Flying Through Lemon Meringue Pie

The ground staff at Tokyo Haneda airport, tiny uniformed Lego people from the window of the 767, wave and bob and bow and salute excitedly at our Asahikawa-bound plane like they’re from the 1940’s when families still gathered to wave their handkerchiefs at departing airplanes.

We rise through so many layers of smog-yellow clouds that it feels as though we’re flying through lemon meringue pie, but when, an hour an a half later, we break through them again on the way down, I see a totally unfamiliar landscape. Someone has sliced the very top layer off of the Midwestern United States, big square plots and cows and crops at all, and set it down like a quilt over mostly rolling but occasionally jagged hills. But in the distance, flat-topped volcanoes rise through the misty clouds, and in the even farther distance, the sparkling curve of the ocean appears, a sweeping peninsula cutting into it. As we bank to make our landing, double-peaked Daisetsuzan suddenly rises close on the right, still slightly snowy in July.

The fact that American Airlines’ idea of a vegetarian meal had been white rice with boiled cauliflower on top, along with the fact that I had chosen to go to the Saryo Itoen at Haneda and eat matcha green tea ice cream with red beans and mochi instead of anything resembling an actual dinner, catches up with me in a big way as I ride the bus from Asahikawa airport to downtown. Briefly, I curse my luck arriving so late when there will almost certainly be no restaurants open to feed me, nor energy to sit down and have a meal even if any were, but when I alight I remember – duh – I’m in Japan, where the nearest 7-11 will give me delicious onigiri (rice balls) fit for a queen, and the nearest corner will overflow with drink vending machines.

So, at 9:00pm, munching on delicious cod roe and horseradish wrapped in rice and seaweed with one hand and drinking lemon-flavored coconut water with the other, I navigate the dark, deserted-but-for-the-occasional-businessman-on-a-bicycle streets to my hostel.

Japan Airlines sets the bar high

I'm squished into the butt-end of a 777, three seats from the far back lavatory.  In a bid for self-preservation, my feet are stretched out into the aisle.  An attendant approaches and I flinch, expecting a reprimand and a canned speech about keeping the aisles clear.  Instead, she presents me with a laminated sheet of paper.  On it are two pictures of airplane dinners.  I point at the Japanese-style picture and she nods.  "Thank you very much," she says.

This is perhaps the seventeenth time I have been thanked profusely: for having a boarding pass, for entering the plane, for entering the economy class cabin, for having my tray table up, for taking a customs form, for handing her back a used hot towel.

When she thanks me for taking the dinner platter she hands over a few minutes later, though, I want to jump up and out-thank her, bow deeper, turn the tables.

Because it's actually edible.  I'm on an 11 hour trip and for once I'll be able to eat something I'm fed.

Five bowls adorn the tray: a fruit cup, a Caesar salad, unagi (eel) slices over rice adorned with peas, a tangle of noodles tossed with egg, ginger, and clear sauce, and a pillowy fold of smoked salmon atop a bed of marinated beans and onions.

My uneasiness at eating close-to-raw fish on an airplane evaporates when I taste the lox.  With my eyes closed, my ears plugged, my sense of touch dulled, and my inner ear masked, I could easily be sitting in a frou-frou Scandinavian breakfast cafe.  The bean salad it sits on has a light vinaigrette; subtle, but not exactly mild.  The grapefruit in the fruit bowl bursts with juice.

As I start eating the the unagi bowl (sweet, but fresh, and better than half the donburi places in the states), my seatmate leans over to me.  "If there's one dish you have to try in Tokyo, it's this," he says.  "I know this sounds crazy, but you have to buy the eel rice bento at the bullet train station on your way to Osaka.  It's not just good for train food.  It's actually good.  You pull a lever and the food heats up like it's been freshly cooked - it's amazing."

"You're laughing now," he continues, noting my face, "but you're going to buy it and think, 'that random Asian kid on the plane was right!'"

Little does he know, I'm too cheap to take the bullet train.  We'll be taking the cut-rate highway bus.  But for now, the airplane eel more than gets the job done.