Take the Long Way Home

When we last left our insipid traveler, he was in southern Japan, under the impression that he would be travelling CONUS in just a few days. Well, I’m still headed CONUS, but taking a slightly longer route to get there, primarily via Doha, where there’s some engineering thing I need to resolve. For good or ill, I’ll be making my first ‘round-the-hemisphere* trip. It would be ‘round-the-world, but I’ll be staying at mostly the same latitude and never dipping south past the equator. That excursion is still on the To-do list, but isn’t currently on the itinerary.

“Isn’t currently on the itinerary.”

It’s all subject to change. This last modification came about over the past 36 hours. We’re working with a contractor in Qatar who adopted a half complete building from the client. The main reasons it was half complete are that the original design was half-assed and would result in a structure that would blow over in the first stiff breeze, and the original contractor was about half effective in meeting scope, schedule, and quality control. My task, since I’ve decided to accept it, is to look at various holes in the ground, and the concrete that fills them, and write a report as to what I observed. It’s not particularly rocket science, but it’s simple enough that a Senior Project Manager can do it. Plus, I’ve got in my possession a very rare and difficult to secure piece of government plastic that grants me, specifically, access to the location in question.

Ultimately, my valid Common Access Card and relative proximity were the deciding factors, which is why I’m sitting in the ticketing lobby of the Fukuoka International Airport waiting for the Asiana counter to staff up. It’s about 1400 now, and the flight‘s not until 1925, so I’ve got some time to waste, either on this side of the immigration folks or the other. After I write this, I’ll find a noodle shop and order something off the picture menu that looks like it doesn’t have too many tentacles, then secure a boarding pass to Korea.

Until this week, the furthest west I’d ever been was Oregon, and the furthest east was Afghanistan. Although my flight to Doha stops in Incheon, I hesitate in counting landing at an airport as actually being in the country. Someday, I’m sure the Company will send me to work in Viet Nam or India, so I’ll wait until then to say I’ve been around the world. This trip will have to maintain an asterisk. As for south of the equator, we have continuous work on Guam, so I may get one of those projects eventually. There was some talk this week as well about me covering for our project manager on Chuuk when he finally decides to take some PTO. For now, though, Fukuoka to Incheon to Doha to Frankfort to Chicago to Moline. Another five days and 12,000 miles and I’ll be home.

I’m just glad I had the hotel do my laundry yesterday.

In reflection, Japan certainly holds a top ten slot on the “Nice Place to Visit, But…” list. I’m sure the Japanese like it here, but there’s just too little space for my liking it over the long term. They’ve got ways of dealing with it, fine-tuned over the centuries. They queue very well, and aren’t large, loud or stinky. Public transportation can take you most anywhere and isn’t entirely a mystery. The taxis are propane powered, have doilies on the seats and are operated by uniformed, whited gloved drivers. Cities are nicely walkable. Did I mention that most every meal included tentacles? I’ve got serious issues with tentacles. However, the Kirin girl at the ball game last night, upon serving a fresh beer, bussed my empty cup. Nice.

We had a free evening yesterday in Hiroshima, and went to see the local major league team at their fairly new stadium. Sadly, the Carp got filleted by the Swallows. The 3-1 final score doesn’t tell the story of how hapless the Carp were, but I’ll try. Their only run was in the first, when a lucky bloop hit had enough energy to clear the left field wall. From then on, it was all Swallows, outhitting 10-3 and under-erroring 0-2. Towards the end, the Carp’s third pitcher was ejected for hitting two batters in a row. He was replaced by their 6’ 8” giant, who threw little but dirtballs. Overall, it had the look of Triple A ball, but with Double A pitching and Single A hitting, all in a major league stadium.

The crowd didn’t seem to care. Although quiet into the second inning, they overcame their cultural silence and became a bit boisterous, though it seemed that their cheers were entirely supportive, leaving the general derision to myself and my mates, not that anyone could understand our English “Use the good eye, Ump!”.

And the whistling. We had to do that, too, as the Japanese don’t seem to whistle. Anyway, during the seventh inning stretch, the fans sang the team song, and then launched balloons, this being perhaps the weirdest thing I’ve seen here. We’d been warned, so for three hundred yen, we bought a four pack of long, red Carp balloons. Each had a hard disk in the open end to assist in blowing the things up to almost a meter in length and 15 centimeters in diameter. This disk also worked to weigh the nozzle down so that the balloons continued to climb until they were completely deflated, at which time they’d flutter back to earth, all 10,000 of them. I fully expected the stadium floor to look like the parking lot of a shady truck stop, but the fans bussed the balloons that fell near them, and order was again secured.

I’m sure this won’t be my last trip here.
Read More......

Plans, Trains, and Automobiles

I’ve pulled all-nighters. In the time before, they were used to make sure that all of the available beer was consumed. Shortly thereafter, they were used to make up for the studying not done due to the beer consumption activities prior. In recent years, I’ve ridden all night on various endurance missions, but have spent more long and sleepless nights travelling from home to wherever (sleeping on a plane is really just being unconscious, so it doesn’t count as sleep). This trip is more of that, as you can’t fly halfway around the hemisphere and not take a mess of time to do it.

After the quick flight to O’Hare and a quicker lunch at Chili’s (not my choice), we boarded a 747 for the flight to Tokyo. I hadn’t been on one for decades, I suppose, although the novelty of being on the storied aircraft wore off as soon as I passed the stairway. Since my seat assignment wasn’t upstairs, who cares?

The international airport at Tokyo Narita is similar to every other large international airport, except that there’re more Japanese in attendance. With each successive meter we progressed away from it, things got progressively weirder. Such is the nature of Japan. We caught an earlier flight to Hiroshima, caught it barely in time, and had to be escorted through security and to the bus that would take us to the plane. On that bus was another of our crew, who was flying in through Singapore. He’d been here before, and I hoped he remembered how we figure out the final legs.

He didn’t.

The Hiroshima flight was half full, but all of the seats were assigned from front to rear, leaving the back of the plane empty, which is where I relocated once we were in the air. By this time, I’d been up for 22 hours and still couldn’t sleep, so I watched the clouds go past, and then counted golf courses once the cloud cover broke. It’s obvious how little space there is here. Cars are really small. Hotel rooms are really small. Compared to Americans, the Japanese are really small. Available land is really small, yet I could see golf course after golf course from the plane. As one disappeared from view, we’d start to pass over the next.

In Hiroshima, I pulled 10,000 Yen from an ugly teller, and got a single crisp, new bill. With each purchase thus far, the bills have been perfect, crisp and new. The coins are well circulated, from a single yen to 500 Yen, about seven bucks. The bills start at 1,000 Yen. I also got a well travelled Where’s George? Dollar as change at the base coffee shop, but won’t release it until I’m back CONUS.

Approaching the 24 hour point in any trip my wits are flagging, yet most critical. If I can’t wrap my sleep deprived noggin around the logistics, I’ll end up on some disputed island in the Sea of Japan, instead of in my cozy business hotel room. So very carefully, my crisp 10,000 Yen note went into the bus fare vending machine and not the soda and beer vending machine right next to it, or was it a bento box fish and rice vending machine? I can’t remember.

The further away from Tokyo you get, the less English you’ll encounter, be it people who can speak the language or dual language signage, so selecting the right bus could be stressful. However, if you can mostly pronounce the destination to a local, it all works out in the end, and we found ourselves still at Hiroshima, but 40 minutes away at the train station. There, we had our choices between trains and train lines, ticket tellers or ticket vending machines, and three levels of trains, one of which might take us to Iwakuni at 100 miles per hour or in the complete opposite direction at the same velocity. In retrospect, we should have taken the local train instead of the bullet train, as it would have brought us to the station a two minute walk from our hotel, instead of the station a twenty minute cab ride away from the hotel. The train was cool, though.

Anyway, I made it alive and unscathed and in bed in only 27 hours, ready to face whatever arises, for example, the really small hotel room, and the really, really small bathroom in the really small hotel room.

The first thing you notice is the electro-mechanical toilet.

Pause.

The next is the faucet on the sink, which is long and moveable, like the one in your kitchen. This is so that it can be swung over to fill the bathtub. The shower wand also runs off of the sink tap, so there’s just one set of controls. The tub is almost as deep as it is long, and it’s not much long to start. The room is efficient, compact and serviceable, and included a cool Japanese robe and slippers, the better to wear while heading downstairs for a steam.

We went to dinner last night, to a place that was a Korean-bred fusion of a fondue joint and a grill your own steak place. Shoeless and crammed around a low table, we ordered the Full Satisfaction Meal. This provided us with as much beer as we could consume and as much meat as we could cram down our collective gullets in 90 minutes.

Immediately, charcoal braziers were dropped into holes built into the table. Seconds later, we were surrounded by beer. Just after that, small plates of meat arrived – various cuts of beef, chicken and seafood. Our job was to grill the food and eat the food, drink the beer and order more beer, and continue this process for an hour and a half, at which time we’d be served a small bowl of ice cream, signifying the effort’s completion. There was salad, too, if I recall, but the bowls of kimchee, cabbage, and greens were lost in the flurry of carnivoracity.

Most of the dining here is more sedate. There’s plenty of rice and noodles, of course, and some thick brown curries. Breakfasts have been at the hotel buffet, where they’ll have eggs in some shape, rice, noodles, fish, curry, fermented soybeans, orange juice and coffee. Lunches we have on base at the food court, where I stop at the local place for Asian food, while the bulk of my crew eats at KFC, Subway, or Taco Bell. I don’t understand it, but that’s what they do. My first dinner in Japan was from the local 7-11, including some hot skewers of meat and a bento box of buckwheat noodles.

Surprisingly, it’s not all sushi, so I think I’ll survive the trip.
I’ll survive as long as I don’t go drinking with the client’s project manager every night, which I’d guess can easily get out of control. Recognizing this, I limited myself to three beers, a couple of shots of sake, and two songs at the karaoke bar. Seriously, what trip to Japan would be complete without participating in awful karaoke? At this particular location (and I don’t know why the others would be much different), a small wireless device was used to search the catalog, find a song and reserve a place in line, After that, the entire process was automated, so there was no need for an imaginary cape-wearing DJ. I chose a transportation themed tune by the Monkeys for my first outing, saving for my final number a dusty NOFX classic, “Seeing Double at the Triple Rock” (…when in Minnesota and you’ve got a drinking quota).

Immediately thereafter, we were presented with our bill. Coincidence? Hard to say.

The colors here are brighter on most things manmade, and big eyed cartoon imagery is everywhere; on clothing, billboards, television, and product packaging to name a few. Meanwhile, since roads are narrow and speeds are low, construction lanes closures are oftentimes delineated with a barrier of 2” pipe. At one local worksite, the pipe was supported by 30” big eyed, green plastic frogs at eight foot centers, each featuring a word balloon that says, “Sorry!” Our orange cones at home seem so impersonal by comparison.

Weirdest thing so far: this is work in the First World. How novel is that?

Next weirdest, Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni is an enduring base, and I see spouses and kids all over the place. On Saturday, the local Boy Scout troop was tramping about in their uniforms. We pass the elementary school and commissary on our way to the borrowed conference room, the community room of one of the family housing mid-rises. On base there are playgrounds, a skatepark and a bouncy bounce. It’s completely at odds with past experience.

Third weirdest, the local Hiroshima ball club are the Carp. I need to find a T-shirt.
Read More......