Wednesday 23 January, 2013
18:34

I just have time to jot a few notes before heading out to dinner with Matt, who used to work with me in Sydney, before he married a Japanese woman and they moved to Tokyo. It’ll be nice to catch up.

I had a bad sleep in the hotel room. Trouble getting to sleep, then I woke up about 04:00, since that was 06:00 at home, and couldn’t fall asleep again. Hopefully I’ll adjust better tonight.

A bit before 07:00 I got out of bed, got dressed, and went in search of breakfast. I’d found a food court in the hotel complex last night, and tried that first, but it didn’t open until 10:00. So I crossed the road to the station and tried the food parlour where I’d bought the mochi last night, but that was closed too. So I went into a 7-11 and grabbed a tray of sushi and a vegetable rice cake thing and brought them back up to my room to eat while I got ready for the day visiting the Canon Inc. offices in Shimomaruko.

I needed to be there at 09:40 to meet my contact, and people told me to allow plenty of time to find my way there. So I left a few minutes before 08:00 and walked over to Shinagawa station, where my first task was to find the platform for the Keihin-Tohoku line, southbound. This was actually very easy to find, and when I walked down the stairs a train pulled in and I hopped on. It was full of people, but not really crowded – there was plenty of space to stand. Three stops later I arrived at Kamata and made my way across to the Tokyu-Tamagawa line trains. I arrived just as one train was departing, but the next train was a mere four minutes later, so that didn’t take long at all. It was only another three stops to Shimomaruko. The stations along this line were smaller and more rustic, with shelters made of wood.

Shimomaruko itself felt very different from the neon bustle of Shinagawa. The buildings were older and smaller, and it felt almost like a Japanese village. The walk to Canon goes down a street lined with fruit stalls and little shops, and it is fairly picturesque. I’d arrived so quickly that I had a full hour to spare before my meeting, so I dawdled down side streets, seeking interesting photo opportunities, as I meandered along towards Canon. The walk wasn’t very long, so I got there with plenty of time left, and continued walking past the Canon campus to the Tama River, where the street went over a long bridge across the broad floodplain and the river in the central part of it. Parts of the floodplain were made into sports fields, and a jogging track lined with trees ran along the side of it.

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Tuesday 22 January, 2013
12:34 Sydney time; 10:34 Tokyo time

I’m sitting comfortably in a seat on Japan Airlines flight 722 from Sydney to Tokyo. This is a short trip for work, to discuss the wrap-up of last year’s project and the plans for new one I’ll be leading a team for this year. I have two days of meetings in Canon’s main office in Shimomaruko, then a Friday morning to myself before flying home on Friday evening.

I woke up just before the alarm, set for 6 o’clock this morning. I had some muesli and yoghurt for a quick breakfast, brushed my teeth, tossed my toothbrush into my luggage, and rang a taxi to collect me for the trip to the airport. M. got up as I was leaving to wish me farewell. The taxi arrived shortly after I walked out to the street, and whisked me off to the airport.

Partway through the drive, I heard a strange clunking noise from my side of the taxi. The driver heard it too, and expressed surprise. I realised it was the belt buckle of my trenchcoat, which had got caught in the door when I closed it, and must now be flapping along the outside of the car. I elected not to open the door while the taxi was flying down the expressway to the airport, but a minute later the knocking became so persistent that I asked the driver if it would be okay to open the door and pull it inside. He agreed and I did so, making the remainder of the journey quieter.

I arrived at the airport, walked inside, and found the check-in counters for JAL. There were no queues, and I had no checked luggage, so it was very quick. I asked for an exit row seat if one was available, and the woman granted the request, saying the flight wasn’t full and I’d probably also have an empty seat next to me. I went immediately through customs and security to the departure lounge area to wait for boarding.

I sat down and tried the airport wi-fi, which took a few minutes to wangle, but managed to get connected. After reading the news and checking Facebook, I ran out of things I could do from my work laptop without all my passwords (I tried one but misremembered it). I had a long time to wait, and my breakfast was smaller than usual, so I bought a chicken caesar wrap from a cafe. It was incredibly mediocre, but satisfying enough. Then with nothing much else to do I browsed the couple of book shops and walked around a bit to exercise my legs. Eventually the clock ticked to 08:45, half an hour before departure, and I headed to the gate. Boarding had just started and there were fewer than 100 people left, so I got straight into the queue and headed on to the plane. My seat is an aisle seat in a row of three at the exit row just behind the wing of the Boeing 777-200. Another guy taller than me got the window seat, but there’s an empty seat between us.

The TV screen on the facing panel showed video from the nose of the plane as we taxied out to the runway, leaving the gate a good 5 minutes early. I could see the tarmac and the plane in front of us as we queued up waiting to take off. After quite a wait on the taxiway, we moved to the runway and I could see the video of the yellow lines speeding below us as we took off. The view changed to a downward facing camera showing the city slipping past beneath us as we turned slightly west of north and headed up into the sky.

The JAL flight attendants are all women, and they put on pink aprons with an antique hot air balloon motif over their uniforms as they started serving rice cracker snacks, drinks, and then a bit later on the first meal. It was a choice of beef curry, or chicken ravioli in a tomato sauce. I chose the ravioli. It came with a bewildering array of sides: a brown bread roll and butter; potato salad; another salad with crisp asparagus, red capsicum, and lettuce with a separate vinaigrette sachet; a serve of soba noodles garnished with shallots and something which I thought was ginger but had a spicier kick, with a small bottle of “noodle sauce” on the side; and a fruit salad. The ravioli was mediocre, but the rest was on the good side. Then there was chocolate ice cream for dessert! It was frozen like a rock and took some heavy spoonwork to chop up.
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