Flight to the U.S.A.

Our flight left from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. (This is from back in July.)

We took American Airlines….Getting into line.

Okay. Now I need to explain something. With the American Express card that my husband and I each have, we are allowed inside an airport lounge. However, your American Express MUST be Japanese! 😦 I know, that’s sad. This is a view from the lounge.

It’s funny though when I enter the lounge. Seeing a foreign woman, the staff assumes: Oh no, we don’t accept foreign cards! But my card is Japanese….so they let me and my son in.

My son LOVES the lounge. Two lounges were available for us, but we went to the one close to our gate. It was the larger one. It was very spacious, very quiet. They have a beautiful view, comfortable seats, plug-in spots at every seat for your devices, free drinks (tea, juice, soda, alchohol) It’s so relaxing.

This is inside the plane. This flight was completely full. (On the way, back it was not full, and we had four seats for the two of us. My six-foot (182 cm) son, who is only fifteen, stretched out on three seats and napped. By the way, it’s getting weird now that he is six-foot but only fifteen years old. People think he is older than he is. No, no, everybody. He’s still my sweet baby.)

This is the sun outside the window. It was bright red and then turned this purplish color. We had a new plane with tinted windows. (The tint level is controlled.) On flights like this, the windows are kept closed (or in the case of tinted windows, they are kept dark.) I believe one reason that windows are kept closed is that a lot of radiation enters the cabin from the sun. A lot! For a casual traveller, the amount is still okay, but it is something flight attendants have to be aware of since they are often exposed to the high level radiation in the plane’s cabin.

The radiation in the cabin is something I learned about when reading and researching the situation in Fukushima.

If you’ve never flown on an international flight, even economy seats have great little TV’s! I frequently look at our flight path. Great for the map lover in me.

There are movies, TV shows, video games.

Even high quality movies!

My son and I each bring our own headphones from home because the free airplane headphones in economy are quite bad. (This was suggested to me by my dad after his trip to Nicaragua.)

You can think about what you want to drink while waiting for the flight attendant to arrive. You don’t have to ask “Um, what do you have?” Making her/his job go more smoothly.