Boeing 747 was almost empty. Soon after taking off from Newark and eating delicious dinner, I extended myself to the two adjacent seats and fell asleep. I opened the eyes in several hours. It was right in the middle of the dark window: a huge white spot with a magnificent triangular tail. A comet passing this corner of the Universe and dragging away human lives without knowing that.
A two-hour stop in Alaska. One picturesque bunch of Korean Air stewardesses was replaced by another. 8 more hours of flying to Seoul. Russian pilots did not test their missiles that morning and our plane safely made it to Korea. More waiting and flying. Finally, I arrived to Kansai International Airport recently built on an artificial island in Osaka Bay. The fact that the island is artificial does not make it look more impressive. At the same time, the airport itself is beautiful and (unlike the most other places in Japan) spacious.
A high-speed ferry was quick and smooth. In thirty minutes I crossed the bay to find myself on Port Island. My Kobe Portopia Hotel looked like a gigantic lighter erected towards the skies.
The country is very clean and neat. And surprisingly peaceful. I
did not see expected rushing and fussing. Life provided mostly pictures
of serenity: brightly dressed policemen friendly chatting with pedestrians;
girls strolling along very narrow streets; girls riding very small mopeds;
girls... Something must have been wrong with my age (and sex?) perception
- I felt as if eighty percent of people on streets were women between age
10 and 25.
About Japanese women - I found them quite attractive: slim, well-dressed, and polite. There was an impression that they were not sure in their beauty and even had some complex on this point. Anyhow admiration of the West was obvious; billboards were filled with European models. Retailers proudly posted big letters "MADE IN ITALY" in their shop windows. I failed to find an original Japanese T-shirt but there were mountains of clothes from Nike, Adidas, and Disney. Almost each building on main streets had something written in English. All this was happening in the environment where people do not speak English. One girl was quite fluent, several other people spoke quite decently but the vast majority could not say a word (maybe, except "OK" and "good").
Fortunately, the language barrier did not cause a lot of trouble. Pointing to myself and my camera were enough to bring back three films filled with images of me and Japan as a background. Besides, Arabic digits are usually used to represent numbers and this furnished quite a bit of information. For instance, when the menu in a restaurant looked no more than a bunch of funny symbols (what usually was the case), it was sufficient to take a waitress out on the street and point into a dish on the restaurant window.
Cellular phones everywhere: streets, hotels, bars, shops, trains, tops of mountains. Everybody was talking over a cellular phone. I had a feeling that a Japanese chatted more wirelessly rather than via ordinary phones.
Night life in Kobe was strange. The downtown was packed with people. But
the only things one could do there were eating and gambling. A neon-lighted
mix of restaurants and rooms of one-arm bandits.
One day I went to Kyoto and managed to take a wrong train. Even though
each station let you know its English name, not every station had a map
(specially in English). When I realized that my train headed too much to
the East, I jumped out. It took some time of riding along Osaka loop line,
before I boarded a fast train to Kyoto. As a result, the travel took more
than twice of expected 50 minutes. A couple of Buddhist temples, Nijo
Castle (Shoguns' residence), Kyoto Imperial Palace. Huge buildings made
entirely from wood. My feet definitely appreciated the tradition of
taking shoes off when entering such places: it gave them a chance to
rest from new tight Reebok's. On the way back, I took Shinkansen, a
"bullet-train" able to make 300 km/h. That was amazing and unnatural.
Japan was passing me extremely fast, smoothly, and silently. As if a
movie was played on windows of this large aerodynamic worm. In less
than half an hour my body was delivered to Kobe.
In the morning of my departure, I took a cable car to climb on the top of a mountain pushing Kobe to the bay. Yet another picture of blooming Sakura trees. One of numerous paths lead me down along steep slopes. A herb garden, a waterfall, another one. One fantastic view after another, and you were never sure whether it's completely natural or human beings had allowed themselves to make some corrections.
Last looks at the modern Japanese architecture (slopes and balconies everywhere). A free shuttle to the hotel, lunch in a pseudo-European restaurant, shuttle to the ferry, sailing to Kansai Airport. 100 minutes of a flight to Korea, 100 minutes of waiting in Korea. Then long and tiresome (14 hours near to a Chinese girl who is an owner of a take-out in Brooklyn) flying to New York City. JFK meets us by rain. So, that's it... The counter is reset.
