Japan

originally posted on 10/24/06

A few random notes on my brief stay in japan:

I noticed, and maybe this is a new development, that when I flew to Japan on Monday morning, (okay, Sunday night in my book, since I didn't sleep and I left for the airport at 5 a.m. after winning the Madden Superbowl) that flights can be quite hair-raising and scary when you are sober. I mean, you are flying in this enormous (and I don't know what the deal with Korean Air is, but I was in row 40 yet I was on the wing. There must have been 900 people on this flight) plane, and it's an hour flight, so pretty much the whole time its either taking off or landing, which I'm used to on a 737, but on this behemoth of a plane (an Airbus, which I don't know much about. I think an A-300) it's all the more scary. But then, I discovered, on the return flight, on the same type of plane, in perhaps worse weather, the trip was an absolute beaute, and I wasn't remotely nervous. The difference? Well, on the return flight, I was absolutely hammered. I think I may be onto something here.

Fukuoka, by the way, has a fine airport, in my opinion. The international terminal was totally empty. My flight was the only one leaving from it. And in this case, international is like 400 miles. 2 cool things at the Fukuaka airport: there are two observation decks, outdoors-ish, so you can watch planes take off. Which, despite my problems with flying, I enjoy doing, because it re-assures me to see planes not crashing. Plus, though I could not find a bar, at least in the international terminal, I found something better. There were convenience stores that sold beers for like a dollar. And it's totally kosher to walk around the airport drinking them. At least, I assume it was. I mean, hell, they sell them past security, and you can't bring liquid on the plane, so where the hell else are you going to drink them? Plus, on top of that, the beers are 7% alcohol, and they sell them in weird flavors like lemonade and orange, so you can knock one back in like 20 seconds or so.

Don't get me wrong, I like beer, beer that tastes like beer, and I am totally opposed to the "flavored malt beverage" thing, like your Mike's Hard Lemonades and your Smirnoff Ices, but the Japanese have managed to get around all possible issues with such drinks and their effete nature by taking 5 key steps, in my opinion:

-They really do taste like lemonade, and lemonade is good
-They put a higher alcohol content in these than regular beer
-They make it the cheapest drink available
-This is key – they put it in cans – no queer yellow or cloudy liquid in a clear bottle
-They sell them for nothing at the fucking airport

Other funny things about Japan in general include the fact that you can't smoke while walking. It's the law. It's perfectly legal to stand on the street, pretty much anywhere, and smoke, but if you walk down the same street, it's illegal. CC told me it's because it goes against the Japanese notion of the group dynamic, which makes smoking in a restaurant or bar or with others on the street perfectly okay, but that walking down the street while smoking is going too much your own way, and it upsets the group dynamic, to the point where they actually made a law against it. So far as I'm concerned, this is the equivalent of the internet being legal, and porn being legal, but internet porn being illegal. I mean, doesn't walking and smoking go together like the internet and porn? And don't kill me for having a lame punchline here, I honestly was trying to make a point rather than set up a joke.

Speaking of CC – for anybody who has read this before, you know that I don't usually use this space to, ah, what's the opposite of make fun of people? But anyway, I just want to re-affirm in public what most of you know already – that CC is awesome. She's the type of kid who would in fact give you 3 grand, no questions asked, after a desperation 4 a.m. phone call from, say, an Indonesian jail cell. Or, as she did, give you a fistful of yen after a frantic phone call from the American consulate at 4 p.m., which is the same as 4 a.m. so far as Japanese banks are concerned. And then buy you beers all night to boot. So, props to CC.

Just a couple more funny things : at the airport in Seoul, there's an ad for SK Telecom, which is a pretty big company here. But the ad says: "SK: The Ubiquitous Leader." I don't think even Microsoft would have the balls to pull off that slogan.

And finally, for Wiley, a little drunken patriotism: so on my flight home, the pilot gave his announcements in Korean, Japanese, and English, and in English, he said that our current speed was five hundred MILES per hour. Yeah, that's right, miles. So basically, he was saying, suck it Brits, Kiwis, Canucks, Aussies, South Africans, and whoever else speaks English and deals in metric. Oh beautiful, for spacious skies…

By the way, I really do kind of want to write about airports. Fukuoka was my 8th in 2 months, and 12th this calendar year, both of which I believe are personal records. If I did write about airports here, would anybody other than Wiley read it? And this questions goes to the giraffe people as well. Answer in comments, yo.