montrealer

My overriding rules are

1. Try to get on the schedule of your destination as soon as possible, ideally from the start of the trip.
2. When you can't stay up even though you ought to, take a 2-3 hour nap.
3. When you can't sleep even though you should be, just work, read a book, or watch movies for a few hours, and don't sweat it. You'll be tired and sleep later.
4. During and after the trip, try to maximize exposure to light (preferably natural light) and moderate physical activity during the destination's waking hours. That can include a completely pointless brisk walk through a boring transit terminal building when you could be sitting on your rear end in a lounge, and paying as much attention to planes moving on a sunny tarmac as befits a 7 year old on their first flight even though you've already flown several million miles -- just because you need an excuse for exercise and light.

Application of these 4 rules to your flights would lead me to do what canadiancow writes.

Together with modest use of the 2 drugs airlines provide, especially in premium class, on demand -- alcohol and caffeine -- I personally find following these rules is adequate. No melatonin or sleeping aids for me. I've always found the dread of jetlag is worse than the actual thing. TATL my sleep is a bit disrupted the day after, TPAC for 2 days, but that's it. But people vary and I respect some people have much more of an issue and adjust very gradually over several days.

Given my rules, I do find it annoying how often the airlines try really hard to make you sleep in the middle of any long flight, and fairly often structure meal times around the time zone of the origin rather than the destination. I've never quite figured out if that's done for their convenience or because lots of passengers prefer it that way, probably both.

mediator

Op, here are my recommendations, based on adjusting one hour per time zone travelled:
1. On the day of departing ICN, try to start the day early, preferably around 6am.
2. When you get to ICN, try to enjoy your dinner at the airport.
3. Onboard, just enjoy some light snacks and skip the meal then try to sleep for several hours.

The goal here is to advance your body clock so that when you land at YYZ around 9PM EST, you are tired but not so overwhelmingly exhausted and ready for a longer night of sleep.

IluvSQ

My most recent ICN-YYZ was the nonstop, but I have done the YVR stop many times.
Strategy is similar for both.
Try to sleep for about 4 hours on the flight ex-Seoul, and stay awake the rest of the time.
You should arrive exhausted and ready to sleep.

LiqAlchemy

Try to stay awake on the last lag of the flight and sleep on arrival YYZ.

boss315

No Jet Lag homeopathic pills..used for years..very little jet lag in any direction.

Sandy King

I was a little astonished on a recent long-haul daytime flight westbound to YYZ, arriving late afternoon, that we were all asked to lower the window shades. And even more astonished that some passengers slept the whole time.

Stranger

Surely placebos help... :-)
Prayers too I suppose.

TheCanuckian

I really dislike it when we are forced to close shades during daytime flights, especially when I'm trying to adjust my circadian rhythm. It's so unhelpful. I want to let the sunshine in! (Though I do understand for ultra-long haul flights like SYD-YVR).

Johnson_Palmtreeig

This is what I would do. If you can't sleep after landing back in Toronto, I would try to stay awake for the entire day (go out and do an activity) and crash the next bedtime.

warrens

One of the Flight Directors (Paul) that does Japan -> Toronto a lot told me recently that he finds the 13-ish hour time difference "backwards" to be a lot easier to deal with than when he worked European routes with 6-ish hour shifts.

Personally, I've definitely found this to be the case as well. Even the 3 hours "forwards" between YYZ and SFO (which I do often) is harder on me than Asia flights in either direction. Frankly, I better wished I understood why. I pretty much can't sleep on airplanes no matter what; maybe that has something to do with it.

Hope your flight is good, Canuckian. The 64 -> 118 pairing is a doozie.

TheCanuckian

And after all that, concierge called and asked if I would like to be moved to AC 62 (direct). That actually simplifies a little bit, I think. I will eat before the flight leaves, sleep for a few hours at 10 PM, and then start my day�

The only drawback is that I lose about 1,000 SQM.