the tall blond guy goes to japanthe tall blond guy goes to japan
Yes, my hotel is called "The Grand Central". I didn't think it was really funny until I found out that their other hotel is called "The Amtrak". I'm not kidding. I'm half-expecting to be awoken tomorrow morning by a freight train barreling through my room.
Landing- looking at the the other side of the water that I see from my Vancouver apartment... there are beaches down there, seaside houses and farms. Reminded me at first of the south coast of Vancouver Island (just off the west coast of Canada). When I got closer, more details became apparent: the obvious care given to the groves of trees that dot the landscape, the intelligently compact farms, the new and clean-looking power towers, carring electricity across the island. This is Germany!
May I complain about just one more airport? Please? Tokyo-Narita. Just like Calgary, but with ten times the number of people pulling, pushing and carrying bags. And since I arrived on some dirty foreign airline, we were stuck far far away from everything else. Moving sidewalks galore! They all politely warned me when they were about to end. "Please mind your step," a semi-robotic female voice cautioned.
Oh, and I'm sure now that when an airport reaches a certain size, it's always under construction. It's the law of averages and expansion. Large airports are never finished, they're always building to keep up with all those airplanes. If they're not building on the domestic terminal, they're building on the international one. If not those, then they're building a hotel across the street to house all those people who are arriving into these new terminal concourses and baggage-claim areas.
Bought a standing-class ticket to downtown Tokyo. A long ride! Seems like Tokyo-Narita is just about as useful to the citizens of Tokyo as Denver airport is to the people who live in Denver. I remember driving for hours until finally seeing an airport. Not quite as bad as Narita, but close.
Lucky guesswork got me off at the right station, and out the right door onto the right street. Found the office with no problems. Found my boss. Found my hotel. Found my PPP connection. Found my email.
And look what I found on the way there! Hitachi makes entire kitchens over here. There's a big Hitachi kitchen store just down the street from my hotel. This one's for you, Ryan.
A Faboo-Looking Kitchen in Ryan RedI might get around to unpacking my clothes later on. :-)
