Sunrise, between Taiwan and Okinawa

I missed my flight to Japan Monday morning, so I bought a new ticket and flew to Osaka from Bangkok, departing just before midnight. I often travel for my work, and in so doing I develop an extensive and peculiar knowledge of airports and airlines. The Thai Airways and Japan Airlines flights that depart at midnight on the Bangkok to Japan route do not serve dinner, but rather serve breakfast on the plane. That seems sensible. The Singapore Airlines flight, however, on the same Bangkok to Tokyo route, departing at midnight, offers a full dinner, but no breakfast. What airline has the best ceilings? My vote is for Emirates, with a simulated star-filled sky above the aisles when the cabin lights are dimmed. Try it. Flights from Japan to the US are surreal; one can usually watch the sunrise and sunset in Japan, then fly east and watch the sunrise and sunset again, yet on the same day.

The funniest moments on airplanes are when someone smokes in the lavatory. Announcements through the public address system become quite shrill, and usually in a foreign language, and one generally knows the term for smoking in a number of languages. On a long boring flight, shrill denouncements of lavatory smoking can be interesting.

And there is an occasional view out the window that one will remember: any sunrise or sunset; Mt. Fuji descending to Haneda; a flight over Iran 2 weeks ago; any approach into the Pacific Northwest.