The process when we landed in Narita Airport in Tokyo was a bit strange. Firstly, when we were boarding the plane, they boarded the Economy class not in order of front to back, but in order of window, then middle, then aisle seats, which I thought made sense. But when disembarking, they first ordered all the people either making Tokyo their final stop, or with a domestic transfer, off the plane first, while everyone with an international transfer had to wait. Then once it was our turn to go, there were a number of airport attendants holding up signs pointing us in the right direction out in the airport itself. The airport itself had public areas with a few shops open that seemed rather normal, but also had several wings that were just entirely sealed off, and officers sitting around watching us suspiciously like we could open a large metal roller shutter gate by ourselves or something.

I found some really cool things, like this bathroom whose layout I swear up and down invoked memories of some dreams that I have had before:

It was so freaky that it instantly reminded me of a dream or two, though I have had a lot of washroom/bathroom/toilet dreams in my dream journal. The toilets were pretty great too — while Singapore’s Changi Airport had bidets, and the Air Nippon Airways jet had bidets, these bidets were far more complex, although I couldn’t figure out what the Hand Clean button did, and all the bidets I saw were missing the air dry feature that Korean bidets have.

Anyway, enough toilet talk. I found a ramen shop selling interesting ramen and a 7-11 place selling bento boxes that could be microwaved at the front counter. I gave my sister a choice as to which I should eat, and she chose the ramen shop, so off I went.

I ordered the Shiromaru Special Toppings Ramen, which basically came with four different toppings out of the six available ones (no bean sprouts though, sadly). The broth was delicious and the spoon and bowl were rather uniquely shaped, and I quite enjoyed this meal, and compared to the Changi Airport meal, this one only cost 1150 yen ($11.40 CAD after credit card conversion fees).

I then walked around Narita Airport a bit, taking pictures of various stores there. Like in Tokyo, Akihabara was busy and crowded and very popular with the tourist crowd:

And there were interesting things like this room and shower place:

Sadly I wasn’t going to be here long enough to use this service, or it might have been interesting. I actually tried looking for the Changi Airport equivalent while I was there, as there were one or two rest hubs and/or capsule hotels there too, but I couldn’t find them (or perhaps couldn’t get there due to parts of the airport being shut at night). That crappy Vancouver airport needs this, though.

Soon enough, our Air Canada flight was boarding, although not before significant delays due to the incoming plane being delayed. Par for the course for Air Canada. For this plane, I had an aisle seat and there was no one in the center seat, so both I and the person in the window seat rejoiced, as the flight was actually nearly full. I brought Tigey out at some point and plopped him on the center seat for most of the flight.

Our meals looked like this:

My first meal, labelled “Dinner” and pictured above, was served about an hour and a half in, and was supposed to be Chicken with Nanban sauce, white rice, black sesame, hiratake mushroom, broccoli, and carrot. That doesn’t seem like white rice to me, and I didn’t see any mushrooms either, and it amused me that they were accurate with the singular phrasing of “broccoli” and “carrot”.. there was literally only one of each. Pathetic Canadian airline. However, the chicken was very, very good. The side items were Macaroni and bean salad, and Chocolate mousse. And some random loaf of hard bread. The alternate meal, which I didn’t take, was Hamburger steak, espagnole sauce, herbed mashed potatoes, sautéed mushrooms, beans, and carrots, with the same two sides. I note the usage of plural in those ingredients!! I bet they got TWO carrots each!

The second meal, served an hour and a half or so before landing, was “Breakfast”. This had two options as well, and I took the Stir-fried udon noodles, pork, vegetables, and pickled ginger.

This was not very good, but it wasn’t terrible. Definitely the weakest of the three main meals I had on this itinerary though. Heck, I’d rank it below the singular chocolate baguette as well, so the weakest of the four meals. The other option was Scrambled eggs, cheese, pork sausage, parsley roasted potatoes, dried tomato, and broccoli. I could have had one pork sausage, one dried tomato, and one broccoli!! The side dish was the same for both meal options — fruit salad. And hard bread. I took tomato juice every time I could as well, although I did vary a bit for my first drink on this flight and took a cup of Clamato instead.

This meal was also notable because I could see the movements of the Air Canada attendants from my vantage point near the back-middle of the left aisle of the Economy class seats. I noticed that just before lunch was served, our male flight attendant wheeled out a drinks cart and started giving out drinks to the front of the left Economy aisle that I was on. There was no equivalent drinks cart going down the right aisle though. He had gotten maybe a third or halfway down the aisle when two lady flight attendants wheeled out the meal carts and started to each push one down each aisle. But then this caused a problem, because the aisle was so narrow already, the lady attendant on my left aisle couldn’t reach the front third or half of the Economy seats to give them their food! (The attendant on the right had no such issue and started giving out the food from the very front.)

Dreadful timing. And to make things worse, instead of sliding the drinks cart into Premium Economy or whatever cabin was ahead of us, so that they could give out the food to the front group of Economy passengers, she instead just decided to start giving out food to those that she could reach, and then progressed to the back of the Economy aisle as per normal, with the drinks cart following along a little behind and giving out drinks to the people that had just received food.

That’s all fine and dandy for us, but this meant that the front third or so on the left aisle of this plane did not get their food at all until they had finished giving out the food and drinks to the rest of the Economy class, at which time they still took some time in the back cabin area before the food cart was wheeled out again to sheepishly serve those in front. By that time there was maybe an hour to go before landing at most, and everyone else was done with their food, though to their credit they did manage to clear the trays fairly quickly this time. It was amusing watching the Air Canada attendants be so uncoordinated though. This was starkly contrasted by the Air Nippon attendants, who were the very model of efficiency — the very minute I finished my meal, there was an attendant there approaching to remove my food tray, and I believe that the attendants did three rounds down the aisles or something to clear the dishes of people that ate at different speeds. ANA really had their timing and coordination down pat.

I was trying to take a picture of my window seat mate as he took pictures and videos of the plane landing in Vancouver, for my collection of pictures of other people taking pictures, but he noticed me and asked if I wanted him to take a few pictures of the scenery outside with my phone instead. I obliged, and so I ended up with an aerial photo of Vancouver anyway despite not having a window seat: