I didn't think I'd be back in Japan so shortly after spending 19 days in last October with my partners, but my dad's friends are racing at Suzuka and he wanted me to be his tour guide around Japan. He'd been wanting to go to Hokkaido for the first time, he's been to Honshu many times, and with high prices on JAL/ANA on their direct TYO flights from Seattle I was booked on Asiana round trip. Then I kept reading more about Starlux after they announced their SEA flights starting in August and had been looking for Mileage Plan award space for a quick get away sometime around Thanksgiving, people faster than me grabbed all the 75K availability which then jumped significantly higher. So with a $500 cancellation fee for my RT Asiana ticket and a positioning flight on AS to get to LAX, I didn't want to risk SFO even though closer due to their runway closure, I was booked on JX LAX-TPE-FUK (hehe). I'm still flying OZ home since the JX arrival in LAX is too late for me to get back to Seattle the same day.
Flight to LAX was uneventful and got some good views, I was super cautious and took a flight with a 4 hour layover when there was one later and even two but that would've been less than 2hrs connection.



Tri-tip sandwich. Good taste but far too much bread, I only ate about a third of it.