The flight over

Everything went well on the flight and I was fortunate to get a lot of sleep. We departed at 11:30 P.M. and soon after take-off, the crew started serving dinner, which was pasta with chicken. The food was pretty bad; I was surprised they served western food on an Asian airline (EVA). I think Chinese food holds up better to being served on an airline. Even the food in coach on Cathay Pacific was pretty good. The best coach meal I've ever had was on Swiss Air back in ~2000, it was fantastic.

Criticizing airline food is quite cliche so I'll at least say that the service of the staff was fantastic as they were literally running up and down the aisles with trays of drinks to keep everyone well hydrated. Perusing the in flight magazine (fourth best?), they described the rankings of the flight attendants. There is a chief-purser, purser, associate-purser and a peon staffer. They alert you how to identify them by the stripes on the cuff of their shirt sleeves. In the section of tchotchkes for sale, they had action figures of each ranking of flight attendant with a modeled portion of the plane, say, the galley. It gave a description of that FA and described attributes like how beautiful and well-spoken they were. There was definitely no equal opportunity employment involved here as they were all quite stunning and executed several wardrobe changes, no malfunctions, though. There were probably 30 FAs on board as there is a mid-flight crew change and not one was male. I'm not complaining...

I slept about 3/4 of the way to Anchorage where we landed for a refueling. They toss everyone off the plane, not sure why, but since I'm usually complaining about being stuck inside on the tarmac during delays, it's not fair to complain. The ANC terminal is a bit old and all of the signs are in English and Chinese. There was a display case highlighting the zoological impact of traditional Chinese medicine which leads to the hunting of bear and other endangered/protected species. I was surprised that the Chinese influence in ANC was so significant; it's obviously a common stop for flights to Asia. I was told that there is a stuffed polar bear in the airport that everyone gets their photo with but all I came across was a mountain goat. Maybe it's in another terminal. There was a self serve tea/coffee setup in the terminal for us and after about 45 min, we re boarded the plane and went back to our same seats.

After sleeping about halfway from ANC to Japan, I watched the movie Brothers with Natalie Portman, Toby McGuire and Jake Gyllenhal. It wasn't quite what I expected. It was a remake of a Danish movie and was very slow but had a really good ending. I love movies that are: climax -> roll credits. The only problem on this segment was we hit severe turbulence over most of Japan. I was somehow able to play Luxor on the AVOD system without barfing. As we were nearing Taiwan they offered us omelet or congee for breakfast. The congee was pretty good and came with a pouch of spiced shredded tuna. Shelf-stable meat is something I have a hard time getting my head around but it is quite common in Taiwan, and the congee was quite good. Upon landing I noticed Uni Air wasw parked next to us. A whole airline dedicated to sea urchin? What a country!