Day 2: Sunday 30 Jan 2011 (Heathrow to Tokyo)

 

We left Heathrow at midday and flew to Tokyo. Simon won the increasingly bitter struggle to drive us to the airport and amazingly Greg came all the way from Shaftesbury to see us off. It is not clear whether this was to wish us well or to make sure we actually left.

Clare still finds it inexplicable that the properties of the aerofoil kept us aloft for twelve hours. At thirty seven she either refuses to believe or is unwilling to understand the science. Our conversations routinely revolve around the improbability of an aluminium tube full of people being successfully propelled over Everest by flaming kerosene.

With the limbless man in the seat behind complaining loudly about the lack of leg room, we felt a bit bad about getting the over wing exit seats. Being next to the galley, we were served the in-flight meal first, even before the Jewish Vegetarian Celiac. Smugness on either count is not an attractive quality but sometimes it is hard to avoid.

Three movies, two meals, seven drinks and four serious attempts at sleep later we were landing at Tokyo Narita. Airports are all the same. The only difference was the overwhelming number of Japanese people and the offerings of the food concessions.

I adjusted to the food quicker than the lack of Western faces. When I say Western, I am not including Australians who seemed to outnumber even the Japanese. Even at passport control, the twang of Western Australia was palpable. By the time we got to the airport exit even the locals were looking a little worried. The Japanese, having a constitutional bar on behaviour falling below the standard of exceptional politeness, would never have actually said so, but you could see it in their inscrutable faces. They knew the game was up and it was with an evident sense of resignation that the station guard ushered us all politely aboard the Express to Tokyo Central.

Even Easy Jet would be embarrassed fly to Narita and call it Tokyo. After ninety minutes on an extremely quick train, we eased into Tokyo Central station precisely on time and I was left with the inescapable impression that Japan is a single mega city. Narita is urban congestion personified and between departure and arrival in the heart of Tokyo, there was an unbroken ribbon of development, as far as the eye could see through the haze. From Tokyo Central we caught the Bullet Train to Nagano, home of the 1998 Winter Olympics. It is not as quick as people say. Its faster and all without enough vibration to induce a ripple on the surface of your drink all the while looking no more threatening than a proctologist's instrument.

From Nagano we caught the bus to Hakuba that deposited us there, weary and slightly travel soiled. There is no snowline between Tokyo and Hakuba. Somehow the rest of Japan was largely snow free but our destination was three metres deep. 40cm fell that night before we arrived and it didn't take telepathy to sense the collective excitement when we arrived at Mount Hakuba Back Packer's Hostel in Echoland even if the manager David, expressed this through the medium of reproach, having ruined his knee a few short weeks into the season.

Clare went in hard when booking this hostel. Not only was it cheap by Hakuba standards but it was cold and a bit smelly with four hairy snow boarders to each eight by six room. I know now that she calculated that if I could take this, I could take anything. I only whimpered a little.

We met up by design with Victoria and Dirk at the very plush Momonoki Hotel and drank saki and ate terryaki. Dirk generously picked up the tab and we rolled home in the early hours. If there were pavements, they were metres beneath the snow.