It'd been a long time since I'd had a holiday away. In fact I hadn't even been of the island since about 1993, so this was certainly a big deal.
I spent the night before leaving Australia in Sydney, staying with an old friend and her flatmate. He was a big Van Der Graaf Generator fan, and had just organised to bring Peter Hammill to Sydney to play at some private function the day after I was leaving the country, which galled me a little bit, as I'd been wanting to see Hammill for about 15 years. Oh, well. Turns out this bloke is the drummer for the Hoodoo Gurus, so Guru's fans take note there is a closet early 70's progressive rock fan in your midst. There's nothing much I want to say about Sydney, except with typical finesse I managed to leave my passport in a taxi, and very nearly didn't get out of the country a) because I nearly didn't get the passport back, and b) because when I did get it back they didn;t bother to tell customs, who thought it was stolen. Other than we cruised down to Bondi Beach - one of the most famous few acres of sand in the world. It was the first time I'd been there since 1974, and all I could think was what a scrawny little thing it was compared with the vast, deserted beaches I get to visit. Sydney was recently voted the best city in the world to live in (as well as the No.1 favored place to be on new year's eve 1999, for some reason) - and not undeservedly so, but I'll take the beaches Tasmanian style, all the same.
On the flight to Japan I managed to end up between three very loud people. A middle-aged woman from New York in the row behind me, who made ascerbic remarks about everything, and two English lads in front of me, who drank continuously for 11 hours, and re-enacted their favourite scenes from 70's television shows, in between their embarressing attempts to seduce the Japanese flight attendants, who smiled along and showed comendable patience. A lot more patience, it should be said, than they showed with me when I insisted on ,looking out of the window instead of watching the in-flight movie. They kept shutting the window on me and indicating that I ought to be watching John Travolta, not the Coral Sea. This happened three or four times, until think I started making growling noises, and they gave up.
When we arrived in Narita (and stepped out into 30' C, and about 300% humidity - northern summer had begun for me!) the lady from New York introduced herself. She expressed a desire to get back to New York, where people are rude to you, instead of pretending to be nice, like they do in Japan.
Actually I think I struck Japan on a bad day, as many people behind counters seemed rather sullen, if not unfriendly. This was in contrast to the general populous, who seemed quite happy. Japanese people in Australia always seem quite happy and smiling too. Oh well. Maybe it was like the day I turned up in Melbourne, and everyone had just found out that Kennett had axed their un-claimed holiday pay. Not a good day to talk to a shop assistant.
I was only in Narita overnight: Long enough to note that the houses all have blue rooves (a dramatic contrast to landing in an Australian city, where you typically see acres of red tiled rooves). The foliage is exhuberant, and seemed everywhere to be trying to re-take the town.
The hotel at Narita was very large. There was an opportunity to try and find a bus into town before bed, but I'm a bit ashamed to admit I passed this up. I took out the plush and we relaxed on the bed for a while before crashing out.
Choosing the plush for the trip was pretty harrowing. I didn't want to leave anyone behind really, and I was nearly going to bring Luna, but she is just a little too big for a suitcase. I ended up bringing Sarsha, Beth, Dog and Puppy. Over the next month they were to meet a lot of people, and visit many places. Puppy in particular musthave travelled thousands of miles on the dash of various cars, both on this trip and the later one. By the end of the trip, this group of four plush had grown somewhat...
Well this has been by way of prelude. Next time round starts with day 1, and my first RL meeting with a fellow furry.
