TokyoTomo Travel Guide

This Valentine’s day, JAL will be receiving chocolates in a very special way and from none other than the award-winning master chocolatier himself – Mr. Jean-Paul Hévin. In an exclusive collaboration, Hévin has created original products for JAL to be served in First and Executive Class onboard international flights from February 14, 2012.

The Jean-Paul Hévin label (JPH label) of chocolates is a successful brand of gourmet chocolate with stylish stores in France, Japan and other parts of Asia. Reflecting his sentiments for Japan where he had spent a year and half leading a famous French pastry store in his early career and where he has opened successively eight shops such as in Shinjuku since 2002, Hévin aimed to encapsulate unique flavors in the new creations for JAL to bring across the elegance and sophistication he felt that were distinctive of the country and its people.

To create the best chocolates that can appeal to the delicate tastes of the Japanese people, the “Goldsmith of Chocolate” as he is often referred to, first sought the highest grades of cacao from Paris, to Venezuela. In the month-long process of formulating the right tastes with cacao from around the world, four JAL Original flavors were produced. Together with an assortment of existing flavors from the Jean-Paul Hévin label, it can be enjoyed onboard JAL’s First and Executive Class from next month.

After meal services in First Class, customers will be served individual pieces of Bonbon de Chocolat Arriba – a masterpiece chocolate of optimal blends of Grand Cru cacao beans, with a hint of vanilla. Customers can help themselves to boxes of Palets at the bar counter after the first meal on flights to North America and Europe routes, or Petit Palets on mid-distance, Asia routes. The Palets are an assortment of JAL Original chocolates and other existing chocolates from the JPH label made from Venezuela and African cacao beans.

Customers can enjoy these with JAL CAFÉ LINES coffee, whose producer and coffee-hunter Jose Yoshiaki Kawashima also cooperated in this tie-up to present the Jean-Paul Hévin JAL Original chocolates.

Japan Airlines has announced today that it will begin offering high-speed Internet connection onboard select international flights from the summer of 2012, utilizing the reliable and tested technologies of Panasonic Avionics Corporation. Panasonic’s broadband Ku connectivity solution eXConnect, will first be installed on JAL’s fleet of Boeing 777s and introduced on routes between Japan and its gateways in Europe as well as in North America. The airline plans to eventually equip its entire long-range fleet with this function, subsequently expanding this service to the rest of its international network.

There has been increasing demand for mobile Internet connectivity even in-flight as customers value the options to do work or stay in contact with family and friends while on the go and also to have alternative forms of in-flight entertainment especially for long hours onboard.

Customers with their own personal electronic devices such as laptops and other Wi-Fi enabled gadgets will soon be able to experience the same connectivity and convenience of ground-level broadband Internet access, thousands of feet up in the air whenever they fly with JAL. The new in-flight service will not only allow customers in every cabin class to check and send emails, stay abreast with updates on their social media network and browse the World Wide Web, but also allow fast transfers of large data files just as in a Wi-Fi environment on the ground. Charges will apply for the service and the cost for usage will be announced at a later date nearer the launch.

JAL seeks to meet the expectations of valuable customers by providing business and leisure travellers alike with even more convenience and quality service, with the support of Panasonic, during their flight.

Japanese foreign ministry has announced it will further ease tourist visa restrictions for individual Chinese travelers from September 1 onwards as well as extend the duration of stay permitted, from 15 days to a maximum of 30 days, in a bid to revive tourism. The government currently only issues visas to individual Chinese travelers after assessing their occupation and income levels. After the new policy is implemented, financial restrictions will be abolished.

A year after immigration control first introduced the individual tourist visa on July1, 2010, which previously Chinese travelers could only visit Japan by signing up a group tour with a government appointed travel agency, the number of Chinese travelers have been increasing rapidly. In year 2009 a total of 7688 visas were issued and in year 2010 the number increased many folds with more than 50,000 visas being issued.

It is hoping that these moves will help the country tap into the world’s fastest growing travel market and attract visitors to return after the Fukushima nuclear crisis, which was triggered by the earthquake and tsunami that hit the country in March this year, causing a slowdown in the economy.