IMR: Entries: 2001: August: 28 — Tuesday, August 28, 2001

Stopover Connecting at Narita is like a stopover at Damnation International Airport.   Northwest Flight 21 to Narita, now boarding. Narita's peoplemovers move people... nowhere fast. Even the internet/shower lounge looks like a jail. The kid's play room, where parents do much of the playing. Beer and coffee, in that order, at "You." You can only walk around this shop so many times. Front-row seats at the freshwater aquarium. The whipped world traveler and his favorite pillar. I don't care what William says, Narita does not evoke the joy of arriving in the Land of the Rising Sun. Not if you're among the thousands of "just passing through" passengers confined by its drab, narrow walls for five to eight hours at a time. Being here in "Satellite 4," where the drone of the omnipresent peoplemovers surrounds you so completely you feel like you're in a beehive, is as close to hell as I want to get in the industrialized world. My flight to Hong Kong has been delayed, and if I understood the harried guy on the public address system, Northwest is meanwhile trying to entice folks on my overbooked flight to give up their seats for cash and valuable prizes. I'm sitting at one of Narita's two — that's right, two — laptop stations: small, green plastic desks with garish fluorescent lights shoved against the wall beneath a billboard for Kent Super Lights (and apparently the Japanese have their own mandatory Surgeon General's warnings). Meanwhile, there's a bespectacled girl and her cap-wearing proto-thug brother wandering back and forth immediately behind me, trying to steal a glance at my screen, and I'm planning to growl at them soon. Ninety minutes to go, barring another delay. At least I'll get the laptop battery charged back up. The flight from Honolulu wasn't bad. Probably a B-minus. (Lookit me, grading commercial flights as if I'm already some hardened globetrotter.) I still hate flying, mind you, but the paralyzing fear isn't what it used to be. I daresay that while surprisingly realistic visualizations of air disasters still dance through my mind during takeoffs and landings, I'm otherwise getting used to it. Perhaps even getting somewhat good at it. I kept hydrated. I stretched and walk the cabin every hour or so. I brought work to do, "work" to do, an MP3 player (160 songs on one CD!), reading material, and a heap of snacks. I started with "The Genesis Code" by John Case, a paperback I bought (as is my new tradition) on a whim fifteen minutes before departure. I devoured its 467 pages in under three hours, which included a break for dinner. (Dinner was teriyaki chicken on rice. Plain, but when it comes to airplane food, I'm not neccessarily looking for "adventurous.") The fact that it was a good book, of course, helped a lot. "The Genesis Code" was written and set in 1997, so at first I was wondering what it was doing on the newstand shelf with all the latest titles from Nora Roberts and John Grisham. But I quickly figured out why it was there, and in fact, I suspect it's probably selling better now than it did new. It's a "biomedical thriller," and the plot centers around cloning — pre-differentiated cells, specifically, known today to nervous politicians everywhere as "stem cells." Fortunately, it wasn't a science book, it was a thriller-mystery, and delivered on that count. In fact, it's only when Case gets into the details — particularly those surrounding PGP and security, rather than medicine — that he seems off his pace. Although I figured out the "kicker of an ending" (sayeth the Associated Press) less than halfway in, it's because I'd already asked the big "What If?" it involved. A smart page-turner that doesn't let you shift into cruise control... definitely a book to recommend to friends. Okay. Book review over. So I could say I read another book. But there was still more than three hours to kill... and I was not about to watch "The Mexican." So instead I read my "PC Magazine" cover to cover, then the in-flight magazine — I now think I can identify most models of jetliners. Then I did some actual work. Then I started on, and ended up finishing, the jumble of tasks that come with the end of every Diarist Award round. My wrists and elbows aching (typing on a laptop in Coach Class ain't a picnic), I then put on some tunes and dozed a bit. I couldn't get too deep into dozing, Benadryl notwithstanding, because we had the definitive "evil small child" on our plane. (She's still in the airport, too, I can hear her.) One of those tots who shrieks for no reason, repeatedly. Re-pea-ted-ly. Imagine a recording of those lug-nut removers at an auto shop, looping over and over, and playing at double speed. If I did reach deep sleep, I'm sure I dreamed up some rather uncharitable "air rage" scenarios. I woke up for the cold noodles, and studied jetliner profiles again. As we were spun once, then twice, over Narita, I plugged into Northwest's own "radio stations," where I got to slip into a time machine to hear the Billboard Top 40 from six weeks ago. The flight had its share of turbulence. (At one point a flight attendant said, "Let's get this done, I don't want to be in the isle when things get crazy.") And the approach was also shaky and in heavy rain. But believe it or not, I think we had the softest touchdown I'd ever experienced. I wasn't even sure we were on the ground until I felt the front wheels make contact with the runway. We did the disembark-on-the-tarmac, take-a-bus-in thing, and soon enough, I was in Hell. Narita International Airport. I headed immediately for the "World Plaza," and plopped down by the same obscure concrete piller I sat against during a previous stopover. (This stopover, sadly, was too short to attempt another temple run.) It offered low traffic, and a power outlet, and not much else. I tinkered. I wandered through the "Audio Shop," happily appreciating all the everyday consumer technology that will soon surface in the U.S. as the latest and greatest. I tried to see if there was anything else to see. (There wasn't.) Eventually I treated myself to a surprisingly good Japanese dinner at "June," one of the little restaurants. Then I exchanged some money to buy another bottle of water. Then I walked a few miles to get here. Satellite 4. It's 6:40 p.m. local time, and my flight was supposed to have left by now. As it stands, I think we'll start boarding in half an hour. At least the nosy kids are gone. It's just me and the bikini-clad girl on the Kent poster.

Comments Yeah, them Japanese cig warnings are pretty mild. I've forgotten the specifics, but it does include "for the sake of your health, be sure not to smoke to much....please mind your smoking manners." Ahhhh... Nippon, the smoker's paradice (sic). Have a Malts for me while you're there next time, man. —dick (August 28, 2001 4:22 PM) E kala mai! Comments have been disabled due to overwhelming abuse by spammers. Please click through to any of the video hosting services linked above to leave a public response, or feel free to send an e-mail. Mahalo! < August 26 · August · August 29 > © 1997-2008 Ryan Kawailani Ozawa · E-Mail: imr@lightfantastic.org · Created: 13 November 1997 · Last Modified: 14 January 2008