In transit

The flight almost seems ages away, but only a few hours ago. Some observations that are still with me, which i thought i would share. Once abroad the plane England had almost vanished, as 90% of the passengers were Japanese. Many of them began to don themselves in face masks. Was there something i should be aware of, swine flu on the plane? When the young man/boy put his on then i was very aware of my own air supply.
It was the quietest, calmest flight i have taken. No screaming children or drunk holiday makers. Infact it was so quiet i wondered if swine flu had been that fast and taken afew out!
My young seat companion was in his early twenties and very sweet, with the odd nod at times. Until seven hours had past and human need for contact emerged. He struck up a conversation and what transpired was he was a student with UAL at Wimbledon and lived in halls at Elephnat & Castle. So our conversations covered visa, foundation art, London, murder, racism and then back to a nod as tiredness took us over.
Another odd image was of an elderly Japanese man on the opposite aisle. Wearing his face mask,which he only pulled down to eat or drink at times. He had the interactive page on for 12 hours, watching every km covered and every time zone crossed. The interesting thing apart from that was his wrist. He wore two watches, one large and one smaller. I wondered which was Japanese time and the other Greenwich time?
Face masks, bento boxes for airline food, no noise, no drunken passengers, lots of films, ice creams at 3am made it a pleasant trip, that's if flying can ever be pleasant.