Day 17: Japanese Haze

Thursday May 22 - Roppongi Hills, Tokyo

Travelling by train and boat is exhausting. And today, I had a much needed break. I am currently the guest of an old friend, Jimmy Muir, and his fiancé, Miwa. I am writing late at night on the balcony of their 16th floor apartment, looking out over downtown Tokyo.

In the near distance, the Tokyo Tower – made famous by Godzilla – dominates the view and glows like a cross between the Eiffel Tower and an orange and yellow-striped electric popsicle. Behind it, countless skyscrapers loom in the darkness, with their red-lights blinking like hyperactive cherries demanding to be picked first.

Jim met me at Tokyo railway station yesterday at 1730. He brought me straight back to the apartment in a taxi. His and Miwa’s home is spacious, stylish and modern, with everything one might expect to find in a contemporary Japanese home. Technology is everywhere and the highlight was the intelligent toilet complete with a discrete wall-mounted control box.

Jim has set it to automatic, so when you stand next to it, the lid and the seat lift and the pan is gently illuminated. Once you have performed your duty, the toilet flushes itself and the seat and lid return to the start position.

It does much more, depending on the settings. I asked if it can detect the gender of the user and, hence, decide whether to lift the seat or not. Or, indeed, if the toilet can tell what type of action one needs to perform, or how much toilet paper should be dispensed. Apparently, these functions are not available but I am sure scientists are working on them.

Jim and Miwa’s home is a far cry from life on the MV Rus. The two days crossing the Sea of Japan from Vladivostock were pleasant enough but the surroundings were distinctly last century. The journey itself was a breeze: the sea was largely calm with only a minimal swell and the weather was benign. But the décor, the service, the food, and even the appearance of the Russian crew and passengers were dated to the extreme.

Apparently, this was the boat’s first voyage since a major update and I can only assume that the focus was the nuts and bolts rather than the interior. The latter reminded me of elderly relatives’ homes circa 1970.

Even so, time passed very pleasantly. I spent most of Tuesday in my quarters, writing and editing my photos. I slept in the afternoon and then joined Marc and Carsten for dinner. As with lunch – and the other meals (naturally I missed both breakfasts) – I was a little late and the food was delivered tepid to the table. There were always three courses but never a dessert. The starter was (intentionally) cold, followed by a watery soup, and then a main course that centred around chewy meat.

Meal times were the only part of the schedule, from pre-departure to arrival in Fushiki, which stuck to a timetable. Rather like British seaside guest houses, breakfast, lunch and dinner are served at precise times (nine, one and seven respectively) and the restaurant was open for an hour only. The food was delivered by mini-skirted, white shirted waitresses in their thirties, with smiles but little humour. There was no choice of food or table (even though the cavernous restaurant had plenty of empty seats) and drinks had to be bought by the diner from the bar.

The highlight of the sea trip was undoubtedly the company. I was determined not to drink too much on the second and last night because I wanted to be fresh and alert for the trip from Fushiki to Tokyo. But at ten thirty, I left my cabin and joined the others in the bar. I spotted them easily, a group of eight in the half-light, sitting on stainless steel chairs around a low glass-topped table.

The bar was otherwise empty, apart from small groups of large Russian men and a couple of Japanese who were idly watching a Russian comedy show on bar-top TV. A pair of huge loudspeakers insisted on spreading the slapstick humour throughout the bar. William, the seventy-five year old Dutchman, decided to make the atmosphere more conducive to conversation and mischievously disconnected the cable from the back of the speaker furthest from the bar. None of the Russians noticed.

William’s and his partner, Anne-Marie, worked their way through a litre-and-a-half flagon of Californian white wine that they had bought on the previous night. It had been parked in my cabin’s fridge for most of Monday but it was still too warm to be classed as anything other than disgusting.

Marc, Carsten, Dominic and I drank Asahi beer and, when the bar’s fridge was empty, we had Sapporo. Dominic’s slightly-built, pony-tailed, boyishly handsome and rather reserved Japanese room-mate, Umon, was on the warm saki. He was sitting next to a new recruit to our party, the demure Mao, a Japanese woman in her early twenties who had been working in Russia but was returning to her studies at home.

The other person was Rosalind, a sixtyish-year old mother, farmer and follower of Zen Buddhism from Switzerland. She had travelled alone, in a third class dormitory carriage on the Trans-Siberian with the lowliest of Russian conscripts.

Of all the people I met on this part of my trip, she was the one I most admired and the person that I unfortunately spoke to the least. Her mission was spiritual – she will be visiting Buddhist centres in Japan and then India – and, apart from one flight, her journey to Asia and back is by train and ship. The final leg involves a cabin on a container ship from India to Italy.

Carsten, Dominic, William and I got involved in a heated discussion about geo-politics. The accumulated wisdom of William was in sharp contrast to the youthful simplicity of Dominic’s point of view.

William knows all about war and conflict. As a child, he spent four years in an internment camp in Indonesia after the Japanese invasion. Over the next sixty years, he saw the end of major conflict in Europe (with the exception of the Balkans in the 1990s) for the first time in two thousand years and, unsurprisingly, he is a committed believer in jaw-jaw rather than war-war.

He, Carsten and I were arguing in favour of the European Union, or indeed, any non-military form of politics because, quite simply, the last sixty years have demonstrated that this approach is much more effective than bloody warfare.

Dominic, on the other hand, believes that the nuclear deterrent is the reason that Britain has not been involved in conflict with its European neighbours since 1945. His arguments were unconvincing but he presented them with conviction. At times, his frustration was palpable and he occasionally gripped the short hair around his temples and growled. He simply didn’t have the words or the facts to support his case.

We listened patiently to Dominic’s views on Europe, terrorism and immigration, and we politely tried to convince him that they had little basis in reality. Carsten put his case calmly, with a measured tone and well chosen words. Had I not known he was an airline pilot, I could have guessed.

William was more passionate and demonstrative, sitting cross legged, leaning forward into the debate. He used his left hand to emphasise his points while his right hand held a Gauloise that was, more often than not, unlit.

At a little after one AM, I wished everyone good-night and retired for the evening. The schedule said that the boat would arrive at Fushiki at nine AM but, given our experiences so far, we had no reason to believe this.

Sure enough, the next morning at about nine, the boat stopped with the Japanese coast just visible through the morning haze. The PA rang out with the tinny, rising four-tone prefix and then a message: breakfast is being served. I slept on. Further messages followed, mostly in Russian but occasionally in English. The latter were asking individuals to come to the information desk. But there was no general announcement about where we were, what we needed to do or what might happen next.

Around an hour later, I felt the boat starting to move again. I got up and went to the information desk. I saw William and Anne-Marie and they told me that I needed to fill in customs and immigration forms, which I collected from the desk. I returned to my cabin and completed them. Unlike their Russian equivalents, they were in English.

Another 30 minutes passed. More PA announcements in Russian but still no general news on what we need to do or when. I went to Dominic and Umon’s cabin. Dom was crashed out on his bed and the room was a mess. I asked what we needed to do. Dom said we had to wait for Japanese customs to visit our room.

So I returned to my cabin and waited. Around thirty minutes later, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to two Japanese men; a skinny, young guy in a blue boiler suit and an older, fatter man in an official-looking khaki uniform. I invited them in and gave them my passport and customs form. The senior man sat on the sofa and scanned the room as if he might be interested in buying it. The junior partner read the form meticulously. The man on the sofa asked me a few basic questions in broken English, nodding his head sagely as I answered, and the junior loudly counted my three bags.

It seemed that they were just passing time. Just as I was running out of small talk, the junior partner asked if he could see inside my bags. I opened my small backpack and invited him to have a look. He pulled out my video camera, some cables and adaptors and then the mini-disc recorder and microphone that the BBC had loaned to me.

He stared at them, said something to his colleague in Japanese and they both started laughing. I was bemused. The boiler-suited guy said: ‘This is very old technology. You should upgrade in Japan.’ I agreed with a smile. At that point, they realised that I was no threat to the Japanese state, they bid me well and went on to the next cabin.

Shortly, another announcement came on the PA. It was in Russian as usual but there was something in the tone that made me think it was important. Sure enough, I heard doors opening and footsteps in the corridor. My fellow passengers were moving out so I followed them.

Again, I saw William by the reception desk and he said we needed to queue outside the ballroom to go through immigration. He also told me that Japanese time was two hours behind Vladivostock, which meant that the boat pretty much arrived on time.

I adjusted my watch, took my place in line and waited to be called. There were about fifteen Japanese immigration officials in the ballroom, some standing around and supervising, others sitting at tables with computers. When it was my turn, one of the ship’s crew gave me my passport and I took it to a wide, bespectacled, white shirted young man with a big smile and gelled hair. He went through my form and asked me to fill in the exact address of where I’d be staying. The Russian guy at the information desk said that ‘Tokyo’ would suffice. He was wrong.

Once he was happy with this, he took electronic fingerprints of my index fingers, and a photograph. He stuck a Japanese visa in my passport, smiled and wished me well. This procedure was infinitely more efficient and convincing than the Russian system in the UK that involved a seven day wait, ninety pounds and careful answers to questions on the lengthy form. Getting into Japan also took about a quarter of the time needed to get out of Russia.

The boat was now in dock but we nine companions decided to have a final lunch before setting foot on Japanese soil. As with every other meal on the MV Rus, it was underwhelming. We then picked up our bags, walked down treacherously steep stairs – with no signs, of course – and made it to the gloomy car deck. We headed toward the bright sun that beamed through the massive open doors, and at just after noon, we took our first steps in Japan.

The strong sunshine was a marked contrast to Vladivostock. The temperature was around fifteen degrees higher and the air was still. We walked across the dock and showed our passports to a uniformed guard. It was at this point that we thanked fate for giving us Umon. He asked directions to the railway station and we dutifully followed, dragging our cases and humping our backpacks, and bemoaning the inefficiencies of the Russians.

Fushiki seemed to be having a siesta. Bemused locals showed only passing interest in this rag-bag band of itinerant foreigners. The only shop that seemed to be open was a fishmonger. A tiny old woman was chatting to the owner next to an open refrigerated cabinet of anonymous creatures of the deep. They briefly glanced at us and returned to their gossip.

The station was tiny and deserted, save for a few taxi cabs and their drivers. One of them spoke to Umon and he reported that the station was closed because of essential maintenance on the track. So we divided into threes and took taxis to the mainline station of Takaoka.

The cabs were old, box shaped and modest. The driver wore ties and white shirts and, as soon as the doors were closed, donned peaked caps with white covers. Marc sat in the front and I shared the back seat with Anne-Marie. She dug her camera out of her bag and took some snaps of the dainty lace covers on the seats.

Fifteen minutes later, we arrived in Takaoka. Umon ordered our tickets, deciphered the timetables and then, when he was satisfied that we were all pointing in the right direction, took his own train. The rest of us stood under a shelter out of the midday sun and chatted as we absorbed the scene.

It was at this point that two facts about Japan came painfully to light. First, none of us could get signals on our mobile phones. They had worked perfectly well in Russia but, contrary to what Orange had told me before I left the UK, mine could not find a signal. Jim and my Japanese friends had warned me that Japan uses a different network type to the rest of the world, but I assumed that my mobile company knew the facts. I was wrong.

The other is that not many places in Japan take MasterCard. The habitually badly organised Dominic found this the hard way when he tried to buy his rail ticket. I paid for him with my Visa card and then he and Carsten, accompanied by Umon, fruitlessly tried to get cash from every bank in Takaoka.

As the rest of us waited, we watched suited smokers make calls on their mobiles, excited schoolgirls in pseudo-sailor uniforms, effeminate teenage schoolboys with feathery haircuts and the occasional, diminutive, shuffling old person come and go. Our banter was light-hearted but we knew that the time was fast approaching when we too would go our separate ways.

The first to depart were Anne-Marie and William who took another cab to pick up their hire car. Rosalind was next, then Mao caught her bus, Marc and Carsten got their train to Kyoto and, finally, Dominic and I went through the barrier and boarded the train to Echigo-yuzawa.