Around the world part 5B: Tokyo to Los Angeles in First Class

After spending a few hours in the JAL First Class lounge, it was time to board my flight! I had been looking forward to this flight for months, and it was awesome that it was finally happening! JAL pretty consistently releases a single first class seat as saver award availability to its partners when the schedule opens. JAL opens its schedule 360+ days in advance. However, British Airways opens its schedule only 355 days in advance (compared to 11 months in advance for American Airlines). That means that these tickets are often not available by the time they can be booked through other programs. The exception is Cathay Pacific, which opens its schedule at the same time as JAL. I got lucky and was able to book this flight through British Airways when its schedule opened. My understanding is that the LAX route is also one of the easier flights to grab a first class seat on, especially compared to New York or London.

Boarding started right on time, as you’d expect, which in this case was only 30 min before the schedule departure time.

After I scanned my boarding pass, I was directed down the first jetbridge, which was for first class only. I chose to board early, and only one other passenger was in the cabin when I entered. Boarding for First Class was very quick because there were only 6 people out of the maximum of 8. Only 6 seats being taken is consistent with what I had seen on the seat map beforehand, but it was interesting that they let two seats fly empty instead of offering them as reward seats. I have to assume the reason is that the A350s only have 6 seats and they didn’t want to run into any problems if there was a last minute aircraft swap.

Whenever I’ve seen pictures of this first class cabin, the proportions of the seats have always seemed a bit off to me. Specifically, the seat backs seem weirdly short, but I thought it may have just been the result of the seat’s shape/length.

Waiting at the seat was quite the selection of goodies, including a menu in a hard folio, an amenity kit, Shiseido toiletries for men, a water bottle, head phones, a pillow. Truly everything you could think of needing for a long-haul flight.

And now the moment of truth: is the seat actually as short as it seems like?

Yes. Yes it is.

And I don’t fully know why. But here I am sitting up straight:

The flight attendants saw me taking selfies and pictures of the seat and proactively offered to take my picture. It was clear instantly that this crew would be excellent.

The seat’s TV is quite large, but it low key needs to be because it’s so far away.

Zooming out, we can see that the entire cabin feels incredibly spacious, even if the privacy isn’t as complete as on other more modern products.

But there’s no denying that you have a ton of personal space and that it’s all usable unlike on Korean Airlines…

I was offered a pre-departure glass of champagne, which I happily accepted, and I even didn’t spill it like on Etihad.

The woman behind me was, I believe, Japanese-American, and I heard her saying that she used to do this flight a couple times per year, but this was likely to be her last flight because it was just too long/far. The flight attendants were absolutely lovely to her, even escorting her to the lavatory whenever needed.

That being said, I was fine on my own just being able to look out the windows. Since it was winter time, this flight was, in fact, a proper overnight flight. We took off before 5 pm local time, but it was still already dark. But that meant that I got an amazing view of the city. It also meant that sleeping would be pretty easy.

Promptly after takeoff, service began. I assume I could’ve had dinner at any point during the flight, but the timing of the flight meant that immediately after departure made the most sense.

Let’s first peruse the menu!

There was a choice of Japanese cuisine:

Or international cuisine:

Then there was an a la carte selection as well:

The dining experience on this flight was truly something else.  I’ve only been to one or two omakase experiences ever, but as far as I could tell, this was as good as any omakase menu on the ground.  I also learned independently that some JAL First Class flights from outstations are catered by top tier/traditional local Japanese restaurants because this level of specialized Japanese cuisine is not feasible from an airline catering kitchen.  My knowledge of this type of Japanese cuisine is somewhat limited, so if anyone has more insight into each of these courses, please let me know.

The meal service began with a glass of JAL’s famous Salon champagne. This champagne retails for $300+/bottle, and it was great! But I think I’ll probably just stick with prosecco for the most part if I’m paying for it. Served with the champagne was a small amuse-bouche that was plated every so delicately.

Next came the “Seasonal five colorful delicacies”, which I can only describe as absolutely fascinating. Clockwise from 7 o’clock they were: (1) Deep-fried Tilefish & Burdock with Truffle Sauce (fish with mushroom sauce); (2) Deep-fried Scallop Cake with Thickened Broth with Chinese Cabbage (similar to a small crab cake); (3) Wagyu Beef & Canola Blossom with Grated Onion Sauce (not edible for me); (4) Simmered Blowfish Milt; (5) Simmered and Deep-fried Taro and Grilled & Simmered Eel. The Blowfish milt I have talked about at length to anyone who will listen to me. I barely even know how to describe it. It was one of the weirdest textured food items I’ve ever eaten. It was as soft as warm butter but more like biting through air. Truly fascinating.

This course was followed by a soup course. It was a small dish with just a single snow crab dumpling in “clear soup”, which I can confirm was basically just flavored water.

Following that came the caviar course, which was served with lobster. At this point, I swapped to beer for something a bit lighter.

Finally came the main course: fried pufferfish. Now, if you’re like me, the only time you hear pufferfish as a food is in the context of the sushi that requires extremely delicate preparation. The sushi is difficult specifically because the fish doesn’t get cooked, and its proteins don’t get broken down. However, this pufferfish was fried, and the frying the pufferfish denatures the poison, so fried pufferfish is totally fine. It was served with white leek, spinach, and shiitake mushrooms, as well as chicken and vegetable rice.

And finally for dessert, I was served a brown sugar jelly & rum mousse along with green tea. I almost declined the dessert because it didn’t particularly appeal to me, but then again, a lot of what I was served for dinner on the surface didn’t appeal to me. And also, I needed to get a picture for the blog.

During dinner, if anyone was wondering, I was watching the movie, Keeping Up with the Jones.

JAL offers the choice of a firm or soft mattress topper.  I selected the soft topper, and it was the best mattress that I’ve ever had on a flight (and just in general a great bed surface).  I got about 5 hours of basically uninterrupted sleep.

Although I didn’t have an enclosed suite, I still had plenty of privacy, especially in such an intimate cabin. It was at this point that I realized that it felt like there were really only a handful of us even on the plane. It was amazing to really feel like we were in our own little world.

I stopped being able to sleep due to being able to hear the noises of the rest of the cabin having breakfast. So, that’s a noticeable negative of this seat. As before, I had the option of a western or Japanese breakfast. I naturally selected the Japanese option. Realistically, most of the time I will select Asian food over Western cuisine when presented with an either/or option.

The breakfast was served on a single tray and consisted of sea bream, red turnip, kale potato salad, spinach, lotus root, white radish, steamed rise, and miso soup. In addition, I also ordered a katsu pork sandwich. This sandwich was, hands-down, the best sandwich that I have ever had anywhere.  It had an amazing ratio of meat to bread, the sauce was perfectly tangy, and the bread was perfectly toasted and served at just the right temperature. And apparently it was a special type of pork, called “Sangenton”, which unlike Spanish jamón ibérico, is exclusively corn-fed instead of exclusively acron-fed.

I’m still thinking about the sandwich months later honestly.

Finally, for dessert with breakfast was a “Petit Dessert Tray”. Four tiny desserts, each of which had its own delicate flavor and texture.

At this point, it was, unfortunately, time to begin our descent into Los Angeles. The cabin was prepared for arrival with peak Japanese efficiency, but I was sad because the flight was coming to an end.

Upon arrival in Los Angeles, the magic of the flight (and the entire trip) unfortunately did come to an end, and I had to return to reality.  But I gained a day back because I arrived at 9 am on the same day despite it being an overnight flight. To get back to the bay, I ended up flying Delta on a short flight to San Jose and then got an Uber back to my apartment.

In summary, this flight was amazing and certainly one of the best flight experiences I’ve ever had.  The lounge in Tokyo was a bit disappointing, but I think that’s largely because I spent much longer in the lounge than I realistically needed to (4/5).  The seat on the plane was excellent, and the mattress pad made the bed amazing (5/5).  The service was top-notch, and I felt like my primary flight attendant really made an effort to understand my likes/dislikes and general flow.  The little airplane gift was also a wonderful touch (5/5).  The meal service on this flight was equally excellent and really felt like a true world-class dining experience (5/5).  The IFE on this flight was basically identical to what was offered on my previous flight, but it gets a slight downgrade to 4/5 because the selection felt much more limiting on a 9-hour flight compared to a 2-hour flight.  Overall, this flight earned a 23/25, and I can’t wait to fly it again, especially with their new A350 cabin coming soon.

I booked this flight using British Airways Avios at 355 days out.  It cost 103 000 Avios and about $400.  Though that’s a higher Avios amount than a lot of BA redemptions, at least the taxes and fees were more reasonable than First Class redemptions on BA (which can be more than $1 000 on flights from the US).  A lot of my Avios come from Amex Membership Rewards transfers, often with a 30-50% bonus, and so the number of points I actually had to earn was somewhat less.