Worldwalker

Sunday

I get to the airport okay. Surprise: the business class seats are booked full. So what now? Oh, I get to travel First Class… well, allright. If they insist.

:-)

I head to the business lounge anyway, like I am beginning to get used to on these trips. It’s a business lounge shared by a number of carriers, and it looks just like the other ones. A large bunch of moderately comfy chairs with little tables, and a self-service bar with crackers, fruit, sweets, coffee and booze. There’s a bunch of people loafing around, some are reading the magazines (newspapers, mostly), others are busily boozing up. I treat myself to some cake and coffee when I realize that not only am I just the least bit curious what the “Sakura” lounge looks like which the attendant told me I was entitled to visit as a first class passenger, but my wife might be interested in what it’s like because of someone in one of her books travelling first class. So I head to the Sakura lounge. It’s smaller, and the furniture is more expensive. They have more attendants and fewer people, resulting in a much lower visitor/attendant ratio. It’s quiter, too. There’s even a sign which requests not to use cell phones, but of course some First Class passengers are way too important to be limited by such. Fewer newspapers, more high-gloss magazines concerning such weighty matters as golf or expensive watches. The bar is still self-service – I settle for a bowl of instant noodles, which I busily slurp away as I wait for the plane to start boarding.

After boarding, the seat I’m given is a huge contraption which looks like someone sliced a giant (shoulder-height) football in half and installed a reclining chair in it. There’s a Western and a Japanese dinner – I choose the latter, despite a polite inquiry whether I’m sure. It consists of a bowl of noodles (always good), some sashimi (raw fish, sliced) and sushi (raw fish, sliced, on cold rice). There’s some interesting vegetable salad which comes along with it, and it’s all beautifully arranged. A work of art, really (Kanseiki, I believe it’s called, at least in its full-fledged form one can supposedly enjoy in Japan – if one can afford to). Still, the unquestioning appeal this form of dinner has to so many people in the world continues to escape me.

They hand out Bose-brand noise cancelling headphones. While their effect is remarkable, and no less surprising for being expected, it also falls far short from cancelling the engine’s background noise entirely. Guess I won’t be an early adopter of that technology. I’m sure not even ten years from now they’ll be much better at half the price – if I’m still doing this kind of travel then (and if my income’s gone up a little, as well), I’ll get some then.

The seat folds entirely flat. The stewardess (who has the simultaneously endearing and annoying habit of kneeling every time she talks to me) offers to “make my bed” first, which consists of draping a kind of padded textile envelope over the chair-cum-bed. She also brings me a real, honest-to-god comforter instead of the more standard wool/polyester blend blanket (albeit somewhat thicker than the ones offered in coach). I actually sleep okay.

Breakfast offers the choice between Eastern and Western fare again. I am now resigned to the fact that I am much less adventurous in the mornings than I am later in the day, particularly as regards breakfast, so I opt for the standard fare – hoping that this won’t be understood as a negative comment on the perceived quality of the dinner I received. Which is weird, because I actually didn’t like the dinner much. So why do I not want the staff to infer this from my choice of breakfast? Probably because I feel that my failure to appreciate the dinner is a personal failure of myself, rather than a failing on behalf of the cuisine. And maybe I’m overanalyzing these things – the staff probably couldn’t care less. “The traveller’s shame is easily washed off” a supposedly Japanese saying states (according to the Lonely Planet Guide, which I consider knowledgeable on these things) – and with that comforting idea in the back of my head, I disembark … in Tokyo.

Tokyo. I’m really here. That’s New York, Tallinn, Tokyo – in the first quarter of this year. Last year was Damascus, the year before, Beijing. I seem to be getting around in the world a bit. Who would have thought this would come about working in banking supervision?

Tokyo – that is, Narita airport – is … less strange, less surreal than I expected. Sure, it’s full of Japanese people, and 90 % of the signs are in Kanji, Hiragana or Katakana. I can’t even tell the difference between the scripts, they’re all equally indecipherable to me. But it’s not in any way overwhelming, doesn’t feel as strange as arrival in Beijing airport did. I wonder for a moment what the difference is. Beijing airport was full of Chinese people, and a (slightly) different, but equally indecipherable, script. Maybe it’s because now that I’m more familiar with this sort of thing I can see beneath the superficial differences to recognize the fundamental similarities of large airports. I’m not sure whether this indicates gained experience, wisdom even, or just shows becoming jaded. I’m not even sure what the exact difference would be, only that I would prefer it to be the former. I guess I’m a snob.

Whatever, immigration is faster even than it was in the US, which is contrary to what I expected from the guidebook. Of course I seem to be lucky, there’s no one in line before me and a horde of people coming down the walkways behind me. Having First Class baggage offloaded first really does seem to make a difference…

I find a public restroom, an ATM (where I get 20,000 ¥), repack my bags (laptop into my backpack, office bag into my suitcase) and check my suitcase with the baggage delivery service, to be delivered to my hotel tomorrow. 2000 ¥ (13 €) not to have to lug my suitcase around all day and still have it at the hotel tomorrow sounds like a steal to me, seeing that I’m bent on finding a cheap place to stay for the first night – and find out all about the (in)famous Tokyo public transportation system that I can while I’m at it.

The Keisei train into town (1000 ¥) is what we’d call an “S-Bahn” in Germany – a tram, really, though an admittedly fast one. I stand for a while, until someone right next to me gets up at a station and I can sit down for the remainder of the one hour ride. The music my ipod chooses to play is surprisingly, though not unfittingly mellow (I realize later that it’s set to the playlist I made for the benefit of my wife). Tokyo looks like other big cities – only even bigger. There are two young Gaijin across from me, who obviously also just arrived by airplane, but seem to know their way around, make local calls by cell phone, etc. I feel strangely envious. I guess I always envy those who’ve travelled more intensely than I. Not that these people necessarily have, but they’ve certainly travelled more intensely around *here*. Oh well, they get off at Nippori (which is apparently the first stop which coincides with a subway station) along with most everyone else, while I stay on till the next and last stop, Ueno.

Leaving the Ueno station, I walk around a bit and try not to gawk too openly. It’s like other train stations in other big cities, again with the caveat of being full of Asian people and script which I can’t read. But every once in a while it hits me that I’m in Tokyo. Every time it does, I feel this face-splitting grin take hold of my face. Jaded or not, I still enjoy this. Not knowing yet where I’ll spend the night (it’s dark already, though I slept until a few hours ago – we landed at 3:30 in the afternoon) adds to my excitement. I have this irrational desire not to “just” do the usual business trip. I enjoy the challenge of finding some things for myself. Though, in all honesty, with a Lonely Planet Guide in my pocket, there’s not all that much left to do. It still scares me sometimes, too. But it’s not really a risk – I can just walk around all night and pull an all-nighter if I can’t find something else to do and should I find myself too beat to take it like a man and simply accept a bit of discomfort, I can always just throw money at the problem until it goes away. But part of the reason for doing this my way (the justification, really) is saving some money. The per diem granted by my employer didn’t cover my food expenses in Tallinn, it likely won’t come close here.

I see some members of Tokyo’s homeless population in the lakeside park near the Ueno station (and recall having read in the Guide that this is their unannounced headquarters). After walking around and gawking for a while, I take the subway to Roppongi. Supposedly the part of town to be in at night. Getting off near Roppongi crossing, I try to find the internet café the Guide insists is not too far from it. While looking for it, I find a quiet little graveyard tucked away not even a hundred meters from the garish neon lights, a 100 ¥-store in which I buy some trinkets (which may or may not become presents for my daughters) and a (local) fast food chain in which I eat a spicy hot dog. I buy some (rather good) OJ in a convenience store and, eventually, admit to myself that while I’ve found all the other spots the Guide says are close to the internet café (like the Gas Panic Bar – shudder), I’m not finding it. And I’ve been accosted by hustlers every 100 meters or so, invariably tallish – certainly for Asian standards, though they’re generally broader, not taller, than I am – black Americans who call me “my friend”. I realize that Roppongi is getting up my nose. It’s probably just the right place if you’re with a group of people out for a rowdy night, but being a single male foreigner not looking to get laid puts me in the wrong demographic here.

So I decide to head to Shibuya. I can do the subway thing again, or walk – though it seems like a good distance. But I’m not against walking (in fact, still hoping to get a hike in over the weekend) and still wish to see something of the city. And I never get enough movement on these business trips (countless hours spent sitting around faceless conference rooms – tiring, exhausting even, making me hungry, but preventing me from efficiently burning off any of the calories my system is used to taking up in a day). So walking it is. 

It takes a little less than an hour at a moderately brisk pace, during which the glitz factor of the environment slowly decreases to a darkish backstreet level, then picks up again as I approach Shibuya. Shibuya crossing is huge. There’s a huge department store, a main bus terminal (right on top of one of the major Tokyo subway hubs), itself topped by a four-way elevated pedestrian walkway which in some parts is again topped by one of the three levels of street around here. It’s big. Roppongi-Dori, which I followed from Roppongi to Shibuya, is in fact a double-deckered street, like many of the main thoroughfares in Tokyo. There are between four and six lanes at ground level, with another two to four on stilts right above. There's a third level on top sometimes at the off and on ramps. But it’s long past the evening rush hour, so for the moment it feels like seriously overblown infrastructure.

I find a “Wired Café” (that’s its name), which isn’t even in the Guide, and – after waiting for 20 minutes – get a seat and order some food (it’s around midnight local time now) and drag out the laptop. There’s WiFi access and I manage to chat (typing, the background noise forbids trying to skype out with the headset) with my wife. It’s early afternoon her time. After that (and a quick check of my business email), I head out again. I find (with the help of a local) the Gran Cybercafé from the Guide, and book 6 hours of access (in a little cubicle with a reclining seat). I just checked my email, so there seems little point in doing it again. It’s a little after one in the morning, though some of the (many) other cubicles are apparently occupied by people busily typing (or clicking) away. There’s a bunch of online RPGs available that I wouldn’t mind trying out, but double-clicking on any of the icons invariably brings up a screen with a lot of Japanese script, offering a choice or demanding an input or something…

The TV stations are more accessible, their content less so. There’s a surprising amount of porn easily accessible (and that content, at least, is easy to understand), but it’s oddly censored. Apparently pornography is outlawed as such, so the (rather massive) offers of effectively pornographic mangas and other magazines are censored around the letter (kanji?) of some law or other. I think having less pornography and allowing that to be the real thing would seem to be a more mature way of dealing with these things, but that’s neither here nor there. In short, I find nothing appealing in any way, shape or form on offer here and settle down for a nap in the reclining chair. A first class recliner it’s not, and I’ve slept well until early afternoon (the not-so-tired leg of jet lag), so I don’t really sleep. But it also doesn’t feel as though I’ve spent five hours wide awake when I get up, so I suppose I must have dozed off a little during that time.

There are showers on offer, and free drinks and snacks. I guess I could get even more value out of the 1200 ¥ (8 €) I paid for the night, but I consider it a steal as it is and am eager to get going. I’ve got today to see something of the city (and get to my hotel), and likely won’t be able to see all that much more of the city, should I actually manage to get out of it on the weekend. The second weekend, after all, will be spent in or near Osaka. So mooching a breakfast out of these people, to eat in a black-walled windowless room doesn’t appeal. I head out to the street again. 

I might have stayed a little longer – everything’s closed. Starbucks is about to open (it’s sixish), but I’m not going there. After walking around for a while, I buy some fruit salad, joghurt and sandwiches in a convenience store (and some more of that OJ), then find a café which just opened. I buy coffee downstairs, head upstairs with it and unpack my breakfast at a window seat. I look out at Shibuya slowly coming alive. There’s a bunch of girls out in their ubiquitous short-skirted school uniforms (so they really do walk around like that), apparently oblivious to the fact that the clouding of their breath would indicate to some people that it’s not the kind of weather for that type of outfit. It’s reminiscent of New York office women’s willingness (and apparent ability) to wear mini-skirts in winter – apparently large cities breed hard girls. I wonder – does this work for everyone or do I only get to see the ones that aren’t home with a bladder infection?

My wife said I should get myself a cool T-shirt from Tokyo, and Shibuya (and Harajuku, not too far away) are probably the places to do it. But the relevant shops open between 10 and 11, and there’s nothing to do here until then. So I pay a visit to the statue of the dog which patiently waited for its master here to come back from work every day, and continued to show up every day for another 11 years after the guy died in 1925. It’s sad, but it’s also right next to the entrance to the Shibuya metro station, where the access points to trains, metro and busses meet. And rush hour is coming on. Within 10 minutes, the amount of people walking past me doubles, then triples, then triples again. At eight, there’s a solid mass of people purposefully streaming through the corridors. It looks like one of those fast-forward scenes of subway stations you see in music videos etc., except that there’s no need speed up the film. I took a little movie of it on my digital camera, but the camera only captures what fits into its narrow focus, so I doubt it captures the overwhelming nature of the experience being immersed in this. I’ve decided at this point that I’m going to visit the Imperial Palace next – it’ll be open when I get there, and it’s one of the must-see sights here (picking up a T-shirt should be easier to fit in during the week than a visit there). I am hesitant to risk it during rush hour though, then scold me as stupid and jump right in. It’s really nothing to write home about. Yes, the subway car rolling to a stop has people pressed against the windows from the inside, but most of them get off here, and the masses of people inside are efficiently switched for the masses of people waiting there. It’s crowded, but I’ve been more crowded in really crowded trains in Germany. Heck, I fell asleep on my feet as a ten-year-old boy in a train in Italy, which was so packed that I literally could not fall down. I was passed overhead hand by hand when I managed to convey to people that I needed to go to the bathroom – this is tame by comparison. I even get a seat after a couple of stops and get to Tokyo station without incident. Tokyo rush hour: been there, done that.

The Imperial palace is great. I love the fortifications, though I wonder how they moved such big blocks of stone around. They must weigh tons, I think – then I find a sign which says that in the restoration of the walls, they used stones based on the ones they found (and a lot of the original ones), which weighed up to 35 tons. So how the hell did they move stones weighing 35 tons around in the 16^th century? Quite a feat of civil (in a manner of speaking) engineering.

The predominant part of the Imperial palace grounds is off limits, being after all the Imperial Palace. The emperor lives here. I here some screaming and clattering noises at one point coming from the area that’s off limits, which – after a weird moment of “déja entendu” – I identify as the sounds of an intense Kendo class in progress. And a map I find a little later shows that the royal Gymnasium was located right behind the building in front of which I was standing. Feeling like a connoisseur, I amble on. This fortress is a lot less vertical than Crac des Chevaliers, but formidable in its own right. I walk around, immersing myself in the fantasy of having it come alive around me as a medieval military fortress. After a few hours, I exit the Imperial grounds on the Northern side, and head through the park to the Nippon Budokan.

Unfortunately, there are preparations underway for some event or another at the Budokan, so I can’t even get close enough to look inside, much less witness a Martial Art class taking place. So I keep going. I’m hungry, and there are university stops only two subway stops away, with the “Sporting Goods quarter” and the “Bookstore quarter” nearby, so that’s where I head to find lunch. 

I find Casio watches on sale and buy one for 2000 ¥ (13 €). It looks good, I think, is slim and cheap and supposedly a quality product. It reminds me that I failed to send back the one I got from Globetrotter before leaving on this trip (so much stuff to do before such trips), but as it kept stopping I still have the standard warranty period to do so. I also find an outdoor shop. It’s so large that it encompasses the ground floors of several buildings, more than one floor in some. I try on a sleeping bag that I’ve recommended to someone for size, but don’t have time (or funds, really) to shop around, so go to find lunch. I find a little hole in the wall with three tables inside. The woman doesn’t understand a word I’m saying, but does understand what I want. The noodles are good, and cheap (500 ¥, just over 3 €). 

It’s early afternoon now, and I am quite tired. I’ve been more or less awake for the better part of 24 hours, and covered a lot of ground on my feet. The suitcase should have arrived at the hotel by now, so that’s where I head. Check-in takes a while. I am given a bunch of coffee vouchers, a discount of 20% on the breakfast buffet and free access to the internet and the fitness room as a “Government Guest”. And am being asked to wait for half an hour (until four) for my room to be readied. All right, then. So I sit down in the lobby and order a coffee with my first voucher. The bill which is provided (for my information, I guess, I’m not paying) indicates that a cup of coffee runs to 1000 ¥, plus 10 % service charge plus 5 % VAT. So it costs roughly what my first night’s (admittedly Spartan) accommodation cost (which came with free coffee! and snacks!). I have to say that the coffee isn’t bad, but it’s also nowhere near *that* good. The room’s nice – I’ve been in better (Beijing, Damascus) and worse (everywhere else, really). Internet access works (by cable, not WiFi – even Japan seems to be behind the technology curve when viewed from Estonia) and I manage to talk to my family via Skype. It’s nice to reconnect.

I put my stuff away and head out again, to avoid the temptation to lie down for a second (which would reinforce jet lag something fierce). I try to find a restaurant that was in the Guide, but fail to do so (my fault, it turns out later). I do find a hole in the wall which serves Ramen (noodles, again). It’s a bar quadrangle surrounding a tiny kitchen on three sides, with stools around it and the chef preparing the food in the middle. The food is good, though I completely misunderstand the purpose of the voucher dispensing machine in the corner. I pay with cash, the chef goes to the machine, buys a voucher and gives me my change. I learn later that the signs on the machine correspond to the dishes one can order, so I should have bought the correct voucher from the machine and hand it to the chef – which means he doesn’t have to deal with money. Not a bad system, really.

I sleep like a log. The next day I get a late, slow start (still feeling a bit weary in my bones) and head to the breakfast buffet. At 2500 ¥ (with the discount) (+10% service charge, +5% VAT), it nearly equals the amount of money I spent the previous day and night for food and accommodation. It also nearly equals my per diem rate. I spend much of the day poring over the paperwork I’ve brought (we start the on-site evaluation process tomorrow, and the first day looks a lot like the Legal Experts are up to bat all day). I get something to eat for lunch nearby (from the same Japanese fast food chain I’ve visited twice before already) and then get back to the hotel, call my family who is just getting ready to leave for school and day care in the morning. I then meet the team. We introduce ourselves, discuss where we come from and what our preliminary take on the received materials is, then go out for dinner. The dinner is really nice, but expensive (over 4000 ¥). This puts a large dent in my “felt” allowance for the time here. I try to subsist on my per diem on these trips – that makes possible gifts or memory pieces bought eat less into my checking account (I mentally offset their cost against the living expenses I’d have to pay for from my salary if I was at home).

The next day is work, work, work. As expected. Dan and I are in the line of fire all day, with me in the lead. I get a few compliments from my colleagues, for which I am genuinely happy. For most of the day, we’ve had four Japanese gentlemen and a woman sit across from the nine of us (2 experts each for Legal, Law Enforcement and Financial Matters, plus two from the FATF secretariat and one from the APG secretariat – it’s a joint FATF/APG evaluation). For the last one-and-a-half-hour meeting of the day, 22 (!) people come in, each seemingly carrying their body weight in paper. It’s one of those moments when the fact strikes me that I’m far away from my usual haunts.

Three of us have dinner in the hole in the wall one over from the one I was in two days before. The Udon noodles are even better than the ones I had next door, and cheaper. 500 ¥ and I’m full afterwards. Not Tomorbat (Law Enforcement Expert from Mongolia), who’s huge and seemingly inhaled the soup while I was still trying to break my disposable wooden chopsticks apart. No point in trying to compete with this man on recognition for eating a lot. Plus, I am now certain that I’ve detected just a hint of a paunch padding up my six-pack. I first had this suspicion in Tallinn – it must be because the hotel bathroom mirrors are so large, I don’t get to see myself that way when at home. I even decide to hit the gym (just before midnight) – I take it easy, not wanting to invite sore muscles before hiking on the weekend (it seems as though the hike will be possible), but also wanting to burn off some calories. It’s either that or eat less, I guess – and I prefer eating and moving to starved inaction any day. Oh, and I picked up some high-calory instant meals in the convenience stores next door to carry on my hike. I am now set on the Tanzawa traverse – it’s described as a medium difficulty hike, which doesn’t take too long (particularly on the first day). This is good – not only do I have to get to the trailhead, I’ll likely have to buy the map on Saturday morning as well. It’s supposed to have a number of options to cut it short, and a hut to spend the night in if sleeping outside seems like a bad idea. Of course, I have a sleeping bag to test in below-freezing conditions, so I hope to sleep outside (and hope that at 1500 meters and more of altitude, it’ll be well below freezing at night).

The weekend thereafter we’ll head to Osaka on Saturday. Kyoto is doable from Osaka (but will definitely need all of a day), Himeji-jō is also possible as a day trip from there (and the Guide offers nothing in Osaka itself that I really want to see). But the train ride to Osaka is supposed to start at noon, so we get there in the afternoon. I guess the Japanese authorities didn’t want to rush anyone – it would be a slow, easy weekend morning, getting stuff together without a rush, etc. I’m sure it has some appeal to some, but to burn a full day in Japan doing nothing? It looks as though I’ll have to choose between Kyoto and Himeji-jō. Every book and every person says that if there is one place you can go to in Japan, it should be Kyoto. On the other hand, I travelled and hiked in Northern Syria to see Crac des Chevaliers – can I be here and not do the same for the pre-eminent Samurai fortress? I’ll see if there’s some way to travel earlier without causing trouble for the local authorities or making the team look bad. But I so want to have my cake and eat it, too.

(The work we do is confidential, though the finished report will eventually be published on the internet - www.fatf-gafi.org -  once it’s been approved by the plenary. As everything else we’ve been doing is work, I have nothing to say about it.)

2. Some Idle and Unrelated Observations on What’s Odd and What’s Not.

2.1 There’s another day at work. It’s not far from the hotel, one subway stop, but we take the subway every morning anyway. One of the arguments I advanced towards our travel unit in justifying the stay in the same hotel as everybody else was that otherwise I’d have to use the subway every day during rush hour … I’d so much prefer to walk this stretch on foot. Yes, we’re carrying a lot of paper and laptops etc., but if I don’t get to walk to and from work, I do nothing but sit around all day. I’m not the only one in the group who feels that way, but Tomonori-san shows up faithfully every morning to pick us up and make sure we all get to the right place on time, who says that it’s too far to walk. Nobody has the heart to put his or her foot down and tell him no.

2.2 When walking toward someone in the subway or elsewhere, I sidestep in the wrong direction. I realize they drive on the left here, and stipulate that this seems to extend to subconscious behaviour. I later realize that it’s conscious behaviour as well (they have signs in all narrow passageways of the subway that say “please keep to the left here”, in order to facilitate the rapid distribution of massive amounts of people via public transportation), and that obviously my background of driving on the right also extends to unconscious behaviour, or I should – statistically – be dodging in the correct direction roughly half the time.

2.3 The content of the work is confidential, of course, but the process should be familiar to some. We’ve got “simultaneous translation”, which is still on a 30 second delay (a “felt” average). It’s okay as long as the person who’s answering is on the ball, in which case the delay is limited. However it exacerbates the frustration I feel when trying to get a useful answer from a particularly difficult counterpart (the difference between obstinate, dense, ignorant or confused often being Lost in Translation).

2.4 Their hand dryers (in all kinds of rest rooms) are like supercharged versions of the lame fans we sometimes see in Germany. They generate a veritable tornado, focussed through a narrow slit so as to physically blow the moisture off the hands. It’s scary at first.

2.5 We’ve covered in English class that the nod of an active listener may indicate only understanding of one’s statement, rather than agreement. But it’s never been driven home as it is here. Many of our counterparts understand some English. It happens almost every day that during a long translation you I see a counterpart nodding emphatically along with everything’s been said in order to then lean forward and vent a burst of syllables which are translated as a succinct “No”.