2008.03.14
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There is never a time in the future in which we will work out out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
I thought it was interesting to compare that to Henry Miller'sThere are no 'facts'-- there is only *the fact* that man, every man everywhere in the world, is on his way to ordination. Some men take the long route and some take the short route. Every man is working out his own way and nobody can be of help except by being kind, generous, and patient.
- The 60 Second Novelist
- On "Allison"
Travelog of the Moment
In theory my jetlag "isn't so bad", but then again I'm writing this at 4AM (3PM Boston time.)
I now have the technology and 'net access to try travelloging in real time. This likely means my observations will be extra facile and I'll be less likely to know if they represent just what I see, or Japan as a whole. And so it's going to be more raw and mundane than if I were pulling it together after. So, those disclaimers out of the way:
Open Photo Gallery
My connection flight to Chicago got changed to a sidetrip to Washington Dulles. I got to stop at a mini-Fuddrucker I remembered from business trips, and my final arrival in Japan was only 2 hours later than first scheduled. Plus I got to see this ATM:
I'm sure they get these jokes all the times, but man! Who let him have a bank? (But then later when I saw the current Yen/Dollar exchange rate, below 100 for the first time in a long while, I myself felt ready to sing Moon River...ZING!)
The flight on ANA (All Nippon Airways) was fine. Inseat video technology has improved since my last international flight, or Japan does it better. Jet Blue had DirecTV, but on this flight every chair had its own video library, so you could pick from about 20-odd films, pause, rewind, etc. There were also some basic time killing video games and the old standby channels of music etc.
My last minute seat change had put me in the "families with kids" section, but I admired the little bassinet things the attendants could fasten to the wall in front of the seats:
My friend Josh met me at the airport. He's lived a total of 9 years in Japan, and lives just outside of Tokyo with his wife Tomomi and their young daughter Erin. We took a few trains from Narita (an airport built kind of against the will of the rice farmers who were living there, but certain concessions were made) to his place in Chiba. The train seating was "subway" style, but often the seats were nicely padded and cushy:
Same car a bit later, giving more of a feel of it:
Josh describes the vibe of Chiba as being roughly "Coolidge Corner"-ish. I could see that, with the caveat that stores and buildings tend to be brighter and more garish than their American counterparts. Here's Chiba on a rainy Friday night:
A few other notes:
- I noticed more people who seemed to have more mundane tasks than in the USA: an airport employee at the luggage carousel, wrangling bags coming out of the chute to make sure they didn't get stuck, a man making a pass through the train with a mop (it being a rainy day), and then at the rail station, a man with a construction uniform and a megaphone warning people getting off the train to be careful about the construction going on. Josh talked to me about the pride and work ethic entailed even at these "low level" jobs, but more striking to me was the-- attention to detail, I guess I'd say, that it was worth having someone responsible for these particular things.
- I'll probably get some photos of this later, but the department store we ducked through is interesting, because it wasn't really a department store... it rather looked like one, but each section was a separate vendor with its own cashier. So while there are other "proper" department stores around, there's also this "evolution of the bazaar" in effect.
- Josh and Tomomi live four or five stories up, and the stairs to their building are exposed to the outside... Josh says this is extremely common in Japan.