Welcome to our Shinkansen

Thirty years ago today I landed at Narita, an hour north (wish) of Tokyo, no visa but an assignment for two years in Japan and England had just lost the Rugby World Cup to Australia. I'd wondered what I would think of myself as a young twenty-five year old if I turned down the opportunity and so here I was, lost. In those years I’ve seen a few changes, little kids don’t run up and touch me, running off laughing that they’d touched a foreigner anymore.

A kind gentleman with a complete absence of English guided me from Tokyo Tower to the Shiba Park Hotel and turned back with a wave. We have mobile phones now and it doesn’t cost $4 a minute to call England any more, if you need to contact someone, the fallback is to call, then it was a message on a cassette on an answer machine they wouldn’t receive until they got home. 

There was no social networking, you met people the old-fashioned way by saying hello, which gladly you can still do today. People were kind to me and that is still true as well. In 1993 I met and married the lady who still sits beside me today. Street signs are in English (!) as are Shinkansen announcements (and not just the recordings, though I did love the lady's voice back then, “welcome to our Shinkansen”). I could fly Virgin to London and be invited to sit in the cockpit for landing into Heathrow though those days are long gone now. 

I no longer have to sit, typing in code that had been faxed to me, to hook my computer up to the internet to watch Mozilla scroll up in front of me with a modem beeping away in the background (I wonder what happened to Global Village). We’ve had some significant earthquakes although I still find myself explaining the difference between the Japanese and international scales however, bar the once, I haven’t had to shovel mud from someone’s home again. 

I’ve lost many friends, some to distance and some to circumstance. There was a different pandemic back then, but we figured it out, hopefully we’ll do so again. I hadn’t even thought about my son but now I sit in awe listening to his guitar. It’s been a good thirty years. I’ve been lucky. And, just about now, the plane landed.

Oh no, it's The Time Warp Again

It has to be said that I am probably one of the world's worst time travelers (speaking in terms of the jet age rather than that of HG Wells and his eponymous Time Machine as it were). Those few hours of difference between Asia and Europe will leave me disoriented, degraded and at a complete loss to not just the time of day but the very day itself. Give me a week and I'll still be rubbish but eventually the rhymes and rhythms of this existence of mine will settle down and I'll begin to feel (ab)normal once again. But why does the journey have to be so painful in it's own right.

Heathrow (T2 from T5)

My return home started with a domestic flight in the UK (delayed two hours by the wrong type of rain) at Heathrow. Where, upon arrival, I had to wait forty five minutes for my luggage to be recovered from the bowels of the aircraft. A ten minute walk, five minute train ride and another fifteen minute walk and I arrive at the chaos of Terminal 2, where the self check-in system appears to be requiring more staff at that moment than the conventional counter and clerk. And then it's another fifteen minute walk to lounge (yes, I indulged myself a little I admit), at least that's what the signs said but as the first two "fifteen minute" signs were about five mins apart, I'm going for more like a twenty minute hike.

And twelve hours later we land on a proverbial different planet. Narita may be the wrong end of nowhere but a modest walk where a soft English voice gently reminds me "the end of the walk is ahead, please mind your steps", a sign welcomes me to Japan (though the Japanese version actually says "welcome home") and a dedicated queue for returning foreign residents has me to the luggage carousel faster than my wife can make it through the Japanese passport lane. Which, to be fair, does annoy her somewhat. And standing there you notice all the bags are emerging from the center of the earth before the passengers have even arrived; and they're neatly spaced with handles carefully turned towards their expectant owners. And, I have to say, it's the little things that make the difference. It's good to be home.

The Tunnels of Tokyo

TenguLife has been travelling for the last ten days and hence has been somewhat below the blog event horizon. It is hard to understand why, in the modern world of jet planes and fast cars it took a little over twenty four hours to travel from the east coast of America to the east coast of Japan. But that is what it is, and much as I admire Washington Dulles Airport for having no additional security checks (I took my shoes off once, do I really need to do it again?)  I would have enjoyed the 11.00AM Bloody Mary in the lounge. But it was not to be, ANA sharing with Lufthansa and apparently these Germans don't drink in the morning, though these must be the first in history; my old company actually included in the work rules that beer must be available at all times of day, and many enjoyed the pleasure.

But upon arrival, Japan has now built something quite remarkable. Narita is in the wrong place. Few would argue with that, including the small population of the town of Narita itself who were fairly solidly against the idea of an airport in the first place. Travelling into Tokyo though used to be a choice of over the Rainbow Bridge (or taking the slow) (or slower) train designed to match the speed of the bus routes. The tunnel under the bay was good for Yokohama but deposited the intrepid driver into the back streets of Oimachi if brave enough to try the route.

And then they built a second tunnel. Coming out from underground after crossing the water between downtown and the airport, there is now a new way to come into central Tokyo. And it is fast. C1 is the old circular roadway around the centre of the capital but now C2, the outer ring, is slowly opening in sections. And last night it brought me home. Depositing cars some 10k's from the entrance, we no longer need to travel through backstreets, roadworks and traffic lights. Circumnavigating Tokyo just got a little bit easier. Now if they could just move Narita some 60k's closer life would be perfect. Or use Haneda of course.

Surely you can't be serious - Jets roar in the skies of Tokyo

Japan has an interestingly integrated culture where millions would rather be inconvenience than cause distress to the few. It's not wrong, it's just the way it is. So, for example, although Japan has compulsory purchase laws, where individual's land can be bought against their wishes, people would rather not use them and act through consensus. Hence Narita International Airport having one and a half runways and a few strips of farm land in the middle.

And speaking of airports, Narita, it has to be said, is still rubbish, in that it is approximately 80km's from central Tokyo with limited connecting domestic flights and trains limited to bus speeds so as not to compete. To an extent, it is easier to take an international flight via Korea than to make a connection through Narita. But things are about to change. In time for the Olympics, Haneda, the alternative airport in downtown Tokyo, is about to see a major expansion in traffic with new flight routes to add multiple new landing slots. And at this point, let's ignore the fact that tourist traffic actually drops during an Olympics as people stay away to avoid the crush.

The upshot of the new flights into Haneda, starting in September, will be interesting. Tokyo is a rare global city that, to this point, is blessed with clear skies (except for the occasional News helicopter). Almost all flights landing at Haneda are routed around the outskirts of Tokyo bay and so the noise of jet engines are rarely heard in town. But this will change. With nine (yes nine) new runways planned in the Kanto region over the next decade or so, the skies are going to get busier. And Tokyo is going to get louder. As Leslie Nielsen famously replied in Airplane!, "Surely you can't be serious?", "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley".