lost or what?

Japan Airlines domestic experience

Flying from Haneda airport to Okinawa on Japan Airlines

Getting to Okinawa was surprisingly challenging.

Before I set off, I did a long lap of the deserted areas of Akihabara and Ueno and took photos of streets with no people. As you can see Tokyo is very grey today, I am leaving at the right time.

Now I will start my journey. Its not that it took long, but there were a lot of frustrating annoyances along the way.

The train to Haneda airport was fine, plenty of room for my bags on the Yamanote line and then whatever the train line is that goes from Shinagawa to Haneda, which is not a monorail (there is a monorail that goes from somewhere else). Sure there are stairs but I dont care, I can carry my bag.

Now I must check into my JAL flight at Haneda. This took well over an hour.
Eveyone has stupid types of luggage to check in, lots of pets, lots of baby products, lots of gift bags with household goods in them that can surely be purchased in Naha. These were all Japanese people including a massive school group, more on them later.
It all took so long because JAL was double wrapping everything being checked in with bubble wrap. Getting a ticket and baggage tag required a computer first, right before the person you hand it to. Most of the employees at the check in counters stood staring blankly while the passengers could not work the computers.

The line got out of hand, so instead of opening more check in counters, people came out from behind them to push people closer together in the line. Japanese logic. Eventually me and a hundred other people got marched out of the line to another line waiting area, where you waited for the line to be shorter, then we got to rejoin the line. Excellent Japanese logic this one.

Once I got to the front of the main line, I handed my printouts from the computer, which they then typed into their own computer, and printed me out a copy of my print out, then made a copy for themselves, then stamped it then handed 2 out of 3 copies to me.

Next up we have security, No one in Japan has been on a plane before so they dont seem to understand security at the airport. The trains dont have security. The amount of concern people had for their carry on double wrapped in bubble wrap tins of spam was ridiculous, white glove people were giving them assurances the xray machine would not destroy the delicate spam texture.

The best was still to come. At the gate, the whole entire school group were being idiots, and laying around on the floor. When it came time to board, ANOTHER PRINT OUT for each passenger, which they then scanned, stamped, and manually typed into a computer, for each passenger! The school kids seemed to be deliberately pretending to be stupid to see who could delay the flight the longest. The worst was still to come.

Never before have I experienced such disgraceful behavior on a plane. These kids, equal numbers of boys and girls, were running up and down the aisle pretending to be planes, and occasionally, screaming at the top of their lungs in packs of 20 or more. Maybe mass groping was going on? I hear thats a thing in Japanese schools. This was alarming most people on board, everyone was turning around to check on the commotion. As the plane spooled up to maximum thrust they all screamed in unison, it was deafening! And then as we lifted off, screaming again, and about 10 boys stood on their chairs! During the actual take off! Arms spread out like they were pretending to be an aeroplane (airplane according to spell check). I really could not believe this.