Update from Japan
Sep. 12th, 2004 03:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaBlogging from the free net cafe in Narita Airport Terminal 2 (THX YHOO!). Kudos to you if you can read this, I suspect - I did something to the arcane keyboard of this Japanese Thinkpad, and saints only know what encoding this is in now. But at least it's not trying to be hiragana.
Boarding flight at 18:35 local time, that is to say in another three hours. I've taken refuge here not because I'm as lj-addicted as all that ahaha, but because the only other thing to do is shop, which is dangerous because the duty-free shops are filled with varieties of booze and perfume I've never seen, and that I don't think they sell in Montreal. If you know me, you know I have no psychic defenses against the lure of novelty. It's one of the reasons the Japanese snack food industry holds me in such thrall. Speaking of which, the "berry"-flavoured Pocky is kinda eh. I don't like how milky it tastes.
Aside from which, purchased a milk soda and a copy of Weekly Jump. For my next trick I'll read this week's chapter of Death Note and have no idea what's happening, as out of respect for my blood pressure I gave up on the serialisation somewhere along the lines of Page 30... yup, don't understand a thing! Except for the fact that this series is on the schweet crack as always.
And Tenipuri 238 after all. o_O My wub for TeniPuri is back, what with the end of the Match of Doom and a return to what the series really does best, namely the perversion of other innocent bystanding sports.I still say Konomi should do figure skating
Suntory whisky? Sake? Talk to me, p30ns!
***
08:25 EST: Taxing down runway now. Wish they let me listen to my Japanese trance music during take-off, but electronics interfere with the navigation system... Have strong Canuck gum to chew. Am also v. sleepy from staying up all night burning CDs.
11:03 EST (10:03 Chicago): Dorval-O'Hare was a blur. Closed my eyes and could hardly pry them open again; didn't even feel the take-off. Glimpses of the Quebec countryside melded into white cloud melded into the Great Lakes, and what I have to assume is Chicago. It's hard to tell - I could've been fooled. Airports are terribly generic.
13:41 EST: Over the Midwest. The guy in the next seat is watching the Olsen Twins on his mini seat-back screen (they didn't have these the last time I flew overseas. They offer a choice of movies, music playlists, and the location/altitude/speed of the airplane in real time. The future is upon us now), with subtitles on. Thanks to Mary-Kate and Ashley I now know how to say "your fly's open" in Japanese. Language acquisition is an ongoing process!
06:00 Tokyo Time (something like 7PM EST): Watching Prisoner of Azkaban, finally - in Japanese dub. Ahaha. Not bad at all, though Snape is a trifle too deep and muffled IMO.
07:05 Tokyo Time: Over Alaska now. Names that were but names: Juneau, Anchorage, Mt.McKinley, Gulf of Alaska, Cook Inlet, Kodiak Island, Bering Sea... hunting the sun and the International Date Line. I spend my time sipping Coca-Cola on ice, listening to chillout/trance/hindi-pop and craning my neck to stare out the viewport window. This is what I like most about flying, and I like flying very much. Strange formations of cloud, rippling seas of translucent white, floating islands, wisps of mist. The Alaskan Range is impressive, albeit brown and bare. Snaking silver riverbeds that may or may not be dry terminate in vast frozen lakes. Distance is hard to judge after one's been staring for a while. If not for the clouds one may as well be looking at frozen puddles and mounds of sand in a construction site - the physical patterns are the same, large mirroring small.
The mini-screen tells me it's -55C out at 10900m or some such, but the sun is ferociously hot when one leans one's face against the glass. Not much air or dust between one and all those UV rays.
12:45 Tokyo Time: 150km to Tokyo, or a quarter of an hour. I can feel my ears pop as we descend. To reach Narita we fly inland and bank around, so one sees a landscape of industry and golf courses and neat rectangular fields. As flat as the Midwest, but with more managed waterways. The fields are mostly brown, not green, like the harvest's been and gone.
Boarding flight at 18:35 local time, that is to say in another three hours. I've taken refuge here not because I'm as lj-addicted as all that ahaha, but because the only other thing to do is shop, which is dangerous because the duty-free shops are filled with varieties of booze and perfume I've never seen, and that I don't think they sell in Montreal. If you know me, you know I have no psychic defenses against the lure of novelty. It's one of the reasons the Japanese snack food industry holds me in such thrall. Speaking of which, the "berry"-flavoured Pocky is kinda eh. I don't like how milky it tastes.
Aside from which, purchased a milk soda and a copy of Weekly Jump. For my next trick I'll read this week's chapter of Death Note and have no idea what's happening, as out of respect for my blood pressure I gave up on the serialisation somewhere along the lines of Page 30... yup, don't understand a thing! Except for the fact that this series is on the schweet crack as always.
And Tenipuri 238 after all. o_O My wub for TeniPuri is back, what with the end of the Match of Doom and a return to what the series really does best, namely the perversion of other innocent bystanding sports.
Suntory whisky? Sake? Talk to me, p30ns!
***
08:25 EST: Taxing down runway now. Wish they let me listen to my Japanese trance music during take-off, but electronics interfere with the navigation system... Have strong Canuck gum to chew. Am also v. sleepy from staying up all night burning CDs.
11:03 EST (10:03 Chicago): Dorval-O'Hare was a blur. Closed my eyes and could hardly pry them open again; didn't even feel the take-off. Glimpses of the Quebec countryside melded into white cloud melded into the Great Lakes, and what I have to assume is Chicago. It's hard to tell - I could've been fooled. Airports are terribly generic.
13:41 EST: Over the Midwest. The guy in the next seat is watching the Olsen Twins on his mini seat-back screen (they didn't have these the last time I flew overseas. They offer a choice of movies, music playlists, and the location/altitude/speed of the airplane in real time. The future is upon us now), with subtitles on. Thanks to Mary-Kate and Ashley I now know how to say "your fly's open" in Japanese. Language acquisition is an ongoing process!
06:00 Tokyo Time (something like 7PM EST): Watching Prisoner of Azkaban, finally - in Japanese dub. Ahaha. Not bad at all, though Snape is a trifle too deep and muffled IMO.
07:05 Tokyo Time: Over Alaska now. Names that were but names: Juneau, Anchorage, Mt.McKinley, Gulf of Alaska, Cook Inlet, Kodiak Island, Bering Sea... hunting the sun and the International Date Line. I spend my time sipping Coca-Cola on ice, listening to chillout/trance/hindi-pop and craning my neck to stare out the viewport window. This is what I like most about flying, and I like flying very much. Strange formations of cloud, rippling seas of translucent white, floating islands, wisps of mist. The Alaskan Range is impressive, albeit brown and bare. Snaking silver riverbeds that may or may not be dry terminate in vast frozen lakes. Distance is hard to judge after one's been staring for a while. If not for the clouds one may as well be looking at frozen puddles and mounds of sand in a construction site - the physical patterns are the same, large mirroring small.
The mini-screen tells me it's -55C out at 10900m or some such, but the sun is ferociously hot when one leans one's face against the glass. Not much air or dust between one and all those UV rays.
12:45 Tokyo Time: 150km to Tokyo, or a quarter of an hour. I can feel my ears pop as we descend. To reach Narita we fly inland and bank around, so one sees a landscape of industry and golf courses and neat rectangular fields. As flat as the Midwest, but with more managed waterways. The fields are mostly brown, not green, like the harvest's been and gone.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-09-11 11:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 12:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 01:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 01:32 am (UTC)Oh look at the time. Why am I up? 9_9;
no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 12:36 am (UTC)Will you pass overhead on your way to Shanghai? I'll look up into the sky tonight and wonder.
(Okay, so I probably won't, since it's raining and the cloud cover is denser than Tezuka re: love, but it does sound romantic, doesn't it?)
Hearting you like a crazy thing.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 01:07 am (UTC)...Prolly not overhead, but I'll be in the air grosso modo between seven and nine. And yeah, I think like that too. XD
no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 01:26 am (UTC)Oh, YHOO. It is only the beginning of his joint effort with GOOG to overthrow Michael Soft's dynasty of monopoly, you see.
And yay! Watermelons! Ryuzaki! Fuji with a shirt on, weep, but still -- sleeveless and shorts!
Also, hope the airport eateries were up to your expectations, grin.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 10:05 am (UTC)*barging into thread*
ryuuzaki in a TWO-PIECE--was NOT ready for that one.
and, glad your flights/transfers went well. o'hare is the stuff of nightmares for me, as it's the hub for united and therefore where i spent an obscene amount of time waiting this summer.
do enjoy japan, and *chortles* the higuma otoshi, a la misty may. and then go on and have fun in china, too, heck.
we are missing you on msn already, although my own time there is doomed to be limited ;_;
no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 01:45 am (UTC)(Huh, you didn't end up getting the ipod?)
no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 11:05 am (UTC)