot towel to refresh myself.

All this took place within the first hour of the flight!

Then I sat back, relaxed and looked forward to the anticipated highlight of the trip. I had heard that The Airline had seats that reclined into beds so that the passenger could actually sleep in a horizontal position. My armrest had all the controls to adjust the seat. I started pressing buttons and feeling the seat adjust to my specifications. Then I realized I had a problem; the seat was defective. I was able to extend the foot rest, raise the seat a little, and move the back of the seat very little. In other words, all I was got was a glorified recliner that did not recline fully. I was still practically seated in an upright position. I had been looking forward to this and I was disappointed. I didn't mention anything about the seat to the attendant. It's not that I didn't want to complain. Everything else went so well that I didn't think about mentioning the seat to anybody.

The good service continued. The attendant came by again and presented me with three packages. The first package were cloth non-skid "footies" to wear. As I looked around at the other passengers, they removed their shoes and socks, and put on the footies. I did the same. The second package conatined a cloth covering for the head to cover the eyes. This allowed the passenger to have dark surrounding for better sleeping. I didn't use this. The third package was a headset for listening to the audio and video. These were not the cheap plastic headsets that I had seen in the past. These were very nice headsets like something I would've purchased myself at Sharper Image. They covered the entire ear and were adjustable to my head. The sound quality was would what you would expect from a good pair of headphones. The best part was this headset was one of those that deadened the noise around you similar to the Bose headset that I borrowed from Mike for this trip.

After another couple of hours, I was offered and accepted another meal. I guess it was dinner time. As before, there was a salad, main course, dessert, drinks, and hot towels.

After awhile, from all the drinks I had to use the restroom. What made these restrooms remarkable was that there were fresh flowers in a container attached to the wall. It provided a fresh aroma when someone entered. Also, instead of paper towels, there were small cloth towels to use for drying your hands. Excellent!

I started lisetening to the onboard music. As on other airlines, there are many music stations to choose from. The sound quality was much better though because of the headset I received. After a couple of hours of this, I started watching a couple of on-demand movies. There was a wide selection of movies to choose from including many in other languages. I chose Vantage Point and The Bank Job. Both were good. When the movies were done, I watched an on-demand TV show and once again, there were many to choose from. I selected Underground Cities. This episode from the Discovery Channel documented parts of London that are under streets and buildings. These structures were built up to two thousand years ago and covered up by succeeding generations. By the end of this show, it was almost time to land and so I received another hot towel to freshen up.

We left Los Angeles at about 4:30pm on Wednesday. We crossed the international date line and arrived in Tokyo around 7pm on Thursday after a 10 hour flight. The sun was out the entire flight and was starting to look like dusk only when we arrived in Tokyo's Narita Airport. The airport is very modern looking with a lot of glass and metal in the structure. We had a one hour layover before we began the next leg of our trip: Tokyo to Singapore.