miamiflyer8

Thanks for another nice read!

ffay005

Oh, I liked this: "The call buttons is the last part to ever wear out on this A388". I've never flown First Class, not yet, and I hope to see whether this holds true when I take my first F flight one day.

I'd be happy to read S04. A welcome break to all the chaos going on right now.

intuition

S03 E09 continued

I arrive into OKA on A KA flight and it takes a really long time to get my bag. I only have a carry-on sized bag, but it is rather full and heavy, so for convenience I have checked it. Now I regret that.

I suddenly get a uneasy feeling I am watched. The bag collection area thins out and I am among the last ones to get my bag. There is no line at the customs inspection and the young female officer just asks me some simple questions. I answer and I immediately realise where this is heading. Full inspection. All very polite and humble, but still extremely formal and I sense this is really serious.

A thousand things rush through my mind. So that is why the bag took so long to come on the belt. They scanned it or sniffed it and for some reason there is something really illegal in my bag. I'm trying to remember if I've let it out of my sight during the trip. Did someone read my BP and decided I was a good candidate for a mule?

- Why have you travelled to Okinawa
- I am meeting my friend, Yukiko-san.
- Where dies she live?
- Eh.. Okinawa-city..
(She lives in Naha, but I am stressed out and not prepared for interrogation and )
- Can you open your bag for me?
I knew all along where this was heading, so the bag is on the desk already. Of course I open it.
- May I?

Like I said, she is strictly formal but very polite. She starts to carefully move my clothes around, searching the bag thoroughly. Suddenly I realise she is extremely uneasy too. Maybe she is pretty new at the job, maybe it is the invasion of my private sphere. I don't know, but the vibe she is sending is very apologetic and humble. Like I'm a shogun and she is a servant who mistakenly addressed me.
The search continues and finishes and ends with her repacking my bag carefully. A few more polite utterances and I am welcomed into Japan. I roll my bag into the arrivals hall in Naha, confused like so often in Japan. I just stand there for awhile trying to understand what just happened. I move on to the monorail terminal and challenged with the task of finding what fare I need to pay in the machine, I let go of the quest to understand.

I am bringing a small bottle of Lapponia Lakka Cloudberry liqueur. While I did get it off Helsinki airport taxfree, I feel this is just as typical Swedish as it is a Finnish drink and a nice and exotic present to bring.
My guide book have taught me the importance of bringing a gift, however not to bring knick-knacks as Japanese has very little space to keep stuff. Consumables are preferable and elaborate gift-wrapping is important. I spend some time in the kokusaidori covered street market and find some wrapping paper. And then I spend at least as much time in my hotel room trying to wrap the bottle ingeniously and elaborately.
I succeed so-so, but hey, don't they say intention and effort is what counts?

The next day I take the monorail to the end station Shuri and easily find my friends studio. I step inside and immediately recognize her from the online profile. OK, mission accomplished!

I am asked to sit down for tea and her husband shows up from nowhere. It gets a bit awkward and I wonder if he came by just to mark his territory. Anyway, I decide this is a good time to present the gift. I carefully hand it over using both hands (marking its importance) and say something polite in Japanese.
They take the gift and literally tear it open, without paying much attention to my elaborate wrapping. Dang - never trust the guide books!

I try to explain what the cloudberry is (but how can you explain this odd berry for someone who never tasted it?) As soon as they realise it has 21% alcohol they look happy though.
We do a tour of her gallery, I buy a print and she invites me to lunch. We are having a nice time, but a bit formal and we don't really hit it off.

I spend the rest of my allotted time in Naha, and thoroughly study the Shuri castle. And then, off to mainland to do some Sakura hanami!

I am impressed with the JL priority boarding, both how well they announce it and how everyone respects it.
This time in Tokyo my timing is slightly before max-opened blossoms and the crowding situation is much more workable.
I am staying in the Ueno area as before and I explore it in even more detail this time. I find a store in kitchen-town that has a large selection of cookie-molds the kind I used in childhood to bake gingerbread cookies. I look to get some and find this very elaborate one.



Japanese never ceases to amaze. The non-stop flow of busy business men pass me by as I am about to enter the metro. A man breaks free, halts and takes a snap of the cherry blossoms. A second later he enters the subway. I wait for my photo op and just minutes later it happens again and I manages to get this snap of the multifaceted Japan.




I wander the Hibiya park and find the replica of a Viking Rune stone, celebrating the first air route between Europe and Japan (SAS flying "over the north-pole" in february 1957). Apparently, "scandinavians" made the stone and shipped it to Japan as a gift.









* 'Scandinavians' means SAS, who were very early into polar flights. First ever commercial flight on a polar route was SAS flying CPH-LAX with DC6 in 1954. And in february 1957 they opened the First Europe-Japan route, via ANC! Yes, do check that route on a map. No flights over Russia in those cold war days.
SAS flying the newly developed extended range DC-7C ("Seven seas") on the polar route meant a travel time of measly 32 hours. I can't make up my mind if I would have loved to do such an adventure or would have died of boredom and noise. On youtube you can find actual passenger films of SAS DC-7C on this route, as well as KLM AMS-TYO with interiors and clips of city life in TYO in the 50's.

In the same park I discover the Japanese take on smokers' corner. There are no smokers in the park, because when you need a smoke they all without exception heads over to them smokers' corner. This is a small 4x3 meter dedicated space, surrounded by a 10 cm high "fence". Do note that not one but two smokers are breaking all the rules by standing just outside of the "enclosure"! Multifaceted indeed!





I discover the WasaBeef potato-chips and devour 2 bags for my stay-in dinner.






Back to Hong Kong
KE first check-in in Hong Kong has no problems interlining cross-alliances and tags my bags all the way to final. I am not prepared for such service, so I asked
- Can you check my bags onto this Frankfurt flight?
But she misunderstands my humble request and replies
- Oh, I assumed you wanted your bags to GOT, but wait a bit and I'll fix that!
- GOT? How did you...? Oh.. I mean GOT is just fine!
I don't even know how she found my connecting flight on a separate Lufthansa ticket. I don't think I told her upfront, but maybe she saw the booking ref in my travel binder I put on the desk.

Yes, I can really get used to F service!

However, she cannot produce boarding-passes for for LH. Which means some problems at ICN where I arrive early in the morning. I manage to talk myself through transfer security, as transfer desks are placed after security. However, arriving into ICN at 4:45 in the morning, they are not open. 4 hours later, at 09.05 they are still closed. One more our of waiting, I have my BP and more importantly my lounge pass!






I try to sleep a bit in a massage chair but it makes me really hot. I go to the shower and enjoy the plastic slippers 5 sizes too small for me. But they have hearts on them, so how can I not be OK with them?



2 hours pass and time to board Lufthansa back home.
Amenity kit is in tin foil box with celebratory design of LH new contribution to the fleet A380. But this is a regular A340. I realise the box is higly collectible and I make sure to bring it home.


(Later it mysteriously disappears from my ever growing collection of amenity kits. When I find finally it, it has been doing service as a pen box for years and is not in a pristine condition any more)


Meal service starts. Oh, they serve that bibimbap thing! Let's eat that again!

I am seated so I can sneak peek into first. The seat looks odd but very spacious. There is flower arrangement on the seat too. Dang, I knew it. Here I am in a perfectly fine business class cabin and all I can think of is that I should have been a few rows further to the front...



The attendant arrives with a basket of chocolate Easter bunnies. I grab two. I realise this is my easter holiday coming to an end.



Transfer in MUC is no better than FRA. Lines are long at security and they are extremely interested in my camera gear. Lens after lens is unpacked and visually inspected and I am asked to assist them removing lens caps and operate it into full f-stop so the office can look through the inside.

Driving the 3hour ride back from GOT airport to Malmö, I can look back on a grand trip and take comfort in that even if my flying life is over, I ended it with a bang!

intuition

Fourth season 2012-2013
----------------------
In season four, the storytelling will get a bit more rhapsodic. Memory is more hazy and with less novelty I guess less things makes an memory imprint. Travel also became a bit more family oriented and I guess some of the spice is gone - for now, I like to think. This season I won't make everything into a episode either.

The season total is 121 400 km BIS, and an impressive 91% of that in business class. Not bad for someone who thought flying life was over...

Season starts with a trip to CAN in july, for family reunion, to pick up some stuff and to move house even more than before.

Finnair doesn't serve CAN at this time, so I need to look outside the box. A mostly (to me at least) unknown and novel airline "Qatar Airways" does, and as they also offers decently priced one-ways (needed for some family members to join only on the homebound) it is an easy sell.
I am flying alone on the outbound and this allows me to experiment with routing. I've noticed pricing from Sweden is slightly better than pricing from my nearest airport CPH. OK, no worries, I can easily go to ARN to get the lower price. But of course, coming back with bags and an entourage, it surely will be easier to land in Denmark with only a short train ride back home.
I venture into the multi-city booking, and while I hate doing all the extra typing and clicking to get the interface working, I really enjoy the outcome. The open-jaw booking ARN-CAN-CPH results in an substantially lower price than any of the advertised campaign r/t fares. I try out a few other combinations, eager to learn if it was a fluke or a structural flaw in airline pricing. I guess it takes a few hours, but with a smile I realise I've found a strategy that can be used for future trips too.

Flight day has come, and I go to Stockholm by TF. In season 1 I had extensive experience with TF and I really enjoyed them, both for attitude onboard and simple pricing and ticketing.
Now, as a slightly more experienced high flyer, I am less impressed, but none-the-less it works. Seated next to me is a guy, I guess late 20's or early 30's and he is rather frolic. He constantly looks around and outside the window, almost like a kid flying for the first time. I strike up conversation, and it turns out he is flying for the very first time. And with a twist - he actually works for TF but has had zero flight experience!

Flying TF means I need to do a landside transfer BMA-ARN and while I am bag-less, I feel slightly annoyed and inconvenienced by this transfer. I'd rather sloth it out in the lounge!

My first flight with QR impresses. I had no special expectations choosing them, and with mostly Finnair to compare with, I now start to realise that all business class services are not created equal. Similiar A330, similar seat and cabin layout. But the food and drink service is way above.

What is often considered as a drawback of QR with hub in ME (the long flight into the hub) also allows for a very decent service. Surely unfair, but compared to a Finnair 2 hour narrow-body service, these 6 hours of the afternoon is a very very very nice way to start the trip.





I guess they catered this in Stockholm, but still very nice and surprising to be served breadbasket with Swedish butter with traditional imprint.


And then a starter



And then the main


And of course cheese-plate and new set of drinks


With a perfect afternoon dining, there is ample room for dessert.
I guess Finnair some 6 years later came up with the proper response - a cardboard packed rock-hard industry ice-cream with plastic spoon... No no. AY still has a very long way to go.




The transfer experience is less impressive, as this is the old Doha airport, with terminal buildings scattered over the apron area and runways shared with Qatari airfore. So it is stand arrival, and jam packed transfer buses (not cabin specific at this time!) that does loop traffic and has to take the long way around. However, they have done things to make it slightly less chaotic - tickets are in a colour coded folder and I was instructed to hold the folder visible at all times and staff will guide me correctly. They do, and I manage to get off the loop bus at the premium terminal.
After a pretty sweaty ride (both physically and emotionally) I am now on a long escalator going up and fresh coolness gradually relaxes me. At the end of the escalator I find myself introduced to the grandeur that signifies QR lounges.

QR keeps on impressing but nothing special to mention, other than I notice how very serious they are to protect the integrity and exclusiveness of the J cabin. When someone wanders into J from behind, a staff member appears from nowhere in seconds to discretely escort the wanderer back.


Arriving back home to Sweden, one of the new family member notices the white noisy birds in the sky and I get a bit of the Chinese mindset:
- What are those?
- Segulls!
- Cool! Can we catch one and fry it for dinner?

intuition

Season 04, episode 02 - Adorable fragility

In episode 2 we are skipping ahead a few months, until Christmas 2012. During the autumn there was a family trip to Paris but it would not add much to this particular story.

Christmas tradition with a trip to Australia to visit sister seems to have become the same habit as the spring trip to Japan, and I am doing a CPH-DIA(OTBD, old Doha int)-MEL this year. In my files though, the receipt of this trip has been lost and so I can't really account for how, when and why this trip came about, nor how much it cost. I am sure it was a bargain. And I am back on my new favourite QR.

While the travel bug has not bitten my new larger entourage, I'd say the new entourage has already affected my ability to travel freely. The trip duration is just 9 days in total, and with travel taking 3 whole days that leaves roughly just 6 days at destination.

My sister has moved house since last visit. They are now settled in a small town in Victoria, renting a house that features a decommissioned caboose as guest house. I settle quickly into both my accommodations and to small town laidback life.

Nephew has grown and is in a very active age. A highly appreciated daytrip for him is a visit to "the dredger" - a site of a dried-up creek where a Chinese company used to dredge for precious metals. Story goes, operations were not profitable and/or owners grew tired of it, so they just left machinery and went home. Now, years later, it has become a very special playground for kids of all ages. The nephew just marvels at the technology (while traces inside the vehicles shows older kids enjoy the site for a number of activities they'd probably like their parents no to know about).


The dredger










Anyway, a delightful trip but without enough originality to warrant space on FT. If it wasn't for the return flight.

Have you ever visited the pet shop without any intention of buying, only to succumb to the friendly eyes of a puppy and end up taking it home?
Well, me neither, but I am sure that puppy feeling is generally known and recognizable for all and I am sticking to it as the explanation (or possibly prevarication) for what happened.
OK, I need to get this down in detail for this drivel to make any sense.

I am in 3K on the B777-200LR from MEL. After sleeping I wake up to find there has been a change in staff and the right side of the cabin is now served by a flight attendant that immediately captures my attention. I can't really say what and why. But there is something that makes her stand out from the crew. QR crew are usually very nice but slightly robotic. They strive to give good service, but they are all made from template 1A. My experience so far is that they basically all look and behave the same - the consistent high service level just leaves no room for personality or a deeper connection with the passengers.

Maybe she is new on the job, maybe her background story is different, maybe it is her first shift in the J-cabin. I don't know, but there certainly is something. I can't really describe it, but I guess it starts with her being really proud of being in service and being on QR in the J cabin. Furthermore, she is as far from robotic you can come. She is that type of person that wears everything on the outside. There is no barrier to battle through, no mask hiding the true self. You gaze straight into her soul. You see the true, honest, innocent real deal upfront. And with that, the adorable fragility that just pulls you instinctively in.

Here is where the puppy feeling comes into play. I wasn't shopping, but suddenly all I can think about is how to take her home with me.

- Daddy, daddy, can I please take her home? Please, please please!!

OK, not possible out here in the real world, for a number of reasons, but if we just accept the analogy for what it is, ignore the unintended sexism lurking there and the fact that I just recently brought another puppy home with me, I guess this pretty much paints the picture of my infatuation.


In general, I am a bit careful with eye contact. Maybe this is a cultural thing too, but my feeling has always been that I can read people's mind through their eyes. I enjoy doing it a lot, but I've also realised that if I can do it others can probably do it to me too, so better to not give away too much! Keep those eyes slightly offset when I speak, and all my secret feelings will be hidden!

Also, this wouldn't be the first time flirting gone wrong, and I have read threads on the BAEC subforum where flight attendants basically tells the crowd "Don't do it - there isn't a pick-up line we haven't heard and besides, we don't come to your office to drop cheesy comments, do we?"

So the flirtatious road is bumpy and best avoided. Still, I am anxious to explore how deep this connection goes. How do I go about that? This question is on my mind as I enjoy the company of "my" flight attendant and for each interaction the urge to act grows stronger and stronger.

As I am sitting there, pondering how to best approach her, our eyes apparently lock on for an extended period of time. And of course, the theory about mind reading through eye contact is now proven, as she breaks the silence and says with an inviting smile:

- You are thinking about something, sir! Please tell me!
- eh...
I am still hesitant on what road to choose.
- Do tell! I can take it!
What?! Is she expecting a complaint!?
- Well, I just like to say how happy I am it is you who are serving me today!

Now, this might sound a bit tame in writing, but it worked well as a conveyor of the message that she really stood out in the crowd and that I was very happy with her entire appearance. The smile on her face shows how the message hit right in the heart.

And this is where it starts to go downhill. In an effort to even better show how well she meets and exceeds my expectations, she works harder, faster, better, stronger. Cue 'Daft Punk', the theme song of this episode...

There is now no end to the smiles, the offerings, the courtesy.
The attention is very nice, but it is over the top and frankly slightly annoying as the balance between us has shifted. This is no longer our soft secret connection; the two people whose paths randomly crossed; two objects that got caught up in each other's gravity and started to intertwine. There is now a tiny dissonance in the cosmic serendipity, a taint of master/servant, and looking back I almost wish I gone down the more flirtatious road instead - those bumps I know how to handle!

Still, this is a minor issue. Just a small smudge on cloud nine, where life to 99,9% is in blissful pink.

I'm eating a phenomenal shrimp cocktail. They are individually prepared, served in small glass bowls from a waiter's tray. With some pink champagne I imagine it slid down the oesophagus very quickly, to the complete delight of my flight attendant. With one down, and happiness on my face, logic has it there is an easy way for her to double my happiness. So she is quickly there to ask me if I'd like another one. I agree and she hurries back to the galley and returns with the tray where the last bowl of cocktail sits in majestic solitude.

Harder, better, faster, stronger - she is now in overdrive.
Yes, harder, better, stronger, but above all faster. Too fast, as it turns out, because when she returns from the galley in supersonic speed, she is like Mika Häkkinen breaking very late on the corner. As she breaks late and hard not to overshoot row 3, the inertia of the majestic cocktail-bowl makes it slide along the tray. It hesitates a fraction of a second at the edge, but finally decides to free itself with a somersault, up-and-away, it defies gravity for a full second before it needs to divert to the airport of my left leg, where it does a spectacular belly-up crash landing.

My reaction is ... anger?
It surprises myself, and perhaps the reaction comes partly from tiredness of a long trip and partly from the fact that I travel lightly and have no change of clothes in the carry on. Or because I'm free-falling from cloud nine and the ground looks very hard.

I manage to keep my exterior decently calm. She apologizes profusely, fetches some table linens to help salvage the wreckage and does a pretty good job. The purser arrives on the scene and after a quick assessment insist on me removing the pants so she can work some magic on the stain.

Pantless in the restroom at 10 000+ meters altitude, I think the readership can agree with me we'd all rather be singing that other Daft Punk song ("Get lucky"), if only it had been released at the time...
Hand-signals from the purser through the door slit tells me there won't be any such singing today. While the shrimp cocktail perished in the accident, she happily informs me that there were no casualties on the ground - My pants have been recovered and only minor signs tell there ever was an accident.

Pants go back on and I go back to row 3. Everything else should also go back to as it were before, right? But the spell is broken. We are into robotic interactions. I want to reach out and say "everything is OK" or "don't worry, stuff happens" but somehow I can't make myself do it. There is no opening for it when in robotic mode. Shields are up, and you can't easily mend when something fragile got broken. Besides, there is a lingering feeling of guilt as I clearly put the pressure on her - and got angry with the result. So we fly on, with that mask on that does polite smiles very well but shows little else.


After the flight, I still can't let it go. Not only the strong connection that got lost, but also my failure to reach out, either directly to her or to the purser.
This feeling lingers for years. Every time I read about QR staff having difficult working conditions, getting unfairly disciplined or discharged, I am back in my guilt-trap. I cannot help but think about her and worry what happened. If there is a moral to the story, it is to mend things when you can.



Epilogue
Many years later I am thunderstruck. I am on one of all those QR flights from somewhere to anywhere and think I see her, working the other aisle. Older and less open/warm, but there is an air of something I recognize. I have a very poor memory for faces. Still, my intuition screams it is her, and I guess my memory is better wired to store demeanour and body language than physical attributes. The more I watch her work the more convinced I get. I sit and watch her furtively, while I ponder how to best approach her. Wow, that same dilemma all over again!

-Excuse me, did we meet on a Melbourne flight years ago when you dropped a shrimp cocktail in my lap? I am so glad you didn't get fired and that there is a bit of your adorable but fragile puppyness left!

Well, I play that conversation out in my mind multiple times and I just can't find a way to phrase it without being a candidate for the Nobel prize in cheesiness. And/or in lunacy. Despite waiting for this moment for years, I chicken out. I have to let this go, or I'll go crazy. I convince myself my intuition is suffering from confirmation bias and that this in fact is a completely different person.

Doumo arigatou, Mr Roboto. ;(




Post scriptum
Stuff happens! All is forgiven. Please come home!

intuition

Season 04, episode 03
The season stories so far has covered almost every trip but I will skip ahead a bit now. Partly because the first years were the most remarkable and partly because memory becomes more hazy when you visit the same place for the umpteenth time. Also, some trips have already been reported on and to prevent myself from committing perjury I better not try to write those stories again...

For Chinese new year I went to HKG and CAN. Lantern festival was nice, but not much on that trip is worth a mention on FT. Perhaps the taking revenge on the "rats of the air" is - eating everything on the menu at the local dove shack, where they serve anything from Dove risotto to salted fried dove. Good to know the menace of the air can be useful, but I am glad I never asked where the doves came from.


Easter 2013 I went to Japan for my usual Sakura holiday and it became A Finnair irrop story.

Let's skip ahead:

Season ending - Hitting it off in Okinawa
Where in I actually start to book open-jaws and I make my first ever positioning flight.

June 2013
Up to this point, I was rather a vanilla flyer. Sure, I did fly a lot more than the regular guy, but I did so mostly by vanilla return tickets.
Somewhere around this time, there was a change in AY+ earnings table. Europe got split up in "Northern Europe" (basically Scandinavia) and "Europe". Before the split, all European Scandinavian flights had a 1500 points basis, making a trivial r/t GOT-HEL e.g. earning a very decent 7500 points. The new table decreased base points to 1000 for Northern Europe, and while the new band structure for longhaul destinations in some cases compensated for the change, it irked me. Or perhaps better put, the flip side of it allured me: While earnings in northern Europe was lowered, the rest of Europe increased to a 2000 points basis, ie 10k for a J return. A simple ... how should I put this ... re-positioning of myself to "Europe" before take-off would improve the end result by as much as 5 000 points.

I ended up with a PRG-HKG/BKK-AMS on Finnair. Once that was booked I got a DY to PRG and SK from AMS to make sure my body was in the right place at the right time (the so called positioning). Of course I made the rookie mistake not to check the positioning before buying the longhaul. Positioning can be pricey and/or add long layovers, but I guess I was motivated by principle to really do this. In the end, the cost wasn't horrendous and schedule not bad but there was a moment of "stupid me" before I found the right positions.
Receipts are gone, but I am pretty sure I fell in love with PRG already when booking: CZK pegged to EUR was a dream when SEK was strong. Combined with the ≈36k CZK J-fare to HKG and an open jaw.. need I say more?

OK, let's see if I can relay out of HKG in some interesting way. Well, yes, how about going to Okinawa? That is always fun. There is of course the direct 2h flight, but who in their right mind wants to pay the premium associated with directs? Ah see, I told you so! This CX codeshare on JL via HND is much cheaper! And it is just 3 times longer.

OK, one more hole in my itinerary (HKG-BKK) to plug. Let's sample some more airlines. Don't do a vanilla CX flight, when you can sample a RJ x-freedom flight on the HKG-BKK route. (I seriously did look at relaying via Australia. Sometimes it works but not this time around).

OK, itinerary done: CPH-PRG-HEL-HKG-HND-OKA-HKG-BKK-HEL-AMS-CPH. Let's go fly!

Leg 1:
DY is not too bad, I like the leather seats. I try to get the free wi-fi working but log-on is so slow I just manage to get online (outside their portal) when it is time to prepare the cabin for landing.

Leg 2:
PRG-HEL is a winner in many ways. One is that they still have the menu cards I've missed so much!





Also, the 2 hours flight is just long enough for me to enjoy the service fully. (the Nordic flights are just a bit short for a slow drinker)
Tomato mozzarella starter is lovely.



This is also the time when the barter deal with Marimekko started and menus and china draws some attention. I get mixed feelings about the project (mostly because the inconsistency with not all elements getting design makeover) but snap a few pics anyway.



Alone in C cabin, so I can snap pics of the marimekko head rests.



HEL lounge is depleted. In these days it was rather poorly run. Food items not replenished, mess not cleaned.






Anyway, AY69 is soon ready and I will enjoy a proper meal onboard. I'm a bit exited, I have pre-ordered the novelty "Chef's delight?" which is a sausage mix. The designed for you concept has been going on for awhile by now, but this is my first non-reindeer try of the concept.

Onboard, the FA comes by and ask my meal preferences.
- Well, I have a pre-order. So that is my preference!
- Oh, I didn't know.

She goes away, and comes back.
- We don't have your pre-order loaded. So what do you like from the menu?

I get pretty annoyed and just pick something. What was an exciting positive thing, to get a special treat, turned into a service failure and a disappointment. I alwyas thought that failing to deliver something extra is always worse than actually never offer anything extra and I'm proven right.

Meal service is now actually starting and something strange is going on. I am not served a meal. I am getting more agitated and am just about to ask for the purser when the FA arrives with a foiled covered plate.
- We managed to recover a meal for you, says the FA and makes it sound like someone else had to give up on it (possibly a staff member) and the foil on top even looks like maybe it has been removed and replaced again.
It is all very odd, there even is a sticker on the foil with my name on it so not sure how it could have been "lost". Meal presentation is very poor, but the taste is actually really good. It doesn't appear to be too much of a second-hand meal, so I devour it.



One of my office friends has started to post pictures of his Stan Smiths in variuos positions; Under the desk ("hard at work"), on the commuter train ("Going home"), at the liqour store ("TGIF"). I annoy the hell out of him letting my brand new, 7,5€ basket-sneakers-wanna-be pose in places like in the shoe-box of A330 ("Going home") and from 33.rd floor looking down on the skyscrapers of Hong Kong ("Hard at work") eating ("Out for lunch")[PICx3]
I win!

Out for lunch!





TGIF!

Going home!




HKG is good to me like always and I spend a night in my beloved Wanchai. The next day I enjoy the detour HKG-HND-OKA. No memories other than the plane is large and old, JL service consistently good but not anything extra.


Back in Okinawa, I got in contact with my friend. Last time was a bit stiff, but this time there is a better flow to things. The cloudberry liqour turned out to be a hit. While the adults found it to be "a little bit" (chotto... the polite expression for turning down something without giving a reason and thus without offending!), it hit home with the teen daughter.


My friend suggests a itzakaya and asks if I mind if they bring a few other friends along?
The evening turns out very nicely and we are a party of six people.
When the night is nearing the end my friend has unnoticeable handled payment and we find ourselves leaving the restaurant without ever knowing when the bill came, how large it was and without any chance of even trying to "go dutch".


Just a simple meal at the local eatery...














It turns out that the other couple stays in the same hotel as me and we can share a taxi back. I am thinking "what are the odds two out-of-towners ending up at the same party have chose the same hotel" and only years later do I realise that was not a coincidence but planned...
For years to come Okinawa will be part of all my Japanese trips and on one of those visits they will tell me that cloudberry turned out to not be there thing, but they gave the bottle to their daughter who became hooked on the stuff. So I guess I am guilty of corrupting a teen. But can cloudberry really be seen as something bad?

Returning to HKG on KA, I get a "seat-upgrade", ie is allowed to pick a seat in the business cabin where I am alone. I think I'm getting Y meal, but it looks like they are "plating" it for a bit of a business class feel. Even the coffee milk looks at me with a happy duckie-face!








My first trip on RJ is a let down. Initially, I like the cabin. Despite being 2-2-2 the leather seats in sand/brown is a nice break from what I'm used to, and FA and purser is dressed in remarkable colourful outfits. However, it turns out meal service is really poor on this segment, probably adapted to the fact that most travellers are with them for the entire trip to AMM. To add insult to injury, the purser chooses to hang with the super-social Aussies in 1A and B the entire flight. And I mean the entire flight. And it is not just that they want to monopolize her time, she is very keen on sharing all and everything with them regarding her own time in Australia. It is extremely unprofessional.




In BKK I do have a overnight. But I know nothing about Thailand and have no interest in finding out either. Besides, the flight out is pretty early. So I have booked the hotel nearest to the airport that has a pick-up service. It takes quite awhile to find the pick-up car and I arrive very late into the hotel. Only to find out that even here, far from city center, there are some party people going all night, but ear plugs gets me through it.


Departing BKK, I am invited to "Lois Tavern First Class Golden" lounge. First and Golden by name but it really is a dump. Sure, compared to my last visit (S01!) I have no walk of shame between lounges that rejects me, and is directed to take the elevator to heaven...eh sorry the First section. I ride the tiny elevator only to find that upstairs has the exact same meagre offer as downstairs. The aircon is broken, and with the open plan and hot air rising, top floor is sauna-like. I endure it for awhile, but makes a decision to jump ship. There is only so much First and Golden I can take. CX lounge isn't far away and while not very well stocked either, real Hong Kong dumplings and working air condition wins every time.




On the flight home I can't ignore how worn the Finnair planes are and take some pics of that too. Food is nice though.

Courmisch

I don't remember European destinations earning 1,500 points. Rather I remember that before the zoning system was introduced, earnings were based on kilometerage, with few exceptions being fixed like HEL<->AMS.

intuition

Good point. Some were distance and some were fixed:



I believe that system had incorporated some extra factors like airline yield. Germany routes fixed at high rate, Poland at a low. Gdansk at 750 and BER at 2000 despite the very small distance difference.

Anyway what I should have written was that Scandinvian airports were all at 1500 fixed and went down to 1000 efter the revamp, while continental Europe got 2000, giving big incentive to move body from scandinavia to continent before flying AY.

intuition

Fifth season
Covering the Love land, reindeer steaks, puppies, downgrades, Tronco di natal and the shortest first class ever.


Season opening
Right of the bat in july, I have a double open-jaw CPH-HEL-HKG/CKG-HEL-PRG. Receipt is lost, but I assume it was cheap. Family is shipped to China for the summer already, and this is me just coming for a quick visit.
But I am already getting a bit fed up with China and, you know me, this is perfect for adding a side-trip, right? CX is willing to offer a decent HKG-CJU fare. I feel I haven't really been to Korea (despite visiting before) and besides Jeju island is supposed to be rather accustomed to tourism.

Air China fills the open-jaw with excellent prices and let's add an Finnair flight too, making the trip end back home - Now I'm all set to go.

CPH-HEL-HKG-CJU-HKG/CAN-CKG-HEL-PRG-HEL-CPH

I leave you with only a few notes in this trip. While Jeju is nice, it definitely is difficult to get by in Korea on english only.
Jeju really has some nice sights and renting a car and go around the island is a must. Make sure you get a korean GPS in the car. If for nothing else, listening to it constantly nagging you for everything.
Literally once a minute. You'll be hard pressed to hear the directions as the GPS nagging is worse than 10 mother-in-laws combined.

The Love land, which really is a exhibitionistic exhibition. I guess they do not have sex ed in this country, because this museum is aimed at the newly wed (of which 90% go on their honeymoon to Jeju) with statues and mechanical devices to demonstrate the art of love making. Yes, really.




Worth a visit if for nothing else to see the blushing couples sneaking around the park.

But generally, the landscape sights, lava rocks, black sand beaches and true Korean barbecue are the take-aways from this trip.

Oh, and one final note. Chinese have discovered Jeju too. Which is, I guess, why CX and mainland airlines has flights here. But it represents tourism at its worse. When we wait for the departing flight in the small international terminal of CJU, the crowd is noisy, messy and unruly. Trash is left all over the floor, things get broken.




In September there is a family weekend in Rome. Not much to be said more than it was a Swiss-ticket CPH-ZRH-FCO (got to feed that A3 Gold too!). And maybe that junior was less than impressed with the rough neighbourhood around Roma termini arriving in the night and me getting solicited by prostitutes despite having family. And maybe that the Chinese entourage for once actually liked the local food (not constantly demanding we look for Cantonese restaurants). And mother just disappearing for hours in the Foro Romano area and her kid thinking she left us for good.
Geez. Travelling alone is the thing.


OK, with season opening done, let's get on with the real stuff. First few episodes are all devoted to

Japan kōyō, Autumn leaves

Where in I walk for Japan, have another puppy moment, watch leaves, get downgrade and deteriorating language skills are saved by intuition.


S05 E01 Puppy moment #2
Somewhere in last the few seasons I started to feel sad about not being able to share the travel experience with someone likeminded. Sure, the trips had generated a good amount of stories that could entertain a wide audience. But there was a lingering feeling that experience this type of travel together with someone ought to make it even better. Four eyes sees more than two and story telling would probably improve. Besides, all those non-sharable moments needs a partner in crime to have a secret understanding with.

This year my brother had what we call a "zero-birthday" (decennary?). He held a rather large reception and during my speech to him I decide, on a whim, to make his birthday present a trip to Japan. I was already booked myself for an autumn trip with the purpose of enjoying the autumn colours. This being the first month of the season I still had some upgrade vouchers left thus treating him in business class felt like a relatively cheap way to impress. So the committent was made, tickets were booked and upgrades instantly processed. (those were the days)

Well, doing that exciting speech, I forgot I had booked myself on a domestic route on JL too. Using their Yokoso fare, where domestic legs are 10000 en (77€ at that time) I had already made plans to bounce everything from Hokkaido to Ryukyu kingdom. And for non-bounce travel I held a Japan Rail pass. Naturally the green version, ie first class. Oh, this gift is turning out pretty expensive. Well, at least I'll get someone to share the Japan experience with.

I started to pony up. Ordering one more JR pass. Making a new call to JAL in London to get the yokoso ticket for my brother. This time I know better than to trust Romaji (the transcription of Japanese into Roman/Latin characters) too much and correctly asks to be routed to "ch'tås" (New Sapporo airport).

Now we are both set for a CPH-HEL-NGO-CTS-FUK-OKA-HND/NRT-HEL-CPH
Yey, let's go fly!

By the way, Finnair served reindeer on the main menu on the NGO flight (ie not pre-order). Pictures tell me so. Nothing else got recorded on that flight though.




Amanohashidate
"Destiny is something that we’ve invented because we can’t stand the fact that everything that happens is accidental."

We are in Nagoya for three nights. Arriving in the morning, we quickly drop off stuff at the hotel and then head out.
We start by immediately taking advantage of the JR pass and hop on the Shinkansen to Kyoto. You can't really be in this region without visiting Kyoto, can you?
Now when we have JR passes, we make it a half-day trip and come back to NGO to stay for the night, even though we are heading out this same direction tomorrow. Because, apart from the must-do Kyoto, our main goal here is Amanohashidate, the small village which is one of the Nihon sankei (the three scenic views of the nation) listed as early as 1643. Here, the "bridge in heaven" is to be found, but only if you fully bend over and watch it from between your legs.





To get here from the densely populated south-east side of Honshu you need to cross the mountains. No problem, it can easily be done by train. But of course no Shinkansen here, only local trains running on winding rail, some of it privately owned. Rail in Japan is like everything else very well organised. Despite a large number of companies running trains on rail owned by many different other companies, it is pretty much seamless. With tight connections and one-stop seat reservations in 'midori no madoguchi', the green ticket window.
This suits the green JR pass very well. While you technically can jump on any train and ride the unreserved car, the ease of getting a seat reservation in a green car is attractive. Rarely sold out (unless high season) even on short notice.
For this trip though, there is a 30 km strip of rail that is excluded in the national JR pass. Which means you can still reserve a seat but you need to pay a supplement to ride. This exception is stated in the rules of the JR pass, but because the pass covers just about everything in Japan I guess this exception is easy to miss. I've done my research though, and am prepared, as we head out of Nagoya with seat reservations to final destination and a 8 minute (!) layover in Kyoto.

Shinkansen is always a separate area of the train station as they run on their own tracks. Other regional trains runs on tracks nearby but the tracks for local trains can be far off. So I am slightly nervous over the 8 minute connection so I ask a station officer and he sends us in the right direction. Signs are obscure or rare in the local section, but despite pressure being on we make it.

We settle in for our 2 hour ride of local train. The conductor arrives and I get ready to pay the supplement. When he sees the foreigners and the JR passes, he gets a bit awkward. Instead of issuing the supplement ticket and ask for payment, he fumbles with his large purse. Finally he find what he is looking for and hands over a A6 sized, laminated card with English text on. It explains in detail the JR pass and the exception of its validity and in humble wording asks for the supplement to be paid.
Without reading all the text I quickly realise what it is about and tell him "Hai!". He looks very relieved and issue the supplement tickets.


We arrive into Amanohashidate and from here my expectations are we will find out the rest easily.
Despite this being a very small station, it is clear a lot of tourists come here. I notice there is a manned tourist information desk in the corner, with three staff ready to help people. But we want to manage ourself so we keep clear of it, and instead watch wall-posted maps and the timetable to plan our return.
But as we linger inside the station, one of the staff comes over. She asks if we would be willing to answer some questions, like why we came here, what services we intend to use, preferred language and nationality. After answering truthfully, she puts her questionnaire form down and says
- Vill ni hellre prata svenska (Do you prefer we speak Swedish instead)? in sounding dalmål dialect.
What?! Unbelievable.

It turns out she's been an exchange student at Dalecarlia ("Dalarna") University. While the university is not an ancient history-filled institution and I assume not well known abroad, it is located in the midlands province of Sweden. A province seen by many as the pinnacle of Sweden, with red cottages, blue lakes, green forests and fiercely independent people. If you have any preconception of what Sweden is, it is likely modelled on Dalecarlia.

(Totally unrelated, but this is a good time to mention that the village "Swedenhills" in Tobetsu-cho, Hokkaido is modelled on Dalecarlia and houses are manufactured in Sweden. The Japanese even celebrate Swedish midsummer here. I really need to go there sometime, I think it will feel like the twilight-zone!)

As we turn to Swedish, the conversation also changes drastically. She let's go of the script and we speak freely, frankly and from the heart. We talk a lot about Sweden and Japan, people and cultures. She has a warm smile and says
- By the way, good choice not to come to the info desk. It's not like in Sweden, we are more of a commercial enterprise and we just recommend tourists to go to those establishments who pays our salaries!

Here it comes again, that feeling of seeing puppies and instantly wanting to take them home - she just such a sweet and interesting person. So when she for the second time talks about how much she misses Sweden and wants to move back if she just could get a long term stay visa, my minds start going over how I can actually make that happen.
I come pretty far in my imagination planning for this, before I realise I already have a sponsored partner living in my apartment back home and both she and immigration authorities might object loudly to me applying for a second one...

I wish I would have asked here to join us after work and maybe do an informal tour of the surroundings or just talk about Japan/Sweden over dinner. Maybe I am impeded by having an entourage. Crush or not, that would have been awesome. But I don't and we depart the station with some friendly advice no to go to the commercial viewing platform. Instead, we just walk "the bridge", watch it from the opposite side and just enjoy the surroundings.
With that done and dusted, there is nothing else to see or do, we return to Nagoya the same way we came.

That night I feel puppyless in Nagoya.

intuition

S05E02 Walk for Japan
Where in I acknowledge the Japanese nationalists, cringe on behalf of someone and the cast is extended by one.

After 311, the great eastern earthquake, there were many different initiatives to support japan. One Swiss guy, Thomas Köhler who worked as a tavel agency specialised on Japan, saw the business dwindle and decided to make use of the sparetime. He flew to Hokkaido and walked the 2900 km from the very north of Japan to Kagoshima, the very south of Japan (outlying islands not counted) in a journey from Cape soya to Cape sata.
The arrival an be seen on youtube:



This effort inspired some different initiatives and/or copycats. Amongst others, one site aimed at free roaming tourists decided to make a small version of the walk. This is a site I had started to monitor a long time ago, because they had extensive reporting on the sakura season. Following their sakura news helped me time all my travel to japan so far. Meaning I was always in reach of a city with a great park where flowers were in full bloom each time I came to Japan in the spring.

Checking this site before going to Japan this time, I found out about their version of the 'walk for Japan'. It was set up with their reporter moving across the country from south to north and for every major site they added a stop and hosted a local walk. For a local walk, they drummed up local support and encouraged anyone to join them on a walk between local sites. During the walk they documented the progress and show cased stuff to do and see all over Japan.

The schedule of the walk coincided with us being in Nagoya, so this was a cool thing to add to the itinerary.


To join the walk in Nagoya, the site only said to meet up 10 o'clock at a certain exit gate of a train station. We posted ourselves 10 meters outside the gate, in the middle of the floor. A slightly chaotic place, with people constantly exiting the station, but we had great overview and would be able to spot the walk-leader. Or so we thought.
Time passes, no one appears. 5-10 minutes after the meetup time has come and gone, we spot another westerner standing in a similar position as us. He does not look as lost as us, but he do looks to be waiting for someone who doesn't show. After a while we get contact and can confirm that we all are here for the walk. So now we only need to locate the walk-leader...
The guy, who is much more savvy, starts to roam the surroundings and comes back with the message that he has found the leader in another section of the station. We walk over and pretty far off from the gate we find not only the leader but a few more people gathered.

- We nearly missed you! says I to the leader.
- Well, yeah it was so chaotic by the gate so I changed the meetup spot!

It must have been done pretty last minute. We had not noticed any updates on the website pointing us to the gate. No worries, it all ended well, but in retrospect I feel this is significant for future events.

The entourage is now the walk-leader plus 8 others. Mostly expats, but also two Japanese ladies who are there from a sponsor. I learn later that this is one of the bigger turn-ups on the entire tour, which is really good timing as the sponsors only joined this segment of the walk and thus could report back it was a big success.


All in all, this episode is not very exciting. Except for one significant detail: Here is where we add a new character to the plot.

I have very little interactions with the walk-leader on this outing, but she will appear in later episodes so she needs a name for future references and events. Let's call her Ms Sling. Sling? As in...?
Perhaps as in her Singaporean connection? Perhaps as in a tendency to strap things up? Perhaps as in the simple yet effective weapon? Perhaps as in the sweet, fruity or the slightly bitter savours of the drink? You'll be the judge. But only if you stick around a few more seasons.

The day in itself is not very exciting. By no means bad, just not exciting enough to warrant a lot of coverage. As we mostly are foreigners, we only talk amongst ourselves and we walk around the city and watch some normal touristy sites. Talking with interesting people is nice, but not material for the story. Two incidents stick out though.

At one point we see a demonstration, with 40-50 Japanese walking under some kind of banner. One of the expats get excited and tells us to line up. We do so on the pavement, without questioning his motives, and on command we wave and cheer the group. We are the only ones, not a single Japanese on the street is cheering. Or, for that matter, giving any sign that they even noticed or cared for the demonstration.
A minute late, he explains:

- That's the Japanese nationalists. No one really cares about them. But one thing they want is all foreigners off the streets and out of Japan too. So we made them very uncomfortable just by acknowledging them!

OK, we failed to see the logic but it was fun stirring up things. (That is as far as stirring up anything goes in Japan)


When the walk is done, most of us are starving and we head for a dinner together. With food out of the way, we all know the party is about to break up and people start to ask for contact info. A piece of paper is circulated and we all add our name and e-mail address to it. On the way to my brother the list goes past one of the Japanese ladies from the sponsor team. She just quietly passes it on, without adding her contact details. My brother, who is a very social person (in terms of a Nordic person anyway) notices the missing info and sends the list back to her.
I've already realised that she, for some non-disclosed reason, doesn't want to give her info and in typical Japanese manner avoids making a fuzz about it. But my brother keeps pushing, thinking she didn't understand the purpose of the list or was too shy to add her name to it.

I so feel for her and cringe on the inside. I really should kick him under the table to make him stop. But that'll make more people awkward, so I find another way. Starring down my plate, speaking directly to the last piece of a delicious Tonkatsu, I say in a casual, non-emotional voice in swedish:

- Just let go of it, I'll explain later.

It works. No one else even knows what happened, the situation is defused and the lady is off the hook.

Did I just act Japanese?! Protecting the common from unnecessary confrontation and preserving harmony (和 / Wa)? Oh, maybe I am a bit Japanese after all!

intuition

S05E03 - Oh that fool-iage...

In which we go to Hokkaido to watch leaves - but will the delusions of japanese proficiency leave me?


In the hotel neighbourhood there is a lot of small shops that can provide Hanko stamps, the personal "signature" stamp. It is a pretty cool thing to have, a stamp that uniquely depicts your name into a brand (and can actually be made legally binding as your signature on documents) and we look to get our own. But time is in short supply - we are covering a lot of ground (and air) in this short week. Besides, we are unsure how to explain our names and chose stamp design, so we opt-out. Later in the trip we'll end up in stamp-rally anyway so there is plenty stamp action ahead.

Up and away.
Catching the short ride to Centrair NGO in first. Looks good on the ticket stub.



The lounge is a classic collection of boring chairs and at this time of day it is pretty deserted. Not that much to eat either, but one can always down some sake while waiting.

A healthy breakfast saves the day.






Approaching Chitose, we get a beautiful view of rural Hokkaido in red - autumn foliage indeed. It is striking how much of Hokkaido is forested. Forests, with hundreds of golf courses ripping small threads open between the trees.


Taking the train from CTS into the city is my first contact with Hokkaido rail - it is rather different than the rest of Japan. More old fashioned and mostly (all?) are diesel.
We are sitting in the first row of the carriage. The door sealing off the saloon from the vestibule has a large window. The rough entry area of the carriage is normally only used by people on the phone (as it is considered extremely rude to speak on the phone on the train). So it is not out of the ordinary to see people parked in the vestibule. But what I see today is a girl, looking to be somewhere between 16-20 y.o., staying alone in the entryway. She is not on the phone and I start to wonder why, because the car is "unreserved" and anyone can sit in any seat. The car is far from full so there really is no reason for her to stay outside of the saloon. This minor deviation from the normal catches my eye.

Then I see she is in pain, and it suddenly makes sense. She chose seclusion in order to not disturb others. I can't really tell if it is body or soul aching, but she holds her stomach and her face is distorted. She leans against the wall, a posture you don't really see in Japan. The pain seems to worsen, and after a while she gradually slides down the wall until she sits on the floor. She looks really tormented and I feel very very uncomfortable just sitting here watching. I need to do something.

But as my mind starts to prepare sentences like 'Kurushii desuka?' ("Are you in pain?") and 'Byouin ikimasenka?' ("How about going to the hospital?") the train nears Sapporo station. We need to get up and collect our bags now. When that is done, I look again and see she is now back on her feet looking as if all is well.

We enter the vestibule and she is up, casually looking out the window. I feel a bit confused. Maybe it was just something temporary, someone was mean at her in school?
But I can't it let go. My perception of myself as language proficient overcomes my shyness. Stupid me.

As the train chugs through the rail switches coming into the station I turn to her and say
- Daijoubu desuka? (Are you OK?)
- Daijoubu desu. (I'm OK)

Her answer comes slowly, but she looks up and looks straight at me with a face equally filled with surprise and gratitude.

For a moment, we look at each other in silence before the inevitable happens. I am such a fool.
If you speak to someone in their native tongue, no matter how poorly you speak, they will respond in their native tongue as if you master it. And now recovering from the surprise of me approaching her, her flow of words picks up speed and soon I'm flooded.

Confronted with my illusion of speaking foreign languages and my factual inadequacy in Japanese conversation, I turn to my saviour intuition. I simply give up trying to pick out and translate individual words from the flow, and just tune every sense into reading her. Facial expression and eyes, pitch, stress and intonation of the voice, body language. A sort of tunnel vision for the brain - Everything else is zoned out.

To my surprise it works. Intuitively I just know she is telling me not to worry and also asking me how on earth I know anything about her situation.

OK, got that, I think to myself. Yes, I will tell you exactly how. With enthusiasm I go:
- あの... (umm..)

And then I stop. While this sixth-sense approach may help in understanding, it is pretty useless when responding. Using all brain capacity for incoming speech I've clearly removed all capacity for creating anything outgoing.

I feel as verbal as a gold fish (and probably look like one too) and end up having to default to sign language. I point through the window towards where I sat. She shines up and "says"- 'ah yes, you were sitting there and so you must have seen me here, that explains everything'.

Despite my failure, the conversation still is surprisingly snappy (for a mute). If she had any hesitations the foreigner understands Japanese, they are now gone and she goes full chat mode on me, telling me more and more things. Now we're way beyond the capability of my 6th sense. My head is full of useless phrases in just about any language but Japanese. It is just a noisy chaos. Not even a few well-placed "sou desuka" (≈"is that so?", a conversation space filler indicating you got it all) can save me now.

As the train comes to a full stop, neither of us hold any hopes for my ability to converse. We have both given up pretending and she just points to the right hand side to let me know where the platform is. We get off and she disappears in the crowd. My brother's curious face reminds me I am not travelling alone and I am now required to explain in detail what just took place.




The lakes
Sapporo feels slightly different than other Japanese cities. Some nice views, the park surrounding the old government office in district 5 offers a real Monet feeling.



Evening light downtown is interesting and I snap a pic. Do notice that the orderly people of Japan has absolutely no intention of using the actual "zebras" of the zebra crossings.




Of course we also go and see the "Sapporo clock tower", a true oddity. A wooden building in American mid-west style, built during the very late exploitation of Hokkaido in the 19th century.
And finally, the Botanic garden provides some nice autumn colours.

But for the serious autumn leaves experience, we will have to go countryside. Good thing we have JR rail passes! We head for the station. Coming from a Nordic country we find it pretty amusing that Sapporo JR station hosts not one but two Danish styled shops; the little mermaid and Danish Bar (Sadly no Tuborg or Gammeldansk salads, just hotdogs and soft ice)




We are going to Onumakoen, a quasi national park located between lakes onuma and konuma, with a nice volcano backdrop. We "just" need to take the train back to the coastline and then around Uchira bay.

Just and just, the ride is rahter long. In Hokkaido, rail mostly follows the shoreline, is slow and distances are long. If it wasn't obvious before, it now becomes clear that Hokkaido is different than the rest of Japan. Not only is the land less densly populated, but also roads and rail are longer and windier. And slower and less classy, with the diesel locomotives and older railcars in dated style.

Lake walk is nice, but we are actually a bit late in the season. Cloudy and grey weather makes this not the shining moment I hoped for, but still worth it.





To prove the ride wasn't in vain, we collect the station stamp. It's a funny thing: Stamp rally. Each station offers a unique stamp for you to stamp your travel diary with, to prove you were there. A slight redemption over not getting personal Hanko stamps earlier.

SPBanker

Very nice, brought back pleasant memories from my only visit to Sapporo... Did you visit the old Sapporo brewery? (Which has been converted into restaurant.) Campus of Hokkaido University is a great place to visit.

WilcoRoger

I think you missed the point here - it's green for pedestrians in ALL directions, so they can also go diagonally - it's just that in Sapporo they haven't painted the diagonal zebras like they did at Shibuya.

intuition

Yeah, I get that. It is just that even the people crossing perpendicularly are not on the zebra markings.

In general, people crossing a street in Japan is always full chaos, in stark contrast with having most other aspects of society extremely ordered!

intuition

Autumn leaves were the main attraction and time was short. So no, sadly!
But the good thing about skipping things is you can always motivate a return to the scene!