The Trip to Japan
It has now been two weeks since my last entry. I have been busy! Even keeping up notes to write up later has been a colossal challenge. Conferences tend to involve a lot of early mornings and late nights, and the touring around that I have done outside of the conference has likewise left little time for journalling. One of the friends travelling with me has been writing in a paper diary while we travel, but I tend to get motion sickness if I try to do that sort of thing, so it has been all on the computer.
So, back to the story.
I woke early on Saturday (the 26th), as was necessary, but as usual I did not get out of bed quickly. I did not linger long, but even still I wound up leaving with about five minutes until the shuttle was to arrive at my pickup point. I saw it across the block and ran -- uphill! -- and arrived, panting and sweating, to get my stuff in. And then the bus driver announced that the bus was going to wait for five to ten minutes because it was early. Aargh!!
The ride was somewhat different from previous. Usually the bus drivers keep to themselves, with some music on the radio, and the passengers are left to their own thoughts and conversations. This fellow, on the other hand, had the BBC World Service on the radio, which was interesting and pertinent to me since I was about to leave the country, and every so often would turn it down to announce something about the things we were passing by. For one thing, the flagship of the Canadian Navy was in Halifax Harbour for Canada Day; for another, the lupins were in bloom. It was a little odd, but I appreciated it. The former datum was rather ironic, since the driver was explaining that the boat would be open for the public to view on the next day to a bunch of people who were all about to fly out of the city!
I got to the airport early, which is always a good thing. I elected to get a 'virtual ticket' from the self check-in kiosk thingy, which it said it would e-mail to me. It did not explain that this system works only for people with cellphones or equivalent devices. This was pointed out to me when I went to the counter to get my seat changed, and I got a paper boarding pass from there. Good thing the kiosk thingy gave me an undesirable seat!
The airplane was a recent one, with seatback video and outlets, so I got to use my computer on the way. This was a good thing, as I went through my slides for my upcoming presentation. It was an amazingly productive flight; I had more to do than I had anticipated (which is of course always how these things go) and managed to stay focussed and efficient throughout. I did not finish the slides on this flight, but I got them to the point where the rest of the work would be fairly obvious.
The airplane landed in Calgary, and then went on to Vancouver, where I had a two-and-a-half hour layover. It turned out to be rather less than that, as we were flying against the wind the whole way, but it was still a large amount of time. The day before I had arranged to take advantage of that by meeting an online friend at the airport. This was odd in its utter lack of oddness: it was like we had known each other for years. In fact, we had, but the fact that it did not feel as though we had never before met was still striking to me. My friend was wearing a UBC Botany T-shirt ("Never mind the animals", it said across the bottom) which I liked; she said that she had to show her geekiness, at which point I pulled aside the long-sleeved button-down shirt I was wearing like a jacket to show the logo on my ISEP T-shirt. It was a good time, and we took pictures. She is a protist geek, so we talked shop a fair amount -- but when one is in science, that is often what one does for fun. Geeks all around!
Too soon, the time was over, and I headed back to the plane. Of course, I had to go through the security rigamarole to get back to the terminal, and as a result I arrived at the gate just as they were making their last call for boarding. I ran, leaving me hot and out of breath, but on the plane, which was the important thing.
This flight picked up where the previous one left off, and I was once again very productive. I finished my slides and moved on to another project, revisions for a paper for what is for me a side project. I had little substantive to say about it but caught a number of technical errors in the methods section, which is of course why papers get revised heavily before being sent out. As I worked I took advantage of the airline's in-flight entertainment system, listening to a variety of music that I normally would not go out of my way to find. Oddly enough, most of it turned out to be recent dance music. The flight was slightly surreal in that it just kept going on and on and on, and it was always bright outside. We were of course flying with the sun, over the Pacific Ocean, so there was only a vast expanse of water to see, always with the sun shining overhead. I got this only in glimpses, as the flight attendants had us keep our shades down so passengers could sleep if they wanted, and as a result it was always a bit surprising to crack the shade open and find it really really bright outside.
I checked outside again as we were descending, and was surprised at the scenery. Japan is, as I had known, an archipelago of volcanic islands, meaning that is a rather rumply country, but I was not expecting all of the rumply bits to be green. Japan is also lush, covered in greenery. As we got closer, I could tell that the trees were foreign to me: deciduous, but dark like conifers. Wow, I thought, this is another continent!
We landed, and then had to wait for half an hour for a gate to open up at the airport. We were all a bit impatient by then, and a baby on the plane had started screaming, but I was still in awe of the fact that I was in Asia. When we did get a gate, another fact about Japan hit me the moment I got out of the plane: Japan is humid. After the air-conditioned airplane it was like swimming through the atmosphere. Ick.
I bumped into another Dalhousie student attending the conference as we waited for the Customs window. She was supposed to have arrived an hour before me, which given the longer-than-planned flight and its further delay in getting to the gate should have meant about two hours ahead of me. Then again, her flight had had to deal with the same headwinds and terminal delays as mine. In any event, it was a happy meeting, and very nice (for each of us, I believe) not to be alone in a country with a different language and alphabet. As it turned out, English signage was everywhere, and we were more confused by the airport layout itself than by anything else.
We had reservations for the airport hotel, which unlike North American hotels was quite reasonable in price, and also unlike North American hotels was not especially close to the airport. Fortunately, there was a shuttle to it, which we found with minimal drama. The hotel itself was very English-friendly. The rooms were, as we expected, small, but hardly uncomfortably so: 'cozy' would be a good word. They also had what was to me an odd and unexpected feature in that the electricity to the room (aside from clocks and refrigerators) was switched on by inserting the keyfob into a slot near the door. The bathrooms were slightly raised from the rest of the room, with a plastic floor that rose up about ten centimetres on the edges, looking slightly prefab and science-fictiony. The toilets, as I had been told to expect, had built-in cleaning functions: one could get by without toilet paper if one wished, although at the risk of a slightly dampened seat of the pants!
I had started getting tired on the ride over to the hotel, and that snowballed afterward. It was about 7 pm local time (coincidentally, and conveniently, exactly 12 hours off from Halifax time!) when I flopped into bed, and ended a very long but very satisfying and exciting day.
So, back to the story.
I woke early on Saturday (the 26th), as was necessary, but as usual I did not get out of bed quickly. I did not linger long, but even still I wound up leaving with about five minutes until the shuttle was to arrive at my pickup point. I saw it across the block and ran -- uphill! -- and arrived, panting and sweating, to get my stuff in. And then the bus driver announced that the bus was going to wait for five to ten minutes because it was early. Aargh!!
The ride was somewhat different from previous. Usually the bus drivers keep to themselves, with some music on the radio, and the passengers are left to their own thoughts and conversations. This fellow, on the other hand, had the BBC World Service on the radio, which was interesting and pertinent to me since I was about to leave the country, and every so often would turn it down to announce something about the things we were passing by. For one thing, the flagship of the Canadian Navy was in Halifax Harbour for Canada Day; for another, the lupins were in bloom. It was a little odd, but I appreciated it. The former datum was rather ironic, since the driver was explaining that the boat would be open for the public to view on the next day to a bunch of people who were all about to fly out of the city!
I got to the airport early, which is always a good thing. I elected to get a 'virtual ticket' from the self check-in kiosk thingy, which it said it would e-mail to me. It did not explain that this system works only for people with cellphones or equivalent devices. This was pointed out to me when I went to the counter to get my seat changed, and I got a paper boarding pass from there. Good thing the kiosk thingy gave me an undesirable seat!
The airplane was a recent one, with seatback video and outlets, so I got to use my computer on the way. This was a good thing, as I went through my slides for my upcoming presentation. It was an amazingly productive flight; I had more to do than I had anticipated (which is of course always how these things go) and managed to stay focussed and efficient throughout. I did not finish the slides on this flight, but I got them to the point where the rest of the work would be fairly obvious.
The airplane landed in Calgary, and then went on to Vancouver, where I had a two-and-a-half hour layover. It turned out to be rather less than that, as we were flying against the wind the whole way, but it was still a large amount of time. The day before I had arranged to take advantage of that by meeting an online friend at the airport. This was odd in its utter lack of oddness: it was like we had known each other for years. In fact, we had, but the fact that it did not feel as though we had never before met was still striking to me. My friend was wearing a UBC Botany T-shirt ("Never mind the animals", it said across the bottom) which I liked; she said that she had to show her geekiness, at which point I pulled aside the long-sleeved button-down shirt I was wearing like a jacket to show the logo on my ISEP T-shirt. It was a good time, and we took pictures. She is a protist geek, so we talked shop a fair amount -- but when one is in science, that is often what one does for fun. Geeks all around!
Too soon, the time was over, and I headed back to the plane. Of course, I had to go through the security rigamarole to get back to the terminal, and as a result I arrived at the gate just as they were making their last call for boarding. I ran, leaving me hot and out of breath, but on the plane, which was the important thing.
This flight picked up where the previous one left off, and I was once again very productive. I finished my slides and moved on to another project, revisions for a paper for what is for me a side project. I had little substantive to say about it but caught a number of technical errors in the methods section, which is of course why papers get revised heavily before being sent out. As I worked I took advantage of the airline's in-flight entertainment system, listening to a variety of music that I normally would not go out of my way to find. Oddly enough, most of it turned out to be recent dance music. The flight was slightly surreal in that it just kept going on and on and on, and it was always bright outside. We were of course flying with the sun, over the Pacific Ocean, so there was only a vast expanse of water to see, always with the sun shining overhead. I got this only in glimpses, as the flight attendants had us keep our shades down so passengers could sleep if they wanted, and as a result it was always a bit surprising to crack the shade open and find it really really bright outside.
I checked outside again as we were descending, and was surprised at the scenery. Japan is, as I had known, an archipelago of volcanic islands, meaning that is a rather rumply country, but I was not expecting all of the rumply bits to be green. Japan is also lush, covered in greenery. As we got closer, I could tell that the trees were foreign to me: deciduous, but dark like conifers. Wow, I thought, this is another continent!
We landed, and then had to wait for half an hour for a gate to open up at the airport. We were all a bit impatient by then, and a baby on the plane had started screaming, but I was still in awe of the fact that I was in Asia. When we did get a gate, another fact about Japan hit me the moment I got out of the plane: Japan is humid. After the air-conditioned airplane it was like swimming through the atmosphere. Ick.
I bumped into another Dalhousie student attending the conference as we waited for the Customs window. She was supposed to have arrived an hour before me, which given the longer-than-planned flight and its further delay in getting to the gate should have meant about two hours ahead of me. Then again, her flight had had to deal with the same headwinds and terminal delays as mine. In any event, it was a happy meeting, and very nice (for each of us, I believe) not to be alone in a country with a different language and alphabet. As it turned out, English signage was everywhere, and we were more confused by the airport layout itself than by anything else.
We had reservations for the airport hotel, which unlike North American hotels was quite reasonable in price, and also unlike North American hotels was not especially close to the airport. Fortunately, there was a shuttle to it, which we found with minimal drama. The hotel itself was very English-friendly. The rooms were, as we expected, small, but hardly uncomfortably so: 'cozy' would be a good word. They also had what was to me an odd and unexpected feature in that the electricity to the room (aside from clocks and refrigerators) was switched on by inserting the keyfob into a slot near the door. The bathrooms were slightly raised from the rest of the room, with a plastic floor that rose up about ten centimetres on the edges, looking slightly prefab and science-fictiony. The toilets, as I had been told to expect, had built-in cleaning functions: one could get by without toilet paper if one wished, although at the risk of a slightly dampened seat of the pants!
I had started getting tired on the ride over to the hotel, and that snowballed afterward. It was about 7 pm local time (coincidentally, and conveniently, exactly 12 hours off from Halifax time!) when I flopped into bed, and ended a very long but very satisfying and exciting day.