First off, as inconvenient as the situation was, I had to - and did - grin and bear it. Nothing I could have done about it anyway, so as I said I made the most of it. I think I handled it quite well considering there are folks (I know some!) who would have probably gone ballistic given the same circumstances.
My main beef with AA is that: 1) They changed my flight times significantly, and changed the overall dynamic of my entire trip significantly enough to where I should have had the option to cancel that ticket and get a refund. I had booked months in advance. They just changed everything without asking whether or not I would (or even could) agree to those changes. Poor business practice, bait & switch. I paid for one thing and got something significantly different.
And: 2) At no time - while enroute or even after I filed my complaint - did they offer me anything whatsoever in compensation. Day room, a pass to the Admiral Club (would have cost them squat!), not even a meal voucher until I pleaded with the girl at Narita, and got a lousy sandwich out of it. And after the fact they offered me no miles, no apology, no expression of regret.
I had done basically the same trip the previous year with Delta. At one point along the way one of my flights was delayed. I don't remember how long, but it was no more than an hour, and didn't even affect my final arrival time. When I got back home, I had an email waiting from Delta apologizing for the delay (which at that time I couldn't even remember) that offered me free miles for my "inconvenience".
And just to clarify, in my original post when I mentioned a monetary recompense, I did not expect a full refund or anything like that. I honestly expected that they would comp me some miles, or offer a future ticket discount or something like that, which they never offered.
The "two free drinks from AA staff" were simply acts of kindness from those two people (bless their hearts!), and not any form of compensation. And I will say again, all the AA folks I dealt with on the ground (and in the air of course) were friendly and helpful and a pleasure to deal with. it is at the company level where I think their customer service model lacks.
You can agree or not with my stance, I respect your opinion (and I do thank you for your reply!), but as a costumer that is how I feel. In the overall scheme of life, this was a mere minor disappointment. But based on this experience I will choose another airline to disappoint me on future trips.