Day 1 - I arrive in Japan

When we decided to go to Japan for Shun’s wedding, Akino left first and I stayed on in Sydney for a few more days. I had to finish up some work for the uni course I was doing and had the usual day to day stuff apart from that. The plan was that I would fly in to Tokyo, where Akino would meet me and we could get the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) to Hiroshima. This would entail getting myself from the plane to the N’EX (Narita Express) and onward to Tokyo station where the Shinkansen was due out at 7:50pm.

My flight was scheduled for landing at 5:10pm, the last N’EX I could catch and still make it on time left at 6:19pm. That would get me to Tokyo Station at 7:20pm, leaving half an hour to make the Shinkansen on time. I’m aware that there’s plenty of problems associated with this plan. I’ve left an hour for; leaving Australia late, arriving late, getting held up in customs, etc. On the other hand if I can get to the N’EX by 6:19pm, I know I’m safe. The N’EX is famous for being on schedule and Akino will meet me at Tokyo station and we can go straight to the Shinkansen.

As it turned out, the uni stuff finished up being a little more time consu

ming than I thought and by the time I left for Japan, I had been working until the wee hours of the morning for the previous week. I finished the assignments at about 3am on Monday night, printed them off on Tuesday, dropped them at the uni and went home.

Sure, I felt a little crook, but wouldn’t you after a pretty hectic week? Not much sleep? Brain working overtime trying to write a case study for a meditation resort in Bhutan? Yes, Bhutan. Don’t ask.

Anyway, Wednesday morning at 4:00am I’m up and ready to set off for Japan. Now I clearly have a cold. It’s a pretty good one too. Bugger.

Off to the airport. Check in. Offered an exit row (yay!) Board. Seated next to a journalist who’s covering the Grand Prix. All good.

The flight left on time and four (or maybe five?) Gin and Tonics put the cold in its place. An uneventful flight landed in Tokyo on schedule and here we strike a problem. Japan has become paranoid about gaijin (foreigners) in general and the swine flu in particular. Enormous signs are posted everywhere when I get off the plane proclaiming that you should present yourself to the “Health Authorities” if you have any of the following symptoms;

• Runny nose (check)
• Sore throat (check)
• Headache (check)
• Cough (check)

My journalist friend is walking next to me as I am politely handed a yellow slip telling me exactly the same thing that I see on all the posters. He tells me that the authorities are putting any gaijin with those symptoms into quarantine. It happened to one of his friends who was foolish enough to present themself to the “Health Authorities”.

I can say at this point that the speed of my recovery was truly remarkable. S

ymptoms that just moments earlier had rendered my a hopeless invalid had disappeared completely. Extraordinary stuff. More extraordinary was the size of the queue for immigration.

In Japan, all gaijin have to be fingerprinted and photographed before entering the country. It was 5:20pm. The queue seemed to stretch on forever and it wasn’t moving real quick either. A small, immaculately dressed young man was wandering up and down the queue asking people to ensure that their passport was ready and their immigration forms were complete. At least I’m guessing that’s what he said. His standard of English did not match his standard of dress.

By the time I got out of immigration and through customs, it was just after 6:00pm. A quick dash to the JR counter, a purchase of the ticket for the N’EX and only one wrong turn later I was on the platform with nearly 10 minutes to spare. Life is good.

After a quick call to Akino to confirm that all was in order, the train arrived and I boarded. There was maybe half a dozen people in the carriage and my cold had miraculously reappeared. It’s incredibly fortunate that my symptoms had disappeared for the half hour or so that I waited in immigration.

Now, at this point patient reader, I should point out that Japanese trains are famously efficient. In Australia, we are used to train timetables being approximate. A train that is scheduled to leave at 6:19pm will leave sometime between twenty past and half past. In Japan this is not the case. A train that is scheduled to leave at 6:19pm will be late, clearly late, if it leaves at 6:20pm. You will understand my unease then, when I tell you that we were pulled away at 6:25pm.

I commented on this to a traveling companion. A chap whose name, I later learned, was Lloyd. He agreed that it was odd, but assured me that nothing stops the N’EX from arriving exactly on time. The driver would simply step up the speed for a half hour and we would arrive at exactly 7:20pm as scheduled. Our unscheduled stop 10 minutes later shook his confidence considerably.

Lloyd and I passed the next hour or so drinking beer until they ran out. We then drank a wine or two and whiskey and water. The picture you see is Lloyd bemoaning the fact that we were drinking our last beer. Somewhere between the beer and the whiskey (actually there was a shotchu as well, wasn’t there?) Lloyd had lent me his mobile phone so Akino was aware that her husband was a: running late and b: dangerously drunk.

By the time I arrived at Tokyo, the last Shinkansen to Hiroshima had long gone. My 61 minute ride on the N’EX had become a two and a half hour train ride involving a fairly stupid amount of alcohol that had been consumed on top of the four (or maybe five?) Gin and tonics on the plane.

Akino was there to meet me and we made a last minute dash to get the train to Osaka, which was at least a little closer to Hiroshima. I had just enough time to fall madly in love with Japanese railway attendant uniforms on the way.

A few more phone calls from the Shinkansen secured us a hotel right next to the train station and at around about midnight local time, 19 hours after I had left home that morning, I crashed into the blissful sleep of the incredibly tired at the Shin-Osaka Hotel.