13 Hours is a Very Long Flight

...but at least I met Steph, my new bff from Singapore and seatmate for the ORD-NRT leg of this trip! Normally, I don't make too strenuous an effort to talk to people on planes, but this time, after the round of courtesy pleasantries (are you coming or leaving/traveling for business or pleasure?), we kept the chatter going. She had just spent a week visiting Chicago and was now on her way home to Singapore. "So, what did you think?" I asked. "Ehh..." was the reply. Unfortunately, she had a pretty lousy week in the Windy City, since she was a) sick and b) staying in the 'burbs. "My friend had this bright idea to stay out in the suburbs, which meant it took an hour to get into the city every time, and cost about $15. Next time, I'm definitely staying in the city I'm visiting." Apparently, she'd visited mostly to experience Halloween, but they missed the train into and on weekends, Metra tends to run every 2 hours so...

"Ok, what did you like about chicago?" I asked. "THE POPCORN! I have TWO jumbo bags of the Garrett's cheese and caramel mix in my luggage. I was going to give one to friends but now I'm rethinking." I started chuckling. "Also, Denny's!" she continued. "And Taco Bell, it's so good!" We got into a discussion of Chicago's food highlights (you knew it was going there) and she did at least cover the basics (hot dogs and deep dish pizza) though she wasn't particularly impressed. "You know," I commented, "those are both well-known features of Chicago cuisine, but we actually have really great Mexican in this town too." I began raving about tamales and carnitas by the pound in Pilsen, freshly fried churros at Maxwell Street and Rick Bayless' haute Mexican. "Drat, I wish I had met you on the way here, rather than on the way back." Steph said sadly. The discussion then meandered onto durian ("ice cream is the best introduction"), what it's like to work in public relations ("sounds glamorous but in actuality a lot of sucking up"), and things that are illegal in Singapore (jaywalking, selling chewing gum though actually chewing it is not).

At this point, the flight attendants thought we were traveling together, and were giving us one menu to share and the same sets of customs cards. ("Wait, I'm not staying in Tokyo!")

A few potentially enlightening gleanings:

I'd never before thought of American fast food as a tourist draw, but in retrospect, it does deserve recognition for being widely accessible, consistent, cheap and most importantly, tasting good. Food snob though I may be, if it were no longer available, I would be clamoring for an Arby's roast beef and McDonald's fries like a kid at fat camp.

Though we may be typified abroad by the McDonald's arches, American cities are actually quite cosmopolitan. In Chicago, you can easily get excellent examples of French, Vietnamese, Ethiopian, Cajun, Polish, etc. In contrast, Tokyo, with its population of 28 million, has woefully nonexistent Mexican food. This country is truly a melting pot and it's something to be proud of.

Steph's English was almost indistinguishable from the average American, save for a few Britishisms like "tea time" and "queue." Apparently, her parents raised her speaking English, and though Mandarin is compulsory in schools, she never learned it well and has forgotten the bulk of it. That surprised me, as it was the first country I'd heard of where the language of the colonizers has supplanted that of the natives.