Picture My World

I am live-blogging from a huge line at the Air Canada counter at Narita Airport. My flight home has been cancelled. I was as surprised as anyone, especially considering the Air Canada web site shows the flight departing on time.

I have no mobile phone anymore (my work phone doesn’t work in Japan) but my colleague in Israel is on the phone with the travel department trying to figure out what’s going on. I am instant messaging with him through the wonder that is the internet. This is the one bright point.

They just announced that the flight was cancelled “due to aircraft maintenance”. I’ve got news for you, Air Canada. You do “maintenance” to prevent this exact problem.

They are putting people on a Northwest flight to Seattle, but there are less than 30 seats left and there are more than 50 people in front of me.  Not good.
More later (if the line ever moves).

Arrived in Tokyo yesterday around 6:30 pm local time. I was exhausted and didn’t stay up much past 7:30 and then, of course, woke up at midnight. I haven’t been able to sleep very well after that and gave it up around 3 am.

I was expecting an utterly foreign land, much stranger than anywhere I’d been in Europe. So are, things are different but not what I expected. Maybe I feel this way because I already knew about the many-buttoned toilets? I suspect things will take on a more alien feel once I leave the confines of the hotel today.

I’m staying at the Tokyo Dome Hotel that shares its location with the Tokyo Dome stadium and a large amusement park (here’s a satellite view from Google). As I was ascending in the elevator, I saw someone descending across from me on one of those faux-parachute drop rides at about the same speed!

The airport (Narita) is about 60 km from Tokyo and I took a shuttle bus in. The surrounding area is quite industrial and, frankly, quite ugly. It didn’t get much better in Tokyo proper as we took an elevated roadway snaking through the dense city and every descent to street level (to get to other stops) led to a collection of dark and dingy viaducts. For some reason I was expecting everything to be shiny and new, but the architecture I’ve seen so far is clearly post-war and not so pleasing. Again, these are first impressions only.

Here’s a night shot from my window (I couldn’t kill the reflections):

The lit curve is one of the elevated roads. It seems every single building has red lights and they form the night horizon. Most of them slowly blink, giving the appearence of a red, roiling sea.