Tuesday, May 18, 2004
I hate turbulence. I can't stand it. I know some people find it fun, and I know that in general turbulence is harmless, but man... nothing freaks me out like turbulence. It's not a vomiting thing, just a heart thing. Turbulence makes my heart go absolutely nuts, and no matter how much I try to relax I can't.
I say this because the latter half of my flight was extremely turbulent. The first half was super-smooth, but suddenly it got a bit bumpy. For the most part, I kept calm and cool. Concerned, but calm. What unnerved me though was that it was the sort of turbulence that normally warrants the Fasten Seatbelt sign, but the captain didn't activate it. Was he too busy fighting it? Or was it not strong enough for him? Either way, I said that I didn't want to know what it would take for him to switch the light on. Naturally, the light then blinked on, and it got a LOT worse. We went every which way, left, right, up, down... look out the windows, and it's all thick cloud. Just unreal. It was pretty bad as we descended too, but thankfully they were high clouds only so it cut off around 3000 metres. If not, it might have rivalled Stockholm for my Worst Landing Ever...
One funny note for anyone who knows about Tokyo's Narita Airport: We were stuck for an hour in immigration, and as we waited a woman behind me said "Oh dear, this line is so long we might have to take a taxi to get into town on time." Taking a taxi from Narita is murder. There is absolutely no advantage to it. It's INCREDIBLY expensive (?20,000?), you get caught up in traffic, and it takes longer anyway. I took the Narita Express train with my uncle and sped into Tokyo Station within an hour or so. We went to his office first before they checked me into my hotel, the Villa Fontaine in Roppongi. It's basically a business travellers' hotel, so it's pretty comfy and bare-bones at the same time. For instance, there's a big bed, massage chair and free broadband access... but there's literally room for nothing else in here and the room service menu consists of a Domino's menu and a list of what you can get in the vending machine (including "Japanese Hotchpotch" and "Hash and Rice"). Still, I'm not exactly going to spend all my time in here, and the bathroom is at least pretty good, so no complaints really.
We went for yakitori dinner and a few drinks after I checked in, but otherwise it was pretty quiet. Roppongi itself seems pretty seedy, but I'm thankfully in a decent area not too far from the big new Roppongi Hills complex. I'm planning to check it out tomorrow, and will report back then!
Posted at 3:48 AM
