Day 194 - Narita, Japan - 16th February, 2005

We flew across the Pacific in a Beoing 777. It only has 2 engines. Makes you think.

I remember seeing a TV documentary about the development of this plane about 6 or 7 years ago. They showed, with film clips, what happens when one engine fails at the most critical point; take off. Virtually nothing. They also showed how much damage the fuselage would sustain if one of the engines blew in flight. Virtually none. The pressurised cabin remained intact. They also show how much pressure it would take to blew up the cabin. Tons. The plane was years and years in development. It was one of those programmes that stays in your mind for years.

The plane was very comfortable with an unusual 2 -5 -2 seating arrangement. We had 2 rows of 2 in a section on our own.

The first thing you notice when you arrive in Japan are the number of people employed to just be around. There was a line of smartly dressed airport attendants showing us the way to the baggage claim or the passport control or the Health Desk which we were asked to report to if we had a temperature or diarrhoea. I was wondering where we should go if we had constipation.

If you hesitate for one moment in your journey to your airport destination (which with 2 crabbit children you do quite often), some one would immediately be there asking you where you want to go.

The money changing was quite an experience. You line up at the kiosk and you are approached by a money changing official who kind of pre-qualifies you for the task. He presents you with a form and has you fill in all sorts of details like what are the denominations of the notes you want to change and what hotel are you staying in. When he checks this all, counts your money and accepts you as a potential customer, you are invited to re-join the line but now you have your bit of paper and the questionable money in a little tray. I presumed that you were not allowed to pass the money to the lady behind the glass unless it was on this little tray.

I was finally offered the opportunity to present my tray to the lady. She carefully checked the form, acknowledged the pre-qualification man for having had me fill it in properly and counted the money again. After lots of initialling of the form it was rubber stamped in 3 places and passed back to a man sitting behind her who scruntinised it once more. Then she passed the notes to him and he counted the money for the third time. All the time the first lady smiled and seem involved in all sorts of activities associated with changing the money but none of which I could understand or involved the collection and counting out of any Japanese currency.

After some moments she presented me with a calculator which showed a figure of about 12 digits in length. She looked at me and smiled and all of her activity ceased whilst she was obviously waiting for me to acknowledge the sum, or agree that it was a suitable sum of yen to be given in exchange for my dollars. I looked at the figure and with my British sense of humour always wanting to get out, I was tempted to say to her in my best Japanese, that I thought the number a little low and could she please speak to her boss to get a better rate. I thought better of it and having given up trying to work out what the 12 digit figure actually meant (I don't actually think I have seen a figure that big before) I nodded in my practicesed Japanese fahion, bowing from the hip, indicating that the caculation met with my approval. She then counted out about 8 notes and a little shrapnel and placed it on the little tray for it's journey back under the glass.

The process had taken about 15 minutes and involved 3 members of staff. I was wondering, if after paying the salaries of all these people, there would be any profit left for them out of my $120 dollars. I was tempted to leave them a tip, as I have never been so served before. In all there were 4 "money changers" in the kiosk and one "pre-qualifyer" working the outside area. There was only 1 line of potential (they needed to be pre-qualified first) customers with about 6 people in it. In anywhere else in the world one person could have handled the job in half the time. But then again it wouldn't have been such fun and four more people were employed and not on the streets.

Arriving at the hotel was another example of the same level of attention and service. 2 people were employed taking our bags off the bus. 8 attendants were in the foyer ensuring that we did not stray off the path that was the shortest way to the front desk. One man was positioned at the entrance to the line up ropes at reception, to ensure you went down the right hole. Another was employed to ensure that we moved up as close as possible to the person in front. As our bags were brought in a bag attendant (another person, not any of the people I have already described) was attaching labels to our bags and another person was checking with the desk which room we were booked into so he could mark the tags on our bags with the correct room number. It's just as well that there is no tipping here. Wow. Who pays all their salaries? Do they get paid?

Being British is quite awkward. We are sometimes prone to wanting to have a bit of space. We (at least I do) like a little latitude. I would quite like to have walked over to the other side of the foyer to admire the mural on the wall for instance. I could see that this would not be an acceptable thing to do as I was meant to be checking in.

I could see from the lady's face that she thought we were odd. "At what time will you be checking out sir?" was her question. We are British, we don't want to be tied down. We don't want to commit. We don't want someone else questioning us. We had not even thought about checking out. We hadn't checked in yet. We had never experienced this level of time zone change. We might wake up at 6:00 am and want to check out at 7:00 am. Then again, we might CNN it for a while and check out around 9:00 am. We have never had someone ask us that question before. The only reply we could make was "What time do we need to check out by?". This of course was not an answer. There was a box on the registration card that asked for a check out time. The box needed to be filled. Surely if a human being was standing in front of me checking in to my hotel they would already know the time they were leaving. I could feel her having this thought. Of course (I am making this next bit up) a Japanese person would never check into an hotel without knowing exactly what time he was leaving the next day. We told her to put down 10:00am so we could put her out of her misery of having an unfilled box.

So being British is awkward. We are hopelessly undisciplined (this was already obvious from being in North America), we are completely unruly with 2 children all over the place and badly dressed (we look like we have just emerged from a month in an RV and the Japanese are all so smartly dressed even if they were being alternative). We do not however, smoke.

I think we are going to have fun.

The Japanese Ryokan hotel where we are going to stay for a night sent us an e-mail asking if we would like boiled or raw fish for our dinner. OK, will rice be alright?