S05 E07: Reconnect to disconnect


A few insignificant trips later (ARN day-trip, December weekend in HEL and a march weekend in MAD that most likely was cancelled as I can't find any pictures from it) we now write april 2014. Spring time equals Japan, and I am off for my yearly tradition to greet the springtime. Flights are CPH-PRG-HEL-NRT/KIC-ISG-OKA-ITM/KIX-HEL-CPH but there is much more than flying to this trip.

Reconnect
I think there is a running theme in my posting - people. Interesting people I observe on the road - I enjoy getting to know the world by watching what people say and do. And interesting people I meet and interact with on the road - never to be seen again but leaving lasting impressions.

But mostly I am alone. When I started travelling, that was a dream. Travelling alone became a way to disconnect from life and idiots. (Not the good kind of idiots, but those present in real life, at the office, in traffic and so on.)
But somewhere around here, in season 5, I started to feel I was missing out on something. Someone to share the crazy stories with.
That was one of the reasons I brought my brother to Japan in S5. While that was a good trip, it didn't work out exactly as I planned. I realised you have to have the exact same mindset or some of the benefits having a travel mate are lost.
So my longing for travel, as a tool to disconnect and get a second-life feeling, is still very much there - I just need someone with me to disconnect with. Can I populate that second life with some interesting people? That is episode 7.


But let me start with food.
Czech Airlines offers a salad, loaded with cheese and ham. Some fruit and a batch of traditional sturdy czech bread. You are not walking hungry off this plane.




I laugh at the champagne being kept off the ice in Prague.




Onboard the PRG-HEL flight I am handed a fresh copy of Huvustadsbladet (nothing beats a paper newspaper) and a menu card. The menu looks promising.



Am I hitting a sore spot here? Are you reminiscing the good old days? Where onboard service meant actual service and food? Well, a few warning signs of the future to come is soon to be found.

In those days, a 2 hour flight meant plenty of time, so I am offered a pre-dinner drink. I down a Nicolaus. The pretzels has some serious Lufthansa vibe, but I guess it is proper for the route. Now the entrée and that duck breast with Waldorf salad knows how to treat me right. Taste, freshness and composition. All good.




The main is a let-down. In a major swing to the cheap style, the cannelloni is the 2€ microwave fast food style, served in the plastic container and the film still on.



Now, having the film still on turns out to be valuable thing when I do this archaeology examination of business class travel in the old days. It allows me to spot the atrocity being perpetrated. Not only is it a 2€ frozen fast food. It is a 2€ meat-free frozen fast food. Well, to be exact, it is "pork-free". If you remember, this is just after the big horse-meat scandal was curbed, where a large number of food companies had to recall fastfood after is turned out that especially cheap frozen meat products was susceptible to criminal activity. "No pigs were hurt producing this pork" could have been a slogan. Sometimes authorities were able to trace the "beef" to horse meat stored in a polish freezer for 10 years. No one was convicted for the large scale fraud. But of course, the reputation of all frozen fastfood products was badly tarnished.
So there might be a logical explanation to the "No pork" label here. But clearly the "no meat" or "fake meat" food on Finnair didn't start just recently.



On to the HEL-NRT flight, order is restored. A falafel is the appetizer (wait a minute - isn't that meat-free too?!) but with a Finnair style gin blend (less than 20% tonic) everything goes. (Do note the plastic spoon to blend at your leisuire - the 80%-20% blend has a tendency to stratify)

Starter is well presented. Not sure the garlic bread was the perfect fit, but knowing it is now gone forever I cherish this moment. The old style salad and a nice Japanese touch with cold noodles in the marimekko cup.



Main is good too, but here is another of those warning signs. Buckwheat is making its entrance and I can clearly remember how it didn't play well with my internal system. After downing a decent cheese desert, I notice the poor cleaning / party feel of last flight. Oh, good old days!





Japan
This trip is meant for serious Cherry blossom viewing. It is all a bit blurred, because I can't track my movements. I was in japan for over 2 weeks of which 7 days was spent entirely riding trains with the JR pass. The guiding principle was to every day decide what place to visit the next day based on cherry blossom reports.

In my archinves, there is just a big collection of pictures. Pictures of cherry blossoms. And castles. And gardens. And castles with cherry blossom and gardens with castles and so on. A very nice collection of picture and I recognize everyone of them - "oh that is the garden after you turned left from the railway station". I just have no idea where each place is located.





Editors note - I've actually spent hours upon hours trying to retrace my steps. There are no hotel reservations in my archive (and hotels.com has deleted my history and all bonus nights, thank you very much). Most pictures does not have GPS track. Worldmate is defunct, so is checkmytrip. I can see I have some details stored in Tripcase, and while they still are happy to remember exactly how many minutes my Narita flight landed early, they have royally screwed up all other details. So great to see that technology can't be made to last even a few years...

In the end, it has come down to examine details of photos, where sometimes tickets, posters and streetsigns are visible and holds a clue to the location. In some cases, I've compared photos with Google street-view to pinpoint exactly where I've been.



Oh, that is the end of a long broad street in front of a railway station where you get off the tram and pass the underground to get to that nice castle...


Naturally, this is the underground square Shirochika in 1 Chome-1 Marunouchi, Kita Ward, Okayama. If you knew that, please apply for the positions as background researcher for my trip reporting.




There are still a few blanks in the middle, but to the best of my ability, this is the tour I took
Narita - Matsumoto - Nagano - Kanazawa - Toyama - Takayama - ??? - Kumamoto - Okayama - Takamatsu - Osaka - ITM - ISG - OKA - ITM - KIX - HEL




But the thing is - the locations themselves might not even be that important for this story. Because there are basically two important events that drives the story.

Half a year ago, in S05 E02, my brother and I was in Japan. We met some interesting people. And like you usually do, we exchanged contact information and wishes to keep in touch and to meet again. And like usually, you quickly lose contact as physical distance and real life interferes with the wishes and ambitions you had on the road.

However, in Japan reading the cherry blossom reports to plan where to go on the second day of this trip, I can't help but notice that one of those lost contacts is writing a trip report from Kanazawa. It looks nice and I decide to go there. I also decide to send an e-mail. Time has passed since we last spoke and it would be silly to count on her knowing who I am, so I start with
- I'm not sure you remember me, but ...

The reply is clear, though
- Of course I remember you...

and that kicks off a lively exchange. To be remembered 6 months after a random meeting feels good to me, and I decide this contact is a keeper.
So, back on stage, let's welcome Ms Sling with a warm round of applause!

There is no meet-up though. She has already left Kanazawa heading for a new site to report on and so I enjoy the Kanazawa castle ruins and the Kenrokuen park alone. But we certainly have reconnected and track each other the following days as we head to different but very similar places to enjoy every aspect of the cherry blossom season.

After Kanazawa I am heading to Takayama, to catch a very special festival. I clearly remember taking this picture being slightly nervous for the transfer from "Thunderbird 11" to "Hida 14", scheduled with a 6 minute interval in Toyama. I'm such a train rookie, 6 minutes is ple-e-enty of time. But at least the pic tells me where I was at a certain time.



As the Hida 14 rolls in to Takayama station, I quickly notice this place is different from all the other stations I've been to. Sure, it is a JR station and it looks and works exactly the same as every other JR station in Japan. But the small detail that captures my observation is the station call. "This is Takayama station" is heard over the PA, but not in the usual formal intonation. Instead it is melodic, like someone singing. This is fascinating, the classic way of being un-Japanese is so Japanese. Here, everything conforms to a certain standard. Except when it doesn't - and no one bats a lid.

Being a keen story teller, I can't help myself telling Ms Sling about this observation. She hasn't notice anything like that before, but as she is heading into Takayama a few days later, she'll be sure to check it out herself.
And that is the second important event of this episode. This observation of Japanese duality and my exact wording to describe it appears in her travel report a few days later. It annoys the crap out of me. I do like to tell a good story, I don't like it to be ripped off.

Now this person both entices me and annoys me. Is this a perfect storm brewing?