I’d torn myself away from my home and my job so it seemed appropriate that there was no one sitting next to me. I was venturing into the unknown again, pretty much for the first time since I had arrived in Japan. I was in a melancholic mood, its odd the things we make ourselves to do.
When the plane landed though, melancholy fizzled it excitement. The view out of the window was just like any other airport but I was smiling to myself; finally life felt like a blank page again rather than just the slow winding down of chapters.
Waiting for my luggage I watched the television infomercials about how beautiful Hokkaido (the island I was now on) was. It seemed a bit pointless to show this in Hokkaido since everyone seeing it had clearly been convinced already but it did illuminate one interesting point of about Hokkaido that I hadn’t previously twigged. Hokkaido was to be the venue for the 2008 G8 World Summit, and it would begin in about a week.
It was a good thing I realised that because a policeman came straight up to me as soon as I got out of baggage reclaim. He didn’t speak much English and didn’t look like a policeman. The only way I knew that he was a policeman was because he held up his wallet with a big silver police emblem inside. I’d never seen one of those before, it’s a good thing I watch American movies because otherwise I might have said, “No thank you,” and walked away.
He was friendly in that, “I’m looking for reasons to imprison you,” sort of way where he knew how to keep me talking. After I had he written a few pages of notes about me he let me go explaining that it was increased security because of the G8.
On the way to the train into Sapporo there were dozens of posters about the Summit, Hokkaido was clearly very proud of itself.
I had three lifelines to support me on this trip: my guidebook to Japan, a notebook in which I scribbled everything I needed to know and finally my phone. My guidebook told me how to get the train into Sapporo but my notebook told me the name and address of the hotel. My guidebook then told me that there was a tourist information office in the station and then in my notebook I noted down which subway line I needed.
I was advised to take a subway train from the main station to where my hotel was. The problem with subway trains is that once you come back up to street level you have no idea where you are. In Tokyo there are often maps near the subway entrances but there were none around when I surfaced.
“Ok,” I said to myself, “I have to get used to this.” Just like we use postcode regions in the UK Japan divides districts into chomes. I needed chome number 11 and this was marked on one of the signs. It was quite a vague clue but it was good enough for me.
My hotel was called Lee something or other (because I have forgotten) and I found a hotel called Lee something or other (because I couldn’t read it). I went into the nice airconditioned reception and asked the man, “Is this hotel Lee something or other,” and he confirmed that it was and that they had been expecting me. So that was easy.
My room was on the seventh floor and with my key in my hand it all seemed very exciting. Now you can probably tell that I don’t stay in hotels very often and never before on my own. You as a seasoned hotel visitor probably know that all hotel rooms have the generic desk, bed, chair, TV and tiny shampoos. You know this and it has eroded whatever excitement you might have once felt. When you stay in a hotel room now you grade it between being a rabbit hutch, or a dog kennel, whether the view is of the back of a wall, or a car park.
But for me I smiled as I walked down the corridor, not seeing the cheap blue carpet below me or the smudged walls and stained ceiling around me. For I was counting numbers.
I even paused before putting the key in, then took a breath and.... There was a bed, a tv, a desk, chair, small shampoos and the view of a carpark. “I made it!” I exclaimed happily as I collapsed onto the uncomfortable bed. “I actually made it,” I said again smiling and pulling apart the thin curtains that could no more block light than solve crosswords. “I’m really here,” I grinned cheerfully at the view of the grey carpark on the grey road lined with grey buildings. I lay on the bed and closed my eyes still grinning, “Everythig is great.”
I napped, showered, changed and then made my way outside. I retraced my steps to the subway exit I had emerged from earlier that day. “Now I came out from here, but walked up those stairs when I got off the train, and it was on the left side so of the platform so it must have come from that direction,” I worked out pointing down the street to my right like the urban explorer I am.
I was right though; the main train station was at the end of the street hardly worth the subway ride at all.
In the middle of Sapporo is a large central park with a TV tower and most of its sites and amenities are near to this. It feels like quite a small city because, being a grid system, you can look down a street so far you think you might be looking into the future. I think its no coincidence that Godzilla was born from a country that uses the grid system. Wide straight roads that cut right through the city is just an invitation for a huge lizard to come out of the sea and stomp through Japan. I think Godzilla would get tired and give up in London’s streets and roundabouts.
I got to the TV tower at 9PM. I know this for certain because of this picture.
I called Yoko, who seemed to be just as impressed as I was that I had really made it. I think she was expecting me to be calling her every five minutes panicking and saying things like, “I can’t find the flush.”
Hunger and exhaustion were rapidly depleting my excitement. I walked around a bit further and found myself in streets blinking with neon signs and crowded with youths waiting outside clubs. Then there were establishments with pictures of women on the outside like a human menu, while seedy men stood on the pavement touting for custom. There was no risk of them trying to get me interested, not because I have a shining aura of innocence and purity about me, but because I am a foreigner. Aside from the language barrier there is a theory that Japanese people think foreigners are more likely to have AIDs than a Japanese person. Who knows whether this is true or not, I certainly wasn’t going to complain.
I sought sustenance at a convenience store, not at a restaurant. Since Japanese is so hard to read and vegetarian food so hard to find, convenience store came to mean restaurant to me during my trip. There were at least five different types of convenience store around so I could still ask myself, “Where am I going to eat tonight?”
Back in my hotel room I ate my dinner and then drifted into slumber. Ideally there would be a cliff-hanger ending here like, “But little did I know that the man hiding in the bathroom had just woken up.”
But there isn’t.
No comments:
Post a Comment