Blogs from Chiba, Japan, Asia - page 6

After China trip, I think about airplane meals. Well, I had never taken Japanese Airplane before Beijing trip. Japanese friends often complained airplane meal except ANA or JAL because of the qualities. I remembered Continental Airline provided great meals when I went to Boston from Tokyo (10 years ago!!!) and Swiss Air had a huge choice of drink. I didn't think Japanese airlines did only provide nice meal. When we left for Beijing, it was first time for me to take JAL flight to Tokyo. We waited long time for getting on the plane, so I didn't expect great service this flight. Although it was short trip, they fed us good meal. I could choose the menu which I hadn't had so long time. All Asia trip, there were no choice of meal; you had to ... read more

I had a bad flu and was not too well in Singapore so we postponed the flight to Tokyo for a couple of days. Then Jasmine was very sick the day after we got to Japan. We took her to a hospital and it turns out she had a gallstone attack. She's never had that before but she is better now but still feeling a bit vulnerable. She has to keep off the fatty food. Laurie looked up the web which said that gall stones are related to female, forty plus, fat and fertile! so kind. Bring on menopause! So we got to see how Japanese hospitals work. Good start to our adventure here, Lucky we have good travel Insurance (provided the company has not gone broke as the stock market melts down). The doctor did ... read more

Ueber das Wochenende vom 11.-13.Oct. wurde ich eingeladen, die Arbeitsgruppe auf ihrem alljaehrlichen "Betriebsausflug" zu begleiten. Das war ein insgesamt super schoenes Wochenende, an dem ich die einzelnen Mitglieder besser kennenlernen konnte, da sie viel offener waren als auf der Arbeit. Der 13. Oct. war ein Feiertag in ganz Japan (Tag des Sports). Wir sind Samstag morgens in den gemieten 3 Autos losgefahren und sind nach etwa 2-3 Stunden Fahrt in Chiba angekommen. Zuerst haben wir uns einen Shinto-Schrein angeschaut. Da hab ich dann mal gleich das traditionelle Gebet ausprobiert. Ich wusste nicht, wofuer ich beten soll (und wieso), also hab ich einfach nur die Reihenfolge an Gestik vollfuehrt, die mir aufgetragen wurde. Leider waren sich die Studenten auch nicht so wirklich einig, wie es denn nun richtig geht. So hab ich es im Endeffekt gemacht: ... read more

Quick first post.... touched down after an uneventful flight over. Good flight, JAL was great as always. Had two options of hot food for supper, I went with chicken and rice and washed it down with some not too bad red wine all complimentary of course. Met a guy from Korea who's heading back there for a bit, and watched the movie Iron Man about 2 and a half times. Made one rather large oops.. I ended up booking the wrong hotel here in Narita for my first night, so now I'm stuck in a very typical business class hotel (aka, TINY) in downtown Narita instead of the rather nice place I stayed the last time around. Had a bit of trouble figuring out the train system since I had to apparently use the local line, ... read more

Wee! I made it to Japan. Crazily, I left Seattle at 1:30 pm on Friday, traveled for a straight 10 hours and landed at Narita at 3:30 pm on Saturday. Not once during our travels did it get dark outside. The plane ride was awesome! It's the first time I've had real food on a plane since 1999! We got two hot meals plus snacks and tons of drinks. Lots of movie choices (I could be as ADD as I wanted!) so I watched parts of Indy 4, Narnia 2, Leatherheads, Miss Pettigrew, and the Jet Li/Jackie Chan flick. Good times. We could also track our progress, so I watched that a lot! The lady next to me was great...a Japanese native who has lived in Alaska for years. We chatted like crazy ( to the ... read more