16 November 2018
Deja Vu
Flying from Nagasaki to Tokyo on a JAL Boeing 737
I have returned back to Tokyo, land of things open at night, land of many trains that go to mountains, land of actual mountains rather than hills, land of Tokyo soup stock for healthy eating options rather than lard soup.
Before I BORINGLY recount the transport activities of the day allow me to summarise Nagasaki. I liked it. The views from the hills are fantastic. The weather probably influenced what I thought of it heavily. The bridge was great, I probably could do that a few times before I got bored. There were other hills to walk over and enjoy views but at night there was not much to do. The bomb stuff is ok, but underwhelming. If you went to Hiroshima or Nagasaki just to look at bomb related activities, I think you would be disappointed. Anyway, now for today.
The Nagasaki airport is nowhere near Nagasaki. It is also on a man made island in the sea and it also has no train going to it. THIS IS UNHEARD OF! Anyway, I think the Nagasaki city government sponsors the bus, because it was only $9 and it goes through some really really.....really long tunnels. More than half the journey is tunnels.
The airport is ok, it has a lot of shops for its small size and was quite busy. When I wandered in from the bus the check in counter was right. there. It took me a minute to convince myself this wasnt a pre check in check in where I get a number and directions to the check in, I just handed my bag and was done? I thought I might have been scammed by a fake JAL check in building that steals bags.
Now I was very early and had time for a coffee and some walking etc.
The flight today was fine also, a smaller 737 jet, completely full, no food etc, but no one near me seemed to have any kind of illness that might kill me, so that was a bonus.
Now to get from Haneda to Kanda, this was also very fast and easy, I took the monorail this time, and then its just 3 or 4 stops on the YAMANOTE line and my hotel is a very modern APA next to the station.
OK thats all matter of fact, lets now talk about the hotel check in. APA has these machines where they are trying to eliminate check in people, a person stands over you as you use it.
The first thing you do is scan your passport, this did not work. Eventually the guy standing over me took over, took a photograph of my passport on his personal phone and plugged that into the machine with a USB cable. I was already highly amused. Now I had to type in various information, but the touch screen would not work, he came around again to help, but it wasnt working for him either, 10 second delay on each key press. So he produces a keyboard and plugs that into the usb port.
Now its time for the credit card payment. It would not read my card at all. He pulls out a different credit card machine to take my payment, and then hacks the touch screen kiosk to tell it I have paid using something other than the kiosk via a service menu.
The final step is that its supposed to spit me our a room key. It made a grinding noise, and turned off! Check in helper guy just turned around and grabbed a key with a sticker of my room number on it from out of a box.
Not many photos today but I did make an effort to get some! I was awoken at 5:30AM so decided to get straight out of bed and run up another hill in the dark for a photo of the dawn. The first couple of stair cases I took ended in dead ends at shrines, so I took a dark shrine photo.
I was now a bit too late for the best of the red clouds when I found a view spot (its cloudy now) but I made the most of what was left of it.
Nice smooth clouds.
So many great spots to enjoy a view are ruined by wires and poles. Also people tend to build a big house with a private view enjoying area to prevent anyone else from enjoying the view.
Happy with making the most of my last chance for Nagasaki view, I descended back down for breakfast, and spotted this crane under the bridge. This reminded me, a couple of nights ago I took a photo of a dark river and theres a crane in that photo also. I am offering a reward if you can spot it and tell me the number of the photo in the comments.
OK, heres something unusual! In many respects. This is actually a photo from my phone, I went to the effort of importing it and including it in the export to my website etc because I got feedback it was awesome. The other unusual thing is the aisle seats. As you board this bus and the normal seats are full, you fold down an extra seat that hangs off the normal seats and sit in the aisle! This would make an evacuation in a fire very difficult! Luckily my bus did not catch fire but there have been numerous bus fires that killed almost everyone on board!
Btw, my skin is not that smooth or white. All Samsung phones selfie cams have beautification baked in that cannot be fully disabled. It is designed to make Asian (Korean) faces skinnier, smoother, and most alarmingly, whiter. Apple actually did the same thing and had to fix it with a patch...they chose not to fix it in Korea!
I was not planning to take this photo but I have a story. Before these kids assembled for this photo they did a very loud countdown for Santa to appear, even though he was standing next to the stage. So in Japanese 10, 9, 8.......,3 2, 1... you get the idea. Santa leaps on stage and starts waving etc. and the kids instinctively broke into a song sung to the tune of old Macdonald had a farm? Is that the default Japan xmas song?
The airport has a cool lookout, its on an island but there is a hill, so its not completely man made, they added onto a real island.
Those mountains across the water are the reason why the airport has to be in the sea. There is nowhere flat near Nagasaki. I proved that over the last few days.
Boring photo of departure area shops.
I was early enough to appreciate all the attractions, included these 3 tyres! You may joke but I was very interested in how the smaller jets and larger jets have almost the same size tyres, the larger jets just have a lot more of them.
Now here is my APA in Kanda, which is the station between Akihabara and Tokyo. It is very new and modern. Theres a huge tv taking up the entire wall at the foot of the bed. It is probably the biggest APA room I ever stayed in actually. Cheap too! About $100 a night on average even though its Tokyo and includes a weekend.
It also has a view of the Skytree. I dont know how this photo worked out as well as it did because my room window does not open so this was shot through glass. The glass also has fine wire mesh running through it, but you cant see it at all in the photo. I dont get it at all. I guess with the huge lens stopped down to f6.3 the aperture is small enough to miss those wires. OK thats enough boring photography talk, I have a lot of steps to get this evening!