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The first international flight I had ever taken was from Tokyo to London. It was a long time ago enough that coincidentally, the day was when the United Airlines’ first flight to Japan arrived. It was the time when smoking was broadly allowed in the cabin, and I had to fight off constant cigarette smoke from the seats in front of me through the long flight. An overseas travel wasn’t so common then as it is today in Japan and the Japanese carrier served gorgeous in-flight meals for coach passengers. I had never had such delicious meals before. It was also the time when planes can’t fly above Moscow and so we needed to get off the plane at Anchorage for refueling during the 16-hour flight in total. I had wanted to go to America for a long time. When my father first talked about a plan of our trip, I strongly insisted the destination should be America. But a travel agent pressed a tour to Europe that was more expensive, and my father was easily pushed for it. Therefore, the place I had looked forward to most in this tour was Anchorage, which was the only chance to visit America in our trip. I was excited to land in America finally after many years of dreaming. We waited for refueling at a restricted area in the airport for two hours and weren’t allowed to go outside that small area because our destination was London. The area was dark with few somber souvenir stands and a bleak barren sight under the leaden skies spread in the window. Contrary to my expectations, my first America was small and gray. I bought a postcard on which ‘Alaska, USA’ was printed and got back on the plane. As a beginner of a long flight, I hadn’t realized how important sleeping during the flight was yet. I didn’t sleep a wink throughout both flights and arrived in London early in the morning. I noticed my first mistake there. It was much colder in London than in Japan and locals were in coats. I had thought it had the same climate as Japan and was wearing a sweatshirt and a mini skirt. But at that point, I hadn’t known that my sleepless flight would lead to a bigger mistake just yet…
