Most airports I arrive at have one thing in common – chaos – albeit due to the fact that most of the countries I go to are on the verge of war, famine, poverty, a bit all three or I have landed in Dublin. Usually, you cannot move in these airports without being pounced on by porters, collared by cabbies or harangued by hoteliers, Tokyo airport is different, very different, everything is calm, everything is ordered, everything is clean, everything is just thoroughly pleasant.
I even received by first bow as I was going through customs. Nothing major but it was certainly a 10-degree lean forward on the bow-o-meter and I was more than happy with that just for showing my passport. I spent an hour in the airport just wandering around before I even considered getting the train into town.
The lady at the ticket window told me the train would arrive in central Tokyo at 10.24 it hurtled along the track at break-neck speed in almost complete silence and arrived at 10.23 and 47 seconds. Not quite on time, but pretty bloody close, I'll give her that.
I am liking this country already.
My hotel room was a little on the small size (a suite to use it's Japanese title) but the highlight of my day came when I went to the bathroom and was greeted with a control panel the like of which I have not seen since Chewbacca sat at the flight deck of the Millennium Falcon.
The panel had 14 different buttons and was for nothing more than controlling the toilet seat, amongst the options at my disposal were; front-directional water jet, rear-directional water jet, water-speed controller (this came as a bit of a shock when I discovered it), water temperature controller, seat heat controller, deodoriser and pop-corn maker.
One of the above is not true – but just one, imagine!
I am loving this country.
No comments:
Post a Comment