No biting the personnel

We’ve started the second part of our vacation. The trip was mostly uneventful. The Beijing smog was back to bid us farewell yesterday morning as a friend of one of the uncles drove us to the airport. Of course that means we also got more gifts: moon cakes and tea. We flew on All Nippon which lived up to the reputation of Japanese air lines. Each seat has its own TV which besides playing movies or TV shows can also serve as a game console. The console’s remote being embedded in the seat’s arm. Even cooler, each passenger gets to start the movie at their own leisure; that way you don’t miss the beginning of the movie as you settle in. That has its own downside of course as I only got to see the first 1h45 of the Davinci Code. Now I’ll have to rent the movie to learn what happens to Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou.

They say in Japan foreigners often get accosted by students of English looking for a chance to practice. Then I guess I must have a big target sign on me as I had this experience as soon as we boarded the train from Narita to Tokyo. The high-school student works evening at the McDonald at the airport to strengthen her English. She wants to be a flight attendant in a few years. She had a good sense of humor and made for a great welcoming party.

I say the trip was mostly uneventful as we had a few problems finding the ryokan. I encourage you if you have a chance to read up on Tokyo’s addressing system. It’s quite different from ours. As such we had the pleasure of playing the role of lost tourists to the clueless Japanese-only-speaking construction workers. All in all though, it was fun and today should be no different.

True to ourselves we’re breakfasting on moon cakes.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 at 5:11 pm and is filed under Travel, Asia 2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.