Recent holiday to the British Isles, Part 2 - Flights and Airports

As promised, I shall continue my account of international travel.

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My Air France flight to Charles De Gaulle left on time (yay!)
I had a window seat, so I got to see many beautiful sights before the air hostess came and made me shut the blind.

First beautiful sight: Narita in winter.
As it was (is still in fact) winter, all the rice paddies (of which Narita has many) were brown. I could clearly see how generations of farmers have made all but the most stubborn of hills as flat as a pancake in order to farm rice. The rivers looked very out of place on that flat brownness.

Second beautiful sight: Tokyo
Out my window, I could look down at Tokyo and Tokyo Bay. At first I was picking out places I had been to, such as Odaiba and Shinjuku. But then I noticed that I had a really good view of Mt. Fuji, so I looked at that instead.

Third beautiful sight: Tohoku in winter
The rice paddies of Tohoku (northern Japan) are also flat, but in winter they have the added bonus of being covered in a perfectly level pristine coating of snow.

(I will now take the time to point out that the place over which the airplane crossed the coast and headed out over the Japan Sea was near the border between Yamagata and Akita prefectures i.e. where I live i.e. at the beginning of the day before's troubles. Oh, if only I had a really long ladder).

Fourth beautiful sight: Random land north of Vladivostok
The next time I saw land was up north somewhere on the continent. The land was thinly forested and very snowy. There were very few signs of human habitation, just the odd road or two. The geography of that land was stunning. It was hilly/mountainous country, but it was all smooth and rounded. Right down to sea level, I could see that the land had been under the polar ice at some stage. In some places I could see long, thin, perfectly sculpted glacial valleys (the last strongholds of the ice age in the area?). They are empty now.

The first meal of the flight came. I had not eaten for 23 hours by that stage on account of there being no food available at train stations during blizzards, or in Tokyo after 11pm. It filled me up for a short while. But it was another 9 hours before the next meal came, probably because it was the cheapest airfare between Japan and Europe available on any airline. I was wasting away to nothing.

For much of the flight, we flew up over the north of Siberia. There was a lot of cloud. We must have been up near the arctic circle because even though it was a day flight, the sun was down on the horizon mingling with the clouds. I did not get to have a good look at this area, because the blinds were down, so all I could do was peek out from time to time.

Finally the plane got to France. The fields of France are huge, with no hedgerows between, and the houses are all brown with roof windows (at least the ones I saw were). Terminal 2F of CDG is quite impressive. Being in the gate area is kind of like being inside a glass whale. While I waited for my flight to Heathrow, a group of Japanese tourists sat nearby. They were mostly middle-aged women, and they were ooh-ing and aah-ing over a Frenchwoman's unshaved poodle puppy. They were saying "chitchai hitsuji mitai" - it looks like a tiny sheep. They loved the dog, and because the dog was young, it loved them too.

I had a conversation with one of the women until their group boarded their plane. Not long after, my flight call came too. The plane left 15mins late or so, because of long queues at the baggage check. I translated this for a Japanese family who did not understand what was going on.

(As an aside: for those of you who think Japanese is useless outside of Japan, notice how even in France it was lucky that I can speak it. You will see later that it was useful for me in England too).

So finally I got to England. I made my way through customs and baggage collection in record time. This was facilitated by luck. It turned out that my plane's baggage was available from the carousel in the very middle of the baggage collection room. By coincidence, my bag happened to be on the side of that carousel nearest me just as I entered. Therefore, I was able to walk straight throught the room in a straight line and *yoink* pick up my bag half way accross without having to stop walking. I barely even slowed down.

I should have known there would be one more problem before my journey was done. Things had been going altogether too smoothly for too many hours.

When I got to the main concourse of Heathrow Terminal 2, Gillian (my sister) was not there. I figured that she was stuck in traffic (not such an uncommon thing in England). So I waited. And waited. And waited. I went for a walk to see if she was waiting in the wrong place. I positioned myself in the easiest-to-spot position. No sister. So I decided to ring her. My cellphone does not work outside of Japan, and at that stage I had no pounds on me, so I had to buy pounds at the exchange bureau first of all. Then I went to a coin phone. "This number either does not exist or . . ." Oh, @$%^.

So I ended up going to the information desk, telling the clerk my Nanna's name and address and asking him to look up her phone number on the internet. (Despite the fact that Heathrow is the biggest international airport in the UK and one of the biggest in the world, they apparently only have those small local directory phonebooks on hand).

When I rang Nanna, she told me that Gillian had been at the airport for hours. I asked if she knew I was at terminal 2, and my lovely Nanna said, "I don't know, dear. I'll just go ring her and check."

Ten minutes later, Gillian and her boyfriend rush breathlessly into terminal 2.

Gillian, being a little sister, naturally blamed this communication error on me. My opinion is this: even if the e-mail I thought I sent her with my itinerary details was indeed a figment of my imagination, Nanna had all the details. Therefore, whose fault is it for not contacting their grandmother, who lives five minutes down the road, on a regular basis? (Sorry Gillian, but I had to say it).

To cut a long story not-all-that-short, I found myself in Milton Keynes after a long-haul international flight, and only having had four or five hours sleep (half of which was on said flight) and two small meals (both on said flight) in the previous forty-hour period. And the day was not over yet.

Next time on Randomness, by Togiren: Biscuits and Half-a-Million Cups of Tea