Sayonara, Tokyo

11:37.10 - Monday 13th October 2008   (Link to This Entry)

And we’re off. We caught the train to Ueno and thence to Narita and were here three hours before our flight time, like good little passengers. We had one last Japanese meal before we left – Chicken Teriyaki – and filtered onto the plane homeward.

Tokyo was, once again, a city of a thousand different sights, all of them welcoming. Just hopping onto the Yamanote line and alighting at a random station is enough to let you experience the different flavours that make up the metropolis. The city is clean, tidy and efficient and you will be welcome pretty much everywhere. Some of the highlights of this year’s trip:

• Riding the Bullet Train and visiting Hiroshima.
• Finally getting to try Octopus Balls.
• Being shooed from the steps of the Meiji Shrine (oops).
• Whale meat for two at Kujira-ya.
• Tokyo Game Show, both days.
• The hospitality and welcome everywhere we went.

Typing this on the plane, I still have a while to go before we land in Amsterdam ready for the 40-minute hop across the English channel to our local airport. I am stuck in a window seat on the South side of the aircraft with the blinds down, which means they’re radiating heat into one side of my face, and I can’t really put them up because people are trying to sleep.

In the seat in front of me is a fat Dutchman who can’t sit still for five minutes and is straining his seat almost to breaking point, encroaching into my leg space. To add to the fun, he’s intermittently dropping the most disgusting farts imaginable, which despite the carbon stuffing of his seat are finding their way into our part of the plain. I can only see the top of his head, which is grey, balding and greasy.

The plane is kitted out nicely, with an airphone and TV in each seat, and a range of games, movies and TV shows to keep every passenger occupied. Unfortunately, thanks to El Dutcho, my screen is tilted slightly downwards and so any vide I want to watch is half negative, since the vertical viewing angle on the screen is utter crap and it won’t tilt up enough to compensate for the seat it is on being tilted back.

And I have six more hours of this. Sigh…

Update:
Finally got in to find that the luggage had been delayed, so I nipped back to the airport (it's only 20 mins away) and picked it up later.