IP: Trip Report Part 2 of 3 -- The Tokyo Diary

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Due to congestion on the Singapore to Tokyo route and a desire to see even
briefly my friends in Tokyo, I took the Singapore Air 2330 flight out of
Singapore for Tokyo. It arrived at 0700 in Tokyo and my connection to Hawaii
on United was at 2100 that night. 


I can not resist some observations comparing United and Singapore Air. I
flew Business Class on both. Both air crews were pleasant and friendly. BUT
while United had those seats with very tight room between the seat in front
and thus difficulties in getting in and out, Singapore Air had widely spaced
seats with much more comfortable seats. At the end of the flight they gave a
small but excellent key case as a gift to the passengers, United gave nothing.


On the Asia route those differences make the difference and United is
falling further behind the rest.


Anyway Hiromichi HASHIZUME met me at Narita and drove me into Tokyo. We met
a NACSIS visitor from Bonn and then went to Glocom for a meeting with the
Glocom staff and Director and some NTT and others from the networking world
-- like Matt Rosin. It was a good meeting and then off to a fine lunch in a
Chinese place on the Roppungi and then to the Akihababra for my required
look see. Items of interest was the small and nice Toshiba Libreto palm top.
TFT screen, 800 megs of hard disk, 16 of ram, 496 running WIN95. Nice. Price
~ 170000. Almost bought it but wanted to be sure re English WIN95
compatibility with that keyboard. Other nice item was the Sony NT2 micro
tape recorder player with digital handling of tape reversing (stores in ram
while it is switching). Tapes are the sub-matchbook units. price ~120000
(rather too pricey when compared to minidisks)


I was near exhaustion so they carried me to the Narita Express and off I
went to japans revenge on travelers -- Narita. Why oh why I ask knowing the
answer is JAL in the nice new terminal and United/Singapore Air and NW in
the old crummy place? Why has it taken years to even start to make it
liveable? Oh well, I checked into United and had to face two beginners
handling Business Class. It was frustrating as they informed me of false
facts re baggage etc. Finally when I demanded the station agent, an
experienced person came over and helped.


Went to Red Carpet club, tried to sleep on then got on the insane seats of
United and off to Hawaii,


Dave


ps ever wonder why frequent flyer programs, if it was not for that I would
fly Singapore Air!!!