After getting through the long line at ticketing (including the sixty-year-old man with the Hello Kitty backpack) and saying goodbye to Mom, I got on the plane next to a youngish Japanese couple. I didn't get an exit row seat, but I had an aisle seat, which is almost as good, and the plane was packed almost full. The safety instructions involved relatively poor computer graphics, but I pretty much ignored them, for the following reasons:
The first inflight meal gave us a choice between teriyaki chicken or "fish in Americaine sauce." I went for the Asian option, only to find that the chicken was not sliced (making it impossible for chopsticks), and was served with a side of mashed potatoes. Those Lufthansa Sky Chefs (I believe they run the food at Dulles; I think I saw their trucks on stilts loading most of the planes there) are almost as culture-insensitive as the cafeteria staff at William and Mary.
My beverage for this meal was a Kirin beer. I had forgotten that it tastes pretty much like a bitter Budweiser (although I think Kirin's alcohol content, at 5%, is slightly higher), but as a bonus I got my own 355ml can. For most other beverages, the flight attendant merely fills up the tiny glass on the meal tray. The beer was stunningly foamy, a property I could not tell was due to pressure or other factors.
The side dish to this meal were some cold noodles. I had to ask the man next to me what to do with them, as they come with several packets of things, and I was confused. Here's how to eat these noodles, to the best of my knowledge (paraphrased from Japanese):
Turbulence is always an interesting thing, as the plane jumps around in an amusing way, and I wonder semi-seriously what I would do if the wing came off. Usually, as there is really nothing I can do to alter my situation either way, I just enjoy the free bouncy ride, unless I have an open beverage or staining sauce on my tray table, in which case I do worry.
There are other worries, too; when I flew to Europe, I made the mistake of watching The Talented Mister Ripley on the plane, which caused me to vow that if I saw Matt Damon in Italy, I'd smack him with the nearest available piece of furniture before he could kill me and steal my identity. Fortunately, the movie that I paid any attention to on this plane was Chocolat, and Juliette Binoche is nowhere near that scary, so there are no expectations that I will walk Japan in fear of actors.
ANA is a particularly child-friendly plane; all the children on the plane got a pack of cards or a little inflatable jet. I wanted an inflatable jet, but they don't sell them in the duty-free catalog. Across from my seat and in front of the galley was a little drawer containing a metal-sided suitcase with an ANA sticker on the front. I was hoping that it contained some sort of weapon or similarly interesting device, but it contains baby bottles, so even small kids can get an in-flight meal.
The second inflight meal (not including the small pseudo-French sandwich "inflight snack") was a so-so attempt at curry rice. The salad had lettuce core in it and the rice was reheated too much. Such is airline food. After the food was taken up, the plane finally began its descent, which the pilot foolishly chose to put on the movie screens. This allowed all of us to second-guess him, and for me ruined my opinion of his skills:
"air brakes...air brakes...you're going too fast...we're wobbling -- we got all the way across the Pacific Ocean, and now he's going to [deleted] it up by rolling the plane over, ripping the fuel tanks open, and blowing everything to pieces."Fortunately, I did not die irritated, and we landed successfully. I managed to get through all the formalities of passport control and customs without doing anything silly like putting "spy" as my occupation or declaring that I was carrying "twenty Swedish assault diapers," despite being a little bit tired, so I was able to get some money from the machine and head towards the baggage delivery counter. The baggage people took my largest bag, and it was off to the train station. I still had a cart, which I assumed I would need an elevator for, but in fact they are designed to lock into the escalator steps as they descend, which was an experience. I spent the first couple seconds looking like a dogsled driver, hanging on to the cart as if it would fall. It won't.
Purchasing the train tickets wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. I've been to Japan before, so I assumed that I could just get back into the swing of things and figure out where I was going. That was not to be. I finally purchased a ticket from the machine (a mistake, as I would find out later) and followed some other guy who'd done the same down a hallway. This is where I finally ditched my cart, after asking a security guard where to do so. On the platform, a train marked "Narita Express" pulled up, and I, tired and impatient, jumped on.
What I did not realize, but figured out very quickly, is that this was an all reserved-seat train. Everyone else had credit card-sized blue tickets while I had a tiny little orange strip of magnetized paper. "Okay," I said to myself. "It's only an hour, I'll stand. Preferably here, in the air conditioning."
Then I see, in the next cabin, a man in a white uniform. First I wonder why Japanese admirals take public transportation, but then I realize that he is the conductor.
The conductor and I had a conversation, during which I apologized profusely for being a jet-lagged American, and he pretty much didn't care as long as I didn't take up a paying customer's seat. He was very nice about it, unlike the snack cart woman, who refused to speak to me in Japanese and gave me watery orange juice for 220 yen. With too much ice.
A side note: Narita really is in the middle of nowhere. I passed through what looked like Japan's entire rice country before getting to the outskirts of Tokyo. It was certainly green. Why we had to stop in the middle of it for a couple minutes still escapes me. Wasn't I on the Super Express?
After pulling through several subway stations very slowly, making us think that it might stop in each one but not doing so, and without the neat glowing ads that were in the tunnel out of Narita, the train stopped at Tokyo Station, and I got out and started wandering around the warren that is JR Tokyo Station (there are other warrens, but I was not to learn this until later). Unfortunately, Tokyo is very stupid-tourist friendly, so I was cheated out of having to read Japanese by English on every sign. My English reading comprehension is essentially at first-pass speed; by the time I realize it's English, I've already processed the meaning, so reading the Japanese doesn't teach me too much. To make up for this, I walked to the Tokyo Central Post Office (right across the street) and sent off all my mail. Then I picked up a cab for the Bickers' residence.
After being up about twenty hours, and "lightly warmed" by the twenty-eight degree weather (plus particulates and humidity) that blesses Tokyo this season, I was not completely "with it" when I got into the cab. Fortunately, the driver knew where to go, and left me to roll my head around in the air conditioning, trying to find where the fares are posted (I don't think they are, other than the 660 yen for the first two kilometers, and trust me it goes up exponentially after that) and what the little button between the two front seats did, other than cost the user 1500 yen. It made something happen quickly, but I don't know what. I put on my seatbelt after my driver made the second near-miss of a car, honking loudly. I don't know if it was him or the other Tokyo drivers, but it doesn't really matter if the car crashes. This didn't happen, my being very lucky when it comes to transportation sometimes, and I got to my lodgings all right. I spent the next four hours sitting on a couch and trying not to sleep so I could be acclimated to Japan time. More adventures in tomorrow's summary.
-Ben