0122 UA 804 SIN NRT 0720 1450 777 9H Ch 9 Y Empower Y

There was one cabbie at the hotel, obviously on the prowl
for an airport fare. Judicious questioning revealed that
he did this every day, with between 2 and 9 fares a day
between 4 and 9 am. He's probably considerably richer than
I'll ever be.

Checkin took moments, and off I was to Terminal 3 and the
Silver Kris Lounge, where I was turned away and sent off to
the rather cramped Krisflyer Gold Lounge, where again the
concierge tried to send me packing, but a modicum of
persistence caused her to call a supervisor; during the
course of that brief conversation her face fell noticeably,
and, after appropriate apologies, I was admitted.

The hot offerings were abbreviated but good: mee sua was at
least as good as you'd expect from your local Kopitiam -
soy-flavored but not too salty noodles with lovely cabbage
and other vegetables, garnished with scallions, fried
onion, and slices of hot pepper.

Duck congee was surprisingly meat-filled and quite ducky.

To go with, a very cold draft Tiger in a very frosted mug.

The Cognac was the respectable Otard XO, very vanillary with
a touch of raisins and a big afterburn, probably a result of
being formulated for the ganbei market. There was only a
tiny bit left, and I finished it. It wasn't replaced in the
time I was there.

After doing the FT mail I got bored with the place (no
Appetite magazine!) and went back homeward.

The Skytrain takes you from gate B10 to B1, not a long
distance.

Went to the TG lounge, where the concierge confiscated my
SATS invitation, telling me that I could use the Orchid or
the SATS but not both. I was fine with that.

The atmosphere is nice and quiet, the seats better than the
SKL, the KGL, or the SATS; unfortunately the food offerings
were scanty - breakfast pastries and bowl o'noodles only.
The pastries (I had an almond custard croissant and a raisin
Danish) were soggy.

Martell VSOP Medallion had vanilla and hazelnut notes and
was very smooth, I think a bit nicer than the Otard XO.

Canned beers available: Tiger, Singha, and I think Heineken.

After my first visit to the groaning board, various
sandwiches came out: Cheddar and chicken didn't appeal,
nor did mozzarella and tomato; but I tried guacamole and
eggplant, fairly okay, and chicken tikka with mango chutney
and lettuce, which was excellent.

Soon it was time to hoof it to the gate, which was C1 - the
gate I associate with the Jeddah flights. Security was
efficient and took just a couple minutes; whizzed through
and boarded immediately. The plane was quite full.

Very attentive crew (Singapore-based, said the
announcement); the preflight Champers was the same
as the inflight: Pommery. The flight looked full.

to begin
Your selected entree will be accompanied by fresh fruits
and breakfast breads

main course

Herb omelette with grilled chicken sausage; Lyonnaise
potatoes and oven-baked tomato with Parmesan cheese

Braised beef brisket with egg noodles; Chinese black
mushrooms, choy sum and spring onions

Continental breakfast; selection of fresh seasonal fruits,
cereal and yogurt

They loaded 25 omelettes, 10 Chinese meals, and a LFML.

prior to arrival
Fettuccine with dill cream sauce; grilled zucchini, fresh
mushrooms and chopped tomatoes with herbs

or

Chicken Caesar salad; pan-seared chicken strips,
romaine lettuce, fresh tomato wedges, croutons and
Caesar dressing

dessert
Apple cake with vanilla sauce

A fruit appetizer was quite nice - watermelon, honeydew,
orange, grapes, and pineapple. A croissant was mediocre
but better than recent ones. Also on offer were raisin
Danish and some kind of nut muffin.

My seatmate, flipping the pages of her newspaper, knocked
a glass of OJ on my legs. I just dabbed it up with a bunch
of napkins - the pants had to be washed anyway. Other than
that (she remained oblivious to this) she was fine, waiting
until I was up to go to the bathroom, that sort of thing.

I had the Chinese breakfast: the beef was tough though
tasty, and its dark sauce made the pallid vegetable and
the nasty noodles at least sort of edible. Washed this
down with decent OJ out of a carton. Then settled down,
did some work, called for a Courvoisier, and sacked out.
My row 9 seat had full, maybe greater than normal, recline.

Stupid boy. I woke from my nap and saw on the
Airshow that we were headed toward Manila. What was the
meaning of this? It took me quite a few seconds to realize
that in fact I had booked to Tokyo, not Hong Kong.

We landed a bit ahead of schedule.

I tried to get on 838, but despite the fact there was seat
availability, it would cost me $200, which I might have gone
for, but there was nothing available upstairs, much less my
favorite seats, so I decided to stay stuck in the club and
do Flyertalk and stuff. Maybe in an hour or two go to the
ANA lounge, but I was lazy today. The Kirin VSOP brandy
here, by the way, is okay - not much grape character, rather
a smooth nutty opening, chocolaty vanillary palate, and then
the roof falls in from the fire. Long rather woody finish.

There were inarizushi (sushi rice stuffed into sweetened
fried tofu pockets) for snacks; I am fond of these.

The red wine is some weird stuff from the Vaucluse or
somesuch place - I didn't dare try it.

Gave up on plans to wander about and instead had a shower
and drank more beer and brandy.

UA 852 NRT SFO 1900 1124 777 9H Ch 9 Y Empower Y

A very light load on this one, 1 or 2 in F, 7 in the
minicabin, and the big C cabin looked largely empty -
perhaps everyone had gotten on 838, which leaves just a
couple hours before. Now I understand why people say that
row 9 lacks recline - I tried to put my seat back, and
shortly after halfway the (down positioned) headrest smacked
into a wall (which wasn't there, or at least wasn't nearby,
on the previous plane). A pretty good crew; I did wander up
front to see if I could find any FT tags (only a couple pax,
so easy to check), but the purser shooed me away promptly.

A very good crew, mostly Japanese ethnic by the look of
them. Hot towels and hot nuts.

I had a glass of Chateau de Tracy Madamoiselle de T
Pouilly Fume 05, which had all the standard Sauvignon Blanc
characteristics and tasted like passion fruit and cat pee.
There was magic between cashews in the nut mix and the cat
pee - the resultant flavor was very like durian. I was
amused.

to begin
Grilled smoked salmon, prosciutto bruschetta;
vegetable sushi and pickled ginger

Fresh seasonal greens; Creamy Caesar or soy vinaigrette

main course
Pan-seared filet mignon with Madeira sauce; baked potato
wedges and herbs with green beans, carrot, pepper saute

Chicken Florentine with smoked Gouda and tomato basil sauce;
mushroom risotto and asparagus saute

Washoku zen selection
Appetizers of salmon sushi with fish eggs, roasted lime-
flavor beef with miso, quick-blanched tuna, broiled salmon,
sansho-flavored sweet smelt, seaweed-flavored flounder and
somen noodles topped with sweet egg
A main course of barbecued eel kabayaki, shrimp and
scallop flavored with sake and seaweed, marinated broiled
sea bass, steamed tofu and assorted vegetables served with
steamed rice and Japanese pickled vegetables
Served with green tea
Items in this meal may contain traces of MSG

dessert

International cheese selection: Red Cheddar, Coulommiers

Eli's praline cheesecake

prior to arrival

Scrambled egg and Red Cheddar crepe with mushroom cream
sauce; Canadian bacon

Fresh seasonal fruit plate with creamy yogurt

Today's menu features beef from Australia.

When making reservations on future flights to and from
Japan, you may secure the Japanese meal by preordering.

We apologize if occasionally your choice is not available.

[wines same as on previous Pacific flights noted here]

The Japanese meal was mostly acceptable, especially the
appetizers. The salmon and tuna were of high quality and
not messed around with. The beef was a little ripe, as if
it were halfway to pastrami - not unpleasant for that. The
smelt was whole and stared at me until I wolfed it down. Was
its brief life and ignominious end worth it? Perhaps. The
flounder was of an insignificance; the noodles were pallid
and tasteless, even dipped in dashi broth.

The main courses were way overcooked but tasted decent.
The eel was quite tasty but overcooked mushy; shrimp (2)
and scallops (3 pieces) fairly tasty but overcooked hard.
The other ingredients sort of mushed together and stuck to
the bottom of the dish. The tofu, what I could pry off the
bottom, was quite nice. Also on the plate, lightly pickled
cucumber, celery, and red plum. An entertainment: a cherry
blossom tinted pink and white, apparently made of surimi. I
tasted it in the interests of science: turned out to be
mochi.

The rice was hard on the outside and sticky in the middle.
I tried to mine down into the middle but gave up after
making a slight mess.

Green tea was of a lowish standard; I had a bottle of
Gekkeikan Petit Moon instead: it was clean, characterless,
and rather like milky pear juice but went nicely.

=

I had a bite of the Red Cheddar to see what it was like.
It was not red and was way underaged - sort of like what
the American public has been duped into thinking is "sharp
Cheddar cheese," probably a few weeks or months aged.

The Port was sort of corked and unpleasant; I drank just
enough of it to wash down the cheese and the apple cake,
which was decent: I liked the vanilla sauce, which was
like a packaged custard - a little grainy, not too sweet,
amusingly, luridly yellow.

Had a nice nap, after figuring out how to get comfy in
this seat (plus the footrest didn't stay up) and was
wakened an hour and half before landing by the lights
going up and the swish of tray tablecloths.

A nicer than usual fruit appetizer - ripe strawberry,
ripe melon, very nice slice of apple, pineapple.

The scrambled eggs turned out to be an omelet wrapped in
a tough shell, which strangely enough kept the eggs fluffy
and tasty despite an obvious overheating, which turned the
fairly palatable mushroom sauce into a thick pudding and
made the bacon (really chop-cut loin rather than eye, so
perhaps Scottish or Irish-style and not so much Canadian)
almost uncuttable even with the aid of the two real metal
knives. A croissant was vanilla scented and awful.

We landed a touch early; the friendly flight attendant
waved us up to the front door only to find that they were
opening 2L! So we had to reverse direction and deplane
with the polloi.

Immigration, a big old hike down the hall, was uneventful,
except that the agent gave me the hard sell about my
passport not scanning and how I should renew a couple years
early to take advantage of the wonderful new security
technology. I didn't say much, refraining from pointing out
that my having just had new pages sewn in should be
indicative of my attachment to the thing.

A sizable line at domestic security, so I traipsed to the
priority lane, where a lot of people who clearly weren't
frequent flyers had managed to infiltrate (one granny and
her grandkids kept the lane clogged for five minutes).

At the RCC I did the RCC_meetings walk a few times, flapping
my FlyerTalk tag in front of me. No recognition.

Got to the gate at boarding time to find a batch of TSA
personnel looming and the plane not arrived yet. Presently
the plane came up (from Chicago), and (oddly) the TSA
people left. I thought it was perhaps a return to the
"random" gate checking, but as I wasn't pulled over, that
must not have been the case - unless the TSA returned later
to play games with the coach pax.

UA 294 SFO BWI 1518 2323 320 2A Ch9 Y Empower Y

Hot towels, hot nuts. Nice crew,

The offerings were the famed pasta trio or a pan-roasted
chicken breast with potatoes and seasonal succotash. I
passed so cannot report.

The red wine was Washington Hills Merlot 05, which I made
the mistake of asking for. The jovial FA kept it coming.

We landed 20 early.