Big Trip To Japan Take 2: The Flight there

Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to The Big Japan Trip Take Two, with your hosts, Maus and Hubbo.  (I have decided to give Him Indoors a proper nickname now that he has 'put a ring on it'. He likes to talk about himself in 3rd person using this moniker, so I'll stick with it here.)

This is both our big get away and our honeymoon. I'll blog it the way I did before, particularly as we have some big trips planned this time round.

I shall begin with the drama of our flights and how itactually turned out to be...

THE BEST TRAVEL DECISION WE HAVE EVER MADE.

See, we booked our flights about 10 months in advance, because we knew when and where we wanted to go and it is much cheaper to do so.  THEN THE RUSSIANS THREATENED STUFF. So we thought, "yikes. If they cut into our bags last time, what will they do this time? better go through Poland."  Which even our parents and guardians believed to be a sensible line of thought.  After minimal use of google we discovered that LOT airlines have a pretty good Premium Economy, which means leg room for Hubbo and extra sleep for both of us. And fewer arguments when we get onto the ground at the other end. #winningalready

It cost us an extra £300 or so each but by this point we had saved that up alongside our wedding fund and pocketmoney fund, so we coughed up and tightened our belts. WORTH IT.
Picture this: clean seats, leg room, drinks in glass glasses and food that doesn't make you wish you were dead.

Love me a good cloud formation

Our flight to Poland was comfortable and we got priority embarkment, but after the 4.5 hours at Warsaw airport, we were resisting the temptation to upgrade to Business Class (the fact it was an extra 500 euros each was a big reason not to bother, though we have made a £200pp bid on business seats on the way back because if we can do that for minimal money, then why the heck not?!).  We got on.  We have just the two seats - so we're not next to randos in our row.  We have leg room, yes. We have foot rests, yes. Magical tint-glass windows - you press buttons and the glass will gradually get darker or lighter, depending on your preference. We got a decent cushion, plush blanket, a care packet containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, socks and eyemask, ear phones that work in regular audio jacks  - so I got some half-decent ones for free - and then we were given our first complimentary drink: a choice of orange juice, water, pink champagne or regular. Well I can tell you that I got hints of cherry and strawberry in my pink champagne and Hubbo will not be going dehydrated.

We were given a menu - yes, a proper card menu.  I suspected, but wasn't sure until I checked later (though the curtain being drawn was a big give away if you ask me - Hubbo was more naive about it) that the rest of the economy passengers were not getting the same food as us.
We chose the Japanese menu, though the western one looked fairly nice too.

For dinner we got: Crab spring rolls served with GORGEOUS beef tenderloin, wakame, carrot and watercress sprouts; seasonal salad with avocado; Baked salmon in teriyaki sauce served with blanched spinach and baked cocktail tomato; a bowl of rice; and a Matcha tea cake.
The only thing that did not taste fresh out of the oven / stove was the blanched spinach, which clearly came from a tin, but it was a high-end brand of tinned spinach. Honestly, I have never had such a good meal before on a plane - Hubbo CLEANED HIS PLATES. And he had some of mine. Thank goodness, maybe his stomach will be less jippy this time when we land! (Update: He has been 100% this time! :) )

For breakfast before landing we are getting Miso Soup, baked turbot appetizer, a spinach omelette and chicken fricasee with vegetables (served hot), rice and a Japanese style salad.

The film selection is pretty good two, with a variety of blockbusters, both recent and "classic". I saw someone watching Toy Story 3 earlier while I queued for the toilet. So far the only slight negative about our pay-for-better experience is that we still have to use the economy toilets, and they're ages away, especially when you have to wait for the rest of the plane to get coffee and tea served and their trays put away and stuff. I just spent ages queuing. I was tempted to go to the back of the plane, cause the people in the last third don't seem to realise there are loos right behind them.... but I would have got stuck behind the trolley again! I am watching Love Simon, since I missed that at the cinema and I know it's excellent. (Update: I have now watched it, as has the Japanese gent  behind me. We both cried a little at the end. It was beautiful.)

I will let you know, when we get to our room in Tokyo, whether or not the drama surrounding our AirBnB has worked out well...!

*****

Just as an aside:  I have just finished rereading the utter delight that is Jonas Jonasson's "The Hundred-Year-Old Man who Climbed out of a Window and Disappeared" on my kindle.  I got a few recommendations from Domestic Sluttery for summer novels to read. Not that they're summery in nature, just short and easy I guess.

The first I'm going to read was one I'd heard about and was interested in and then persuaded by the staff at DS:  "Convenience Store Woman" by Sayaka Murata - a topical book if ever there was one.  Already the first pages have given me mental flashbacks to the 7-Eleven stores and Convenie stores in and around Tokyo, and it's written in that gorgeous clear, simplistic style that authors from that region of the world tend to use. I guess it's how it's translated.

I also bought "After the Party" by Cressida Connolly, which is about how fascism was just evident and on the rise in Britain as anywhere else during the 1930s-40s, as much as people like to pretend/forget that was the case.

I was also interested in "Death in Spring" by Merce Rodoreda and is listed in the Penguin European Writers section of things. This one is a short coming of age story, from what I gather.

I also had a bit of a splurge on books by Mhairi McFarlane. I enjoyed "It's not me, it's you" enough to have a look at the blurbs of her other books and while they're thematically all similar, I can tell I'll probably enjoy them as well.  Everybody loves a formulaic rom-com every now and then.
I also grabbed the second Rivers of London book, to see if the series is worth persuing.

The iPad failed to capture the redness of the sun peeking up to the East