I left from Los Angeles Airport for Japan on Tuesday, May 30. Once again, it was great to be flying business class and not have to wait on a long check-in line. Once I got to the check-in counter, I was processed efficiently, if abruptly. I suppose they have no time for niceties in L.A., compared with Indianapolis. There was no comment about my carrying only one carry-on bag and no checked bags for a trip to Tokyo. Maybe it's normal for L.A. or for a 5 day trip, or maybe they don't care to wonder.
By the escalator up to the gate, an elderly man holds a large (gallon?) can for donations to the homeless. The branch of the United terminal for gates 70 to 78 seem a bit odd. Maybe it was built with several extensions as afterthoughts. They seem to like to break up the walking pattern. You walk past two gates in the normal linear layout, then there's a duty free store right in the middle of the room that you have to walk around. There are two more gates and then the path splits again to enter a pod-like room with escalators down, then you go out into another pod with 4 gates. Between 2 of the gates is an opening to the last pod. The trouble with splitting the path around an obstacle in the middle is that it pushes you so close to gates that you have to walk through lines of people waiting to get onto a plane.
Another benefit of flying business class is being able to go to the Red Carpet club, where you can sit in a quiet place. They've added lots of features to these clubs for business travellers in the past few years. I made a few calls back to the office a work to find out the status of some things I would need to discuss in Japan. Other people were using the phones to tell their brokers to buy and sell stocks.
At 12 noon we board the 747-400. I got a seat in the upper deck at the suggestion of a co-worker, and it is indeed quieter there than in the main cabin. There is less engine noise. Take-off was around 1:15pm PDT.
We landed at 4:07pm Tokyo time, (12:07am PDT) Wednesday, May 31. As we were landing, we passed areas full of rice paddies, wooded areas, hills being torn up for development, and a golf course. This reminded me of "Heisei Tanuki Kassen PonPoko", the japanese animated movie that Scanner recently bought and showed us. It takes place in somewhere called "New Town". I think there may actually be a "New Town" near Narita.
I came out the gate, went around the perimeter of the terminal wing, went down an escalator and turned in the immigration form and showed my passport at a counter. I went for the first restroom I saw and was surprised to find only two stalls in it. They were western toilets. I went down another escalator to baggage claim, and then went to customs declaration. The customs person talked too softly. I had to lean toward him to hear what he said. Just past customs, maybe 10 feet away, were money exchange booths. $1=81.96 yen, which, of course, includes their profit.
We exited to the right into an area where people stand with name signs to meet passengers. I bought a airport limousine bus ticket to the Palace Hotel in Tokyo for 2,800 yen and headed outside to wait for the bus at bus stop #3. The buses leave punctually. Three busses left from the stop before mine arrived. There were enough signs in English for me to feel secure about where I was going. Outdoors, it was warm and somewhat humid.
The bus had seat belts, lights and vents, much like an airplane, and it also had window curtains. There is so much standing water in the rice patties, I wondered how the mosquito situation is. There appear to be "no smoking" signs along the road. I saw an Esso station off the road. We paused at a toll booth where the lowest toll listed was 750 Yen.
As we rode into downtown Tokyo at 6:20pm, our bus was on level with many office buildings. I could see lots of people still working in the open rooms. I guess they don't tint office windows much in Japan.
At the Palace Hotel, I had a single size room. I found the room small by western standards, but it was more than adequate. I think it was about the same size as my bedroom at home. They left a couple of drawers ajar so you can tell they contain certain things to peruse. In the room there was a flashlight, hot water dispenser. Right next to the Gideon Bible was "The Teaching of Buddha", both bilingual. On the bed there were two small "non-sugar" chocolates, a small sprig of dried flowers a sheet with the weather forcast for the next day and a night kimono in a bag.
I was amused and happy to find that the peephole in the door was below my eye level, and for once, I didn't have to tip-toe to see out. Actually, all the furniture including the mirrors seemed a bit lower than in the US. Just my size. The kimono fit also.
Hitomi met me for dinner at the Humming Cafe in the hotel. She gave me this "Hitachi communication tool TC-3000E", a translation device which lets you select situations and phrases in English for display in Japanese.
The next day, Thursday, I read the weather forcast. It said it was partly cloudy, Low 17C, 63F; High 25C, 77F. I went to the Humming Cafe for breakfast and ordered the Continental breakfast. It consisted of orange juice, tea, a croissant, a raisin bread toast and a roll for 1500 yen.
I met Rumi in the lobby and checked out of the hotel. We took a taxi to the Ueno train station. When we got into the train at 7:30 it was pretty empty, but it was full by the time the train left at 8:00am. Rumi and I talked while waiting, but once the train started to move, we tried to sleep. Rumi was used to getting up around 7:30am, but got up that day at 5:30 to meet me. Mito was the 4th stop for the train at around 9:20am.
We took a taxi to the Mito Plaza Hotel where I left my suitcase. Then the taxi took us to Tokai factory where my business meetings were. They had tiny guest badges for us, maybe 2 cm x 5 cm. The meetings took place in a conference room in the front of the factory. They had a bento lunch for us in another conference room across the hall. The contents of the bento didn't seem particularly Japanese. I did not get to see the inside of the factory, but I did see a promo tape for it in English. The tape showed more automation than I have seen in US factories. I think it has to do with the higher labor costs in Japan.
For dinner, they took me to a special facility in the company. It was a traditional style place with tatami mats, shoji over the windows, floor chairs and low tables. The meal was sukiyaki, crab, tempura, miso soup and melon. The sukiyaki was cooked on hot plates at the table. There was a karaoke set, but we didn't use it.
On the ride back to the hotel, one of the engineers was telling me how the young single engineers had been looking forward to seeing Hitomi, but were happy to see Rumi, as they were beautiful women. I thought it was strange for him to tell me this, but I thought maybe he was tring to find out if Rumi were unattached.
At the hotel, the check-in form asked for full name, age, address, phone number, occupation, nationality, passport number, gender of those staying in the room, (man, woman or child), date of departure and signature. Whew! My suitcase was already in my room. The room in the Mito hotel was smaller than at the Palace Hotel, with 13" TV, a 10" high, 7" diameter garbage can and 1 small table. The desk had 1 drawer and was attached to 2 clothes drawers with space on top just barely large enough to hold my carry-on suitcase on top. There was a shallow closet, maybe 8 inches deep with 2 hangers. From the 4" tiles in the bathroom, I gathered that it was 4'8" x 6' x 6'10" H.
There was no night table. Instead there was space on the headboard which also had a built in radio, alarm, and controls for A/C and lights on the side, and a built-in light on top. The phone was on the headboard next to a notepad and pen. There were no mints on the bed, but there was 1 pair of slippers in the closet and a packaged evening kimono with "Mito Plaza Hotel" printed among the flower blossom logo design on the cloth. It was curious that many of the information things in the hotel were only in Japanese, yet the notepad with the hotel name and address was only in English (romaji).
I called back to the office using USA Direct. I got a return phone call at 12:15am. Since the phone was on top of the headboard and the handset cord was not very long, the phone call kept on falling down as I was trying to take notes in my notebook on the bed. I'll know next time to pull down the phone on to the bed where there is no place for it to fall. It turns out the line cord was long enough for that. From the 12:15am call, I also learned to leave a light on very dim near the bed so when a phone call wakes me up in the middle of the night I won't be so disoriented. Unlike the Palace Hotel in Tokyo, I think the Mito hotel was a little smaller than convenient, and too small for a long stay.
Friday, I think I woke up around 4am, and the sun was on the horizon. Later I woke again and jumped out of bed because the sun was so high in the sky. I couldn't believe it was just 6am. I suppose it's because there is no daylight savings time in Japan and it was getting toward the longest day of the year.
In the hotel info booklet was a breakfast menu for the Restaurant Rose. The American and Japanese breakfasts were each 1400 yen. The translation of the Japanese breakfast amused me. "Appetiser, Stewed Something, Dried Seaweed, Roasted Something, Miso Soup, Rice, Pickles." I think the last would more appropriately have been "Pickled Something."
I took a taxi to Tokai (2220Y), using a slip of paper given to me the previous night with the directions for the taxi driver where to take me. On the taxi ride I tried to take a picture of the statue of Colonel Sanders at a KFC. We had just been talking about such statues in L.A. a couple of days previously. Unfortunately, the taxi went by too quickly. At lunch I asked Mr. Toyota Honda about his name. He showed me how his name was written in kanji and how the automobile companies names are written, and they were different. Mr. Honda pointed out that he did not own either a Toyota or Honda car.
I had been under the impression that I might have a meeting on Saturday. So I had not checked out of the hotel that morning. I found out in the afternoon that the Saturday meeting would be in Tokyo. So at 4:45pm I hurriedly checked out of the Mito hotel and had to pay a 1/2 late fee. We rushed to the train station to catch the 17:15 train. Yoshino-san had a ticket for the train and caught it to go to another meeting that evening in Tokyo. The 17:15 train was full, so Furuichi-san and I took the next train at 17:40. Surprisingly, the train was no where near full. For these inter-city (non-commuter) trains you buy a ticket and get an assigned seat, much like in an airplane. There were seat belts, reclining chairs, fold down tables and such too. I'm told we have that on Amtrak trains here, but I don't remember from my only ride on Amtrak some 10 years or so ago.
Back at Ueno station, Tokyo, I was planning to take a taxi by myself back to the Palace Hotel. I figured the hotel was a major hotel and the taxi driver should know where it is, but when the taxi driver started pulling out his map, I decided I wanted Furuichi-san to go with me. We went through Akihabara, past the store with the Bart Simpson image on it.
At the Palace Hotel, I got a double room with a double bed and things set out for 2 people. It was luxurious compared with the little room at the Mito hotel. I noticed that the room doors had little square cut outs in the wood, filled with plastic inserts. This lets people outside see if the light is on inside.
I ate supper at the Zuilin Chinese Restaurant downstairs in the hotel. I ordered noodle soup with shredded beef (black mushroom, bamboo shoot, snow peas) and tea (1500Y). The menu was in Chinese, Japanese and English. The restaurant staff all spoke to me in Japanese until I pointed to the English name of my selected dish before sliding my finger through the Japanese and Chinese names. When I did this, the waiter immediately started speaking to me in English.
I woke up at 5am the next day, Saturday, and tried calling United after 7am to reconfirm my return flight home, but they were not open until 8am, so I watched CNN in the meantime. The TV remote controls in the hotels have a bilingual button that switches the audio between Japanese and English. The CNN station in Tokyo and a movie station in Mito were bilingual. When I called after 8am to reconfirm my flight, the airline asked for the name of the hotel I was staying at, and the room number.
At 9:30am I headed down to the lobby to meet Yoshino-san. As he was delayed, I took the time to reserve a seat on the 12:20 Airport Limousine Bus for the next day. I put the 2,800Y charge on my hotel bill. When Yoshino-san showed up, we went to the Swan Restaurant in the hotel and talked over tea and apple danish.
Afterwards, I went back to the hotel room and tried to call Hitomi at home, but the people at the other end of the phone line didn't know English well enough, so I tried leaving a message for Hitomi at the front desk . At 11am, I called home, but got no answer. So I wrote some faxes and sent them via the hotel business office. There was some confusion as to the telephone exchange and the location I was sending the fax to. There does not seem to me to be a standard way of breaking apart a Japanese telephone number. I see the same number written different ways on different business cards.
The Daily Yomuri was delivered to the room each morning. Despite what the Los Angeles paper said the day before I flew to Japan, it appears that Aum Supreme Truth leader, Asahara must still be alive, since The Daily Yomuri said the police intend to question him further.
I found it curious that the day time high temperature seemed to vary less than 10F from the morning low in Tokyo. I also thought it odd that I had not seen any local telephone charges on my hotel bills. Perhaps they are included with the room. Yet when I called from a public phone downstairs in the hotel to USA Direct, it spat out my 100Y coin after I was done. Is there no charge?
Hitomi called saying that she would not arrive until 2pm. I called home again and got through. Scanner told me my computer hard drive was dead, and asked me to buy a Totoro doll for his co-worker's child.
Having a couple hours free time, I went walking in the Outer Imperial Gardens near the hotel. I did not find it impressive. One section was a city part with walking paths lined with wooden benches. There was flat ground with grass and trees, and brown spots under the trees where the grass doesn't get enough light. There were people lying on the grass.
On the other side of the road was a section of the park that was mostly gravel areas surrounding green areas with flat grass and trees and a low fence around the grass, and keep-off-the-grass signs here and there. It smelled of weed killer and fertilizer. There were no brown spots under these trees. I took pictures of the Tokyo Tower, Palace Hotel, moat, swans and crowds of school children in their uniforms.
When I got back to the hotel, I was not too surprised that they handed me back the message that I had left for Hitomi. When Hitomi arrived around 2:30, we went up to the Crown Lounge on the 10th floor, with its view of the Outer Imperial Gardens. The Crown Restaurant on the other side of the 10th floor would have had a better view, but they served dinner there, and we were only having sandwiches and soda.
Hitomi's "Mixed" sandwich had several meats in it and was the usual Japanese sandwich of white bread with the crust trimmed off. I had the "American Club" which had the crust still on, and was toasted. The Club didn't have as much stuff between the bread as one would get in the US.
Next to us was a table with a young couple who were being introduced by an older woman. I suppose if they were jewish she would be called a Yenta. According to Hitomi the older woman brings up a topic that she thinks the two young people can both talk about. After the conversation gets going, she leaves the two alone together. Hitomi says most women get a job right after they graduate from college and work for a few years before getting married and raising a family. But with poor economic conditions now, many do not find a job and decide to go straight for marriage. So arranged marriages are becoming more popular again.
Hitomi and I talked a little about work and Tokyo Tower and such things and then headed out to Akihabara by taxi (~2000Y). We went to a store labeled "Dynamic", or at least the Japanese characters that represent a similar sound. I explained about Japanese animation in the US (at least from my perspective,) to Hitomi, who seemed rather surprised. She didn't know about Totoro or other anime characters, but then she is not a child and has no children.
I could not find the anime that Scanner had asked me to get, so I called him at 4pm, even though it would be 3am in New Jersey. I was afraid that if I went back home and said I saw certain titles, but did not buy them, Scanner would be disappointed, so I figured it was better to call. So with the new list, I was able to find some Bounty Dog and Orguss 02 LDs for Scanner at a larger store nearby. I also saw Please Save My Earth and bought them, hoping that Scanner did not order them.
We went to the electronic stores and looked at cameras, phones, TV monitors, massage charis, security-door cameras and the Sharp Zaurus. I bought some t-shirts for souvenirs. I was curious about the bio-lights in the stores with the apples under them. What is that supposed to do?
It started to sprinkle and rain. Hitomi took me to a noodle shop in the old narrow unnamed streets. The cook sang out the orders when the food was ready for the waitresses to bring out to the customers. I gave Hitomi an american indian Dream Catcher as thanks for taking me sight seeing on a Saturday, which should have been her day off.
Next we went to a traditional Japanese dessert shop with sliding door and some tatami mat sections. We had red bean paste tempura. It was nice. We also had a dish of agar-agar cubes (flavorless) with 4 apricot preserves, some beans or peas and 2 pieces of sugar something. I couldn't finish it since I was full and tired.
We went back to the main street and hailed a cab which had a red light lit indicating that it was empty. In Japan the passenger doors open and close automatically. The driver must have a button for that. The trunk opens automatically too. I don't think the trunk closed automatically, but I didn't really notice. This driver knew where the hotel was and came in some back way that I didn't recognize.
Back in my room around 7pm, I closed the window curtains, turned on the TV and collapsed into bed. I woke up hourly until I could get up enough energy to turn off the TV and lights.
The next morning I woke up at 6am and again at 7am. I went to the Swan restaurant for breakfast. Sometimes you can see a swan in the moat outside the restaurant windows. (The Rose restaurant at Mito had rose patterns on the carpet and plates.) I ordered yogurt (400Y) and cinnamon roll (400Y). The yogurt seemed smaller and was more expensive than at the Humming cafe downstairs, but the view and decor at Swan was more pleasant, and the Swan had a higher level of service. With the 10% service tax and the 3% consumption tax, the meal came out to 904Y. It turns out the restaurant had run out of cinnamon rolls, so I asked for danish pastry instead. They came out with a basket of 3 danishes. When I took one of the danishes, they told me I could have them all.
I checked out of the hotel room at 11:20am and had my suitcase stowed so I could meet the noon check out time and still be able to go to the sushi restaurant (which opens at 11:30am) before catching the 12:20pm airport bus. I thought that being in Japan I would have to have sushi at least once to see what good sushi is supposed to be like. I was the only customer in the restaurant.
The 8 piece sushi meal I ordered was 4000Y. It had 2 pieces of tuna, 1 yellow tail, 1 shirmp, 1 mackerel, 1 roe, 1 tomago (egg), 1 eel sushi, 3 piece cucumber roll, pickled ginger, clam broth and green tea. The tuna was very smooth, but I did not find the taste special. The mackerel had bits of scallion and something else on it. The eel was not as sweet as in the US. The clam broth was not as fragrant as those I had in the US.
The case where the sushi was kept has a frosted refrigeration tube running across the top, rather than ice under the trays. Something in the fish did not agree with me and I had to hurry off to the rest room before retrieving my luggage.
The limo bus picked us up, drove around Tokyo station, picked up more passengers, stopped at the Tokyo City Air Terminal and picked up more luggage and passengers. The exit sign logos were neat, but I wondered why they were green while some entrance signs were red. As we left the terminal, the workers lined up and bowed, almost in unison, to our leaving bus.
Along the expressway, I noticed netting around construction sites and perhaps baseball fields. The buildings in Tokyo are not as tall as those in downtown and midtown Manhattan, or in Hong Kong.
At the entrance to the airport we stopped and the police boarded the bus and checked everyones passports and faces. After 2 stops at Terminal 2, I got out of the bus at the south end of Terminal 1 at 2:12pm. There were money exchange booths inside the terminal along the outside window/wall. To spend time, I bought an orange drink with pulp for 110Y from a vending machine, and wandered around the departure area looking at the signs, the tour ticket sales booths, coffee shops and souvenir shops.
Seki-san found me at a souvenir shop and handed me a PWB to take back to the US. I suspect he had to remember to bring a passport or something to get into the airport even though he was not flying.
It was 3:35pm and I now that I had the PWB, I could check my bags. I struggled my way past the winding Economy class line that had grown much longer in the past hour. When I finally got to the Connoisseur/Premiere class line, Seki-san found me again and handed me the invoice for the PWB. As I waited on line, my checked bag went through an x-ray machine. After I checked my bag, I looked at souvenirs some more.
Then I purchased the mandatory 2000Y "Passenger Service Facilities Charge" ticket from a vending machine and headed downstairs where I immediately turned in this ticket and showed my passport. They put a sticker saying "Blue Line 1 June-4 1995" on the back of my passport.
I got on the immigration line. At a table to the right there were some forms in Japanese and a sign saying its for Japanese only. Some American-sounding guy with a green passport in front of me asked if we needed to fill out those forms. I told him I thought not, since we filled one out coming into Japan and have a stub stapled to the passport. At the head of the line, they took this stub and looked at my ticket and passport.
I then wandered around the duty free shops looking at the small 7 inch folding umbrellas (3500Y) and Kitsune keychains. I bought a cotton kimono with cherry blossom and fan design (5800Y). It was impulse buying, but I figured that after buying souvenirs for other people, I should get one for myself.
When I got to the gate 38 it was very crowded. I got on the line for Flight 802 to Newark. A Chinese lady asked a man in front of me if he were on line. He said there was no line and then a couple seconds later, he turned and smiled at me. I was puzzled, but I looked ahead and saw that the people at the head of the line were just relaxing and not being processed. Yet the line moved and I moved with it. Finally I saw that Flight 803 to Beijing was the one that was boarding through the same gate.
The Flight 802 boarding light went on at 5pm and I found myself only 5 people from the head of the line. It is as well that I did not go to the passenger lounge to wait. The stairs up to the passenger lounge are to the right of gate 38. There was a red rope separating the Flight 802 line from the now empty Flight 803 line all the way down the stairs and along the gate corridor. We boarded orange on white Airport Limousine buses. It was raining, but with the bus under a shelter, we did not get wet. So many stairs.... I was glad not to be carrying my heavy suitcase anymore.
On the plane I noticed that there was more jet and cabin noise on the lower deck than there was in the upper deck, but there was also more leg room than on my flight to Japan. Although I had an aisle seat, when the person with the inside seat arrived, I did not have to stand up to let him sit down. I remembered later that Hitomi told me the seat arrangements were changed on the 747 flights between the East Coast and Japan, but not between California and Japan. This explains the extra leg room.
The new Pentium Laptop advertisement was out. I saw it on the screen but didn't have headphones on. Two slightly graying business men are next to each other on an airplane. One takes out a laptop. The other looks over and takes his out. They trade looks. They start various applications, trying to out do each other. The faces they make at each other become weirder and weirder scowls. Finally they seem to be playing a video game against each other, until a flight attendant tells them to quiet down. They close their laptops like guilty school boys.
The flight landed at 5:08pm EDT. With all the LD's I bought, I exceeded the $400 limit, and I expected to have to pay duty on the amount over $400, yet, the US customs agent just waved me through.
I must remember the next time I travel, to bring a separate wallet just for the foreign currency.