60 minutes to landing in NRT at 37,000 feet we were being bounced hard enough that they had to seat all the FAs and stop breakfast. There were three planes ahead and behind us was requesting, and getting lower altitudes (perfectly smooth under FL340 according to a NW airplane slightly ahead on the same routing - thank you channel 9).

We ended up flying at this horrible altitude for another 20 minutes - my question is...is this some kind of fuel saving tactic? Isn't it better to have a smoother ride and burn more fuel at lower altitude?