So I finally had the chance to fly in the Sky Suite on the 777-300ER last week. JAL wasn't kidding when they said they were aiming for a business seat that feels like first class. They really hit a home run with this seat! Best J seat ever.

The good: The flat bed is great. And the mattress pad makes it even better. The seat is very private. It really feels like a first class seat. Storage space is great. (I had an aisle seat which has the side table, unlike the window and middle seats. But the window and middle seats have bigger tables under the TV monitor and a shelf above the seat.) My 20" rollaboard bag fits under the ottoman. The video screen is HUGE.

The seat is also very comfortable just for lounging in a reclined position. I was concerned that the lack of a foot stopper at the end (like the ones on the old Shell Flat seats) would be a shortcoming, but it's easy to put my feet on the ottoman and feel perfectly comfortable.

The seat also has lots of room for my feet in the bed position. My biggest complaint about other airlines' flat J seats is that the foot space is usually very narrow and I can't spread my feet without banging against the walls. This was not the case with the JL seat.

Another great thing about this seat is the ability to lower the partitions so you can talk to your seat mate. My son sat next to me, and we had no trouble communicating during the flight.

One of my worries when JL first announced this seat was that all the walls around the seats would prevent views out the windows of everyone but window seat passengers. Well, it turns out that JAL requires all the seat dividers to be lowered during take off and landing (presumably for safety reasons), so you can still catch views out the window during these most interesting phases of flight.

The bad: The pillow is weird -- very thin and hard, even by Japanese standards. JAL should get thicker pillows. The bed was also a bit too narrow around the waist (and I'm skinny with a 32-inch waist). Head and shoulder room is good, but the seat compartment tapers by the waist, because the table has to fit in the side wall. This means there was no room to lay my arms by my side. My right arm was squashed by the side wall, and my left arm fell off the other side of the bed because the seat was too narrow. So I had to rest my hands on top of my body or clasp them together.

Overall, though, this is by far the best J seat I've ever tried and even beats the last generation of JAL first class seats (the Skysleeper Solo). Combined with the first-rate service and food, JAL has an industry-leading business class.