When I travel, I like to blog in realtime as I explore new places and go on tourist activities. Usually within a few days of doing something interesting, I will have finished preparing the associated photographs, writing about my experience, and publishing the post on my website. I’ve found success in this particular system because it helps me organize my thoughts while they’re still fresh, and it also acts as a way for me to unwind and reflect on my day before going to sleep.
For the first time in as long as I can remember, I broke this aforementioned habit by going on a two-week trip to Japan without releasing a single new blog post the entire duration. There were a few reasons why, but the main one is because I enjoyed Tokyo so much that I wanted to get the most out of my limited time there. I packed my schedule completely full with activities—so much so that, when I was done for the day, I was completely exhausted and couldn’t stay up for much longer before falling asleep.
As of today, I am back in the United States. I have a lot of work and rest to catch up on, but in my free time, I plan on spending the next couple weeks going back through my photos from Japan and writing blog posts for all the interesting things I did while I was there. Functionally, it will be very similar to when I blog in realtime, with the only difference being that every post will be going live two weeks late relative to the actual timing of when I did all this adventuring and sightseeing.
So, that brings us to the beginning.
For my flight outbound from the United States, I took United Airlines from Los Angeles International Airport to Narita International Airport. I know that Asian airlines tend to have a much better reputation than American airlines, but I decided to take United Airlines for one leg of my trip anyway because I wanted to experience United Polaris and compare it to the business class offering on All Nippon Airways. United Airlines flight 32 is still cross-listed with All Nippon Airways as their flight 7019, but the actual service is provided entirely by United.
As for the cities, I flew out of Los Angeles instead of my home airport in Las Vegas because LAX offered non-stop service while LAS required a layover; I flew into Narita instead of Haneda because flights were cheaper to NRT, so much so that I deemed it worth it to deal with the associated longer train ride into Tokyo.
The morning of my flight, I called rideshare service to bring me to the airport. I ended up getting so carsick in the traffic that, even though I was supposed to board my flight from Terminal 6, I asked my driver to drop me off in Terminal 1 as soon as possible at the beginning of the horseshoe because I felt like I would vomit if I stayed in the vehicle any longer.
After getting out of the car, I took the escalator up to use the new pedestrian skybridge to the other side of the airport, only to discover that it was still under construction and not yet open to the public. I went back down the escalator and wandered my way to Terminal 7 by cutting through the parking garage. I’m glad I had a chance to walk around for a bit, because helped alleviate some of the motion sickness and I no longer had a pressing urge to throw up.
International flights at LAX often depart from the Tom Bradley International Terminal, but because I was taking United Airlines outbound, I was departing from Terminal 6 instead. This was very convenient because the United Polaris lounge is in Terminal 7, so I was able to get the full United Airlines business class experience rather than needing to use a partner lounge in Terminal B.
Upon arriving at Terminal 7, I had a quick and easy time getting through security using the Transportation Security Administration’s new TSA PreCheck Touchless ID system where you just look into a camera and get allowed through. After only a few minutes, I made it to airside and walked down past Gate 73 where I took an elevator up another floor to the entrance of the lounge.
Even though I wasn’t about to vomit, I was still pretty carsick, so I didn’t eat a full meal like I normally would have in an airport lounge. Instead, I sipped on some Diet Coke and walked around the lounge to take some photographs.
It was pretty busy in the lounge, but I managed to find a relatively quiet and peaceful area in the rear of the lounge near a giant cabinet of alcohol.
After relaxing for a little over half an hour, I started making my way over to my boarding gate. The United Polaris lounge is in between Gates 73 and 75, but I was boarding from Gate 68B, which meant I had to walk to the entrance of Terminal 7, take a long hallway to Terminal 6, then walk all the way to the deepest edge of Terminal 6… literally, because Gates 68B and 69B are the final two gates of the concourse.
I left the lounge a little early to make sure I had plenty of time and wouldn’t be late if I ran into any issues on my trek there. Luckily, there were no problems, so after loitering for a bit between Gates 68A and 68B to wait for boarding to begin, I embarked our Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner without incident.
I almost always take the rear-most window seat in the last row of the cabin because it usually ends up being the seat that offers the most privacy.
However, on this United Airlines flight, I reviewed the seat map ahead of time and realized that the staggered configuration makes it so that the final window seat in the cabin has the seat facing out towards the aisle instead of in towards the window. Because of that, I reserved the second-to-last seat for myself for this leg of my trip. This ended up being a wise decision, as it was much more cozy having a table separating myself from the aisle.
Another perk of picking a rear seat is that, although it depends on the configuration of the aircraft, the final seats of the business class cabin are usually next to the wing of the plane. I prefer this because it is closer to the center of gravity and results in a smoother ride that is less affected by turbulence, and its proximity to the wing-mounted engine means the loud noise of the engine fans and exhaust will act as white noise and help drown out any disturbances from auditorily disruptive passengers.
Less importantly, and more as a point of personal preference, I think photographs out of plane windows look nicer when there is a little bit of wing or engine in the shot so that it gives some context about the origin of the photograph.
Luckily, my second-to-last seat was still close enough to the wing and engine that I still got all of these perks like I would have if I was in the last seat.
The business class cabin is split up into two subsections. The main section has rows 1 through 8, followed by a divider for the galley and restrooms. Behind that is rows 9 through 12, before a curtain separates the Polaris cabin from the Premium Plus cabin. This means that there are half as many passengers in my section compared to the front section, which adds to the feeling of peace and serenity.
Because I was one of the first people to board the plane, I had an opportunity to pull out my laptop, recline back a bit, and get some last-minute work in prior to our on-time departure.
After taking off, we were offered some warm assorted nuts and beverages to enjoy while the flight attendants prepared dining service. I opted for a can of The Pickle House tomato juice and Coca-Cola Zero Sugar.
My can of Coke had 錡 printed on it. I couldn’t quite figure out what it meant in this context, but my guess is that this can is part of the “Share a Coke with” campaign, and the name of the person you’re supposed to share this can of Coke with is Qí.
During online check-in, I pre-selected the Japanese menu for my meal.
For my first course, I received a curated sampling of Japanese appetizers—Kenchin vegetable-stuffed chicken, sweet soy caramelized sardines, and boiled shrimp with egg yolk vinegar.
My main entrée was United’s salmon Namba grill with purple sweet potato, myoga pickles, and gin-an sauce; mushroom pilaf with Japanese pickles; and red miso soup.
In addition to the Japanese menu, United also offered an international menu as well. There was a Japanese family seated in front of me; I assume that they eat Japanese food all the time and wanted to try Western cuisine on an American airline, so they selected the international menu. While one of them was in the restroom, I snuck this photograph of what they were served—it looks like a filet mignon with mashed potatoes and vegetables.
For dessert, the flight attendants came around with United Airlines’ signature sundae cart where you can custom-order your own sundae. For mine, I requested Tillamook vanilla bean ice cream with caramel sauce, freshly-whipped cream, and sliced nuts.
It was delicious, though I wish they had put a bit less caramel sauce on it so it wasn’t quite as sweet. Basically every YouTuber who does a review of United Polaris raves about this ice cream, and now I can confirm with first-hand experience that it is indeed very good.
After meal service concluded, I reclined back to relax and unwind.
One thing I liked about this plane was that they had dimming windows instead of physical shades. This meant that I could darken my windows to the point where the sunlight wouldn’t be disruptive to other passengers trying to sleep, yet I could still enjoy the view of the sky and clouds out the periphery of my vision.
After a quick nap, I got back up and snacked on a grilled aged cheddar cheese sandwich alongside another glass of tomato juice. It was mediocre at best, but I hadn’t eaten a grilled cheese sandwich for a really long time, so I figured I’d seize the opportunity when I had a chance, considering that I wouldn’t otherwise go out of my way to seek out a grilled cheese.
Not long later, breakfast service started, which was very funny, because it was 10 PM PST and 3 PM JST. A lot of flights from the United States to Asia depart late at night, fly overnight, and land in Asia during the local morning, so for those flights, a breakfast as the final meal would make sense. However, I feel like for United flight 32, it would’ve made more sense to serve breakfast or brunch as the first meal, and then save the dinner for the second meal.
Anyway, I had also picked the Japanese menu for this, but without any additional notice or information, I was given the international menu instead, which I assume means that they either ran out or did not properly account for my dining preference.
For my Western breakfast, I received some sausage, scrambled eggs, hash browns, a roasted half tomato, a fruit bowl, some Greek yogurt, and a croissant. I found it to be an overall pretty acceptable breakfast, but I particularly liked the fruit. They also provided a side container of jam, which I mixed in with the Greek yogurt; I thought that made it a lot better, and it ended up being my second favorite item of the breakfast.
Not long afterwards, we approached Japan’s coastline.
After just over 12 hours of total travel time (which was a little bit longer than scheduled due to needing to take a slightly inefficient flight path to avoid some weather events), we pulled into Gate 38 in Terminal 1 of Narita International Airport.
Being from the United States, I generally just drive everywhere in my pickup truck and don’t really take public transportation. The only time I’ve ever taken public transportation in the past is when I was still a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and sometimes took the bus between my apartment and the main university campus. Thus, when I went downstairs to the train station under Narita International Airport, it was quite an overwhelming experience.
After carefully reading all the signs and referring to Google Maps for instructions on which train line to take to get to my lodging in Tokyo, I boarded the Keisei Narita Skyaccess, which conveniently converted to the Asakusa Line without needing a transfer and dropped me off at the Higashi-Ginza Station only a couple hundred meters away from my hotel.
At first, the train wasn’t too crowded, but as we got closer to Tokyo, the cabin filled up pretty quickly and ended up fairly packed due to me having landed right around rush hour. Regardless, I still managed to keep a careful eye on the location of the train and got off at the right stop without incident.
As for the flight on United Polaris, it wasn’t bad, but I think it was literally leagues behind the service offered on the flights I took on EVA Air, both outbound from Los Angeles to Taoyuan to Hanoi, as well as inbound from Hanoi to Taoyuan to Los Angeles. I had an American flight attendant tending to my area of the United Polaris cabin, and she didn’t really seem particularly attentive or caring and mostly just had a “I’m just doing my job” kind of attitude. Once in a while, the Japanese flight attendants would come to my area to help out and make up for shortcomings because it seemed like the American one couldn’t really keep up with the level of service that the Japanese flight attendants wanted to provide.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, I’m already back in the United States, and I already experienced the All Nippon Airways counterpart to this flight back from Narita to Los Angeles… but I won’t spoil it yet and I will continue posting things in chronological order. Check back in a few days—I’ll be pumping out blog posts soon.