Back in the U.S.A.

In a departure from the normal topic of China, this time I’ll share a few pictures from my recent trip back to the US. I took the direct flight from Beijing to Seattle on Hainan Airlines, which saves a lot of time compared to even the Air Canada route via Vancouver.

The first few days I was home, the weather was reasonable. Here’s a clear day view from our front deck.
I promise if you look really closely you can see a bit of water between the trees. That’s something you can’t get in Beijing (and I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether I mean the water or the blue sky).

This is a cat named Baby.
She is not a skinny cat.
No, the cat in the picture above her is not her, but another cat with a strong resemblance.

When she gets a chance, she likes to hang out in the yard.
Speaking of the yard, there were a few dahlia stragglers still in bloom.
And speaking of cats, here’s the other one, generally called Pele.
Here’s one of the parts of the house in Seattle that I miss:

Another highlight of the trip was seeing Sam Phillips at the Triple Door. This is a really nice club in Seattle where they unfortunately keep the lighting really low.
She is one of my favorite singer/songwriters, with a wonderful expressive voice.
She’s a pretty good guitarist too, and plays both acoustic and electric. And in case you’re wondering, that other instrument is a Stroh violin.

Her drummer also used uncommon instruments.
Here he’s holding a drum in one hand and hitting it against his leg while he plays a cymbal with his other hand. He also had a tambourine strapped to his ankle and a table full of various objects to hit and shake.

One of the fun things she did was for the song “Animals on Wheels.”
She was accompanied by a piano recorded on a microcassette which she held up to the microphone.

And all too soon, the stay in Seattle was over (though I’ll admit to being tired of the rain), and it was time to return to Beijing.

Here’s a rugged part of Siberia we flew over.
Here in Beijing, winter has definitely started its inquiries, and will soon be moving in. After a couple of cold nights, I got my heat turned on, so all is fine now at home.

While I was away, those of my coworkers who are still with the company moved into a temporary office space at The Place, which I’ve written about before:
At the moment, we’re all on folding tables crammed into one room.
That picture was taken with my BlueBerry, so excuse the quality.

Sometime next month our permanent office should be ready. It’s also at The Place, in one of the other towers.

I feel safer already

I’ve traveled by air within China a number of times before, and in general it has been much less hassle than traveling within the US. All the TSA’s security measures of questionable effectiveness seem to provide much bother for little real safety gain. Until recently, you could take up to a liter of liquid with you on a domestic flight here, and there was none of that take-off-your-shoes foolishness.

Well, I don’t know if it was just in honor of the Olympics or a permanent change, but the convenience factor here took a nose-dive on the recent Yunnan trip. To add to the confusion over what you can and cannot do or bring, each airport seems to have its own interpretation of the rules.

The hassles started more or less from the moment we left home (and were not actually security related). The new rapid transit train to the airport is open, so we decided to take advantage of it and save on the taxi fare. It’s normally about ￥80 for a taxi from my place to the airport. The train is ￥25 per person. As far as we were able to tell, there is no way to get to the train without navigating stairs. You can take a big lovely set of escalators from the ground level down, but that puts you on a landing where you have to go down a short flight of stairs to a security checkpoint, where you have to run your bags through an X-ray machine.

That puts you inside the Beijing Subway system. To get to the Airport Express, you have to go around to another area to purchase your ticket. Then you go through a security checkpoint where you have to run your bag through an X-ray machine. I think there must be some way to get to this point without going through the first checkpoint, but that would also mean that you can get to the subway without getting X-rayed. Hmmm…

Anyway, from there you go down an escalator to a very small landing area where you wait for the train. It’s a relatively nice train, but there is not a lot of room to stow bags, so unless you’re willing to put your bag at the end of a car and sit where it is out of view, you have to stand up if you have more than a carry-on.

It takes 17 minutes to get to the new Terminal 3. Our flight to Kunming, however, took off from Terminal 2, so we stayed on the train. Total time to T2 is about 30 minutes. All of which are faster than a taxi.

When you get off at T2, you go through another security checkpoint, there’s only one officer checking everyone, so when a train lets out, you end up with a big long line. All they do here is run the little chemical-sniffing paper over parts of your bag. (At T3, they have a fancy sniffing machine, but T2 has to be content with the old tech.)

After you check in and get your boarding pass, you get to the regular security line. The usual, laptop out of bag and so on, but no need to remove your shoes. We were only going for a weekend, so we hadn’t planned on checking anything, and crammed all we had into our carry-ons. They ran D’s backpack through the machine twice before opening it to search. They dug through it for what seemed like forever, not finding anything to complain about, then finally triumphantly held up a tiny bottle of Purel sanitizer. Aha! Not allowed. They confiscated it and let us proceed to our gate.

Right on time, we got onto our plane. We could see out the windows that it had started raining outside. By the time everyone was on board and they went through the safety spiels, the plane was rocking back and forth from the buffeting wind, and rain was hitting the windows as hard as if we were already in the air. We started to see flashes of lightning outside.

They announced that we would have to wait for the weather to clear before we could take off. A wise decision, of course, but it was already getting pretty stuffy inside the cabin. Before long they brought around the drink carts. They did not seem to have any alcohol available.

After twenty minutes or so, the storm slacked off a bit, and we could see other planes taking off. They told us we were waiting our turn in queue, and would take off soon. But before that time came, the weather took another turn for the worse and all take-offs were halted.

Then they brought around the food cart. It was a mid-afternoon three-hour flight, so we normally would have had dinner an hour after take-off. Feeding us seemed like an admission that we would have at least an hour more on the ground. Just after we started eating, there was an announcement that operations had resumed and we would be leaving soon, so we all hurried to wolf down the food.

It was another false alarm. By the time we finally left the ground, we were almost two hours behind schedule. I had built a two hour layover in Kunming before or connection to Lijiang just in case, but this pretty much ate that up.

Aside from a bit of turbulence and the lack of any further food, the flight south was uneventful. Beneath us we saw nothing but clouds until just before landing.

Of course we had missed our Lijiang flight, and as it turned out there was no other one for us until the following morning. I guess that’s one down-side to buying steeply discounted tickets.

We stopped at the ticket window and arranged a replacement flight at 11 the next morning, then called the hotel in Lijiang to tell them we were stuck in Kunming. We asked at the airport information desk where we could find a hotel, and they said there was one across the street.

The less said about our hotel arrangements that night the better. It was really cheap and not really worth the pennies we paid.

When we got to the airport the next morning for the Lijiang flight, D’s carryon again had problems. It contained exactly the same things that had passed muster in Beijing after the Purel was ditched. This time they pulled out a 14oz. (396g) tube of skin lotion. On reflection, I have no idea why they let something so large through in Beijing. This lotion is fairly expensive stuff (and not readily replaceable in China), so we dropped out of the line, put the hand lotion into a different bag, and went back to the check-in counter to check it. So much for our carry-on-only plan.

That did the trick and we whizzed through the Kunming security line this time.

I’ve already written a number of posts about our short time in Lijiang and our visit to the Stone Forest. But getting home again presented challenges. At the little airport in Lijiang they have a big sign that informs you in Chinese and English that you have to remove belts and shoes in order to pass through security. That’s something I’ve never had to do in China. But we complied and there was no problem.

Back at Kunming, we had already worked through their process, so it was no problem.

I think that now the Olympics are past, things may have lightened up a bit – maybe someone else can confirm that in a comment. It strikes me as odd that in China, a country widely regarded as featuring strong monolithic central control, should have such regional variation in a matter that is so tightly regimented in the US.

I’ve used the Airport Express train since then, and this time the first escalator was closed down for maintenance, leaving me to lug my big bag down a long flight of stairs. As far as I can tell, the train is not accessible for a wheelchair at all. I looked all over and did not see an elevator. The airport stations seem to be accessible, and the trains themselves have fold-up seats in designated areas for wheelchairs, but I don’t know what a person in a chair would do once they got off the train on the Beijing end of the line. It is possible to get onto the Airport without going through two X-ray machines, however. When the attendant saw me approaching the first one with my bag, she asked if I was going to the airport; I said yes and she waved me past it – which of course means that if I had lied, I would have been able to take my large unscanned bag onto the subway.

Ghost of posts to come

Aw, isn't that pretty? I've got that and a few other Olympic events to cover yet.

But it will have to wait, since today I just booked a weekend trip to Yunnan in Southern China. We'll be mostly in Lijiang, with flight transfers and a bit of looking around in the Kunming area. I've been wanting to see some of China aside from Beijing and Shanghai, and this is about as far from that as you can get. We depart tomorrow afternoon. Should be fun. This is not considered the ideal time of year to visit there (rainy season), but sometimes you just have to take the opportunity when it comes and make the best of it. If it rains, it rains, but at least we'll be getting wet somewhere other than Beijing for a few days.

Zooming back and forth

The last couple of weeks have involved a lot in the way of air travel and family visits. Once again, I flew Air Canada to Seattle by way of Vancouver, and once again I had an incredibly uncomfortable seat in an older plane. I left Beijing at around 6pm on Friday, and got to Vancouver around 1pm the same day, nearly an hour late, but I managed to make the connection to my next flight. I got to Seattle a couple hours before leaving Beijing. Gotta love those time zones.

In my continuing chronicles of Things No One Is Interested In, I got a new digital camera, a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3. I picked it because it’s reasonably priced and has a really good lens with 10x zoom. I also made substantial raids involving used books and CDs.
On Tuesday the 18th, I took a quick flight to Spokane to visit my parents and brother.
Here’s one of the new areas at SeaTac. If you look closely, you can see a grand piano off in the distance. There was someone playing Christmas tunes on it.

It was quite a bit colder in Spokane, and snowing. Here are a couple of pictures taken on the drive between Spokane and St. John.
That evening we returned to Spokane and had dinner with my brother at the Applebee’s near his house. And after that, it was back to St. John for the night.
The next day, my parents took me back up to Spokane for my flight back to Seattle. On the way, we saw this pair of elk run across the road and into a field.

Here are a few shots taken around Seattle.
This is a view of the downtown area taken from an angle you don’t often see.
We went shopping at the big Uwajimaya market. It’s more Japanese than Chinese, but there are lots of familiar items.
One night we accidentally wandered into the Christmas Dimension.
An obligatory cat picture: Baby with her holiday bell.

And so soon it seemed like I’d been in the US only a couple days, it was time to return to China, again by way of Vancouver.
Like SeaTac, the Vancouver airport has undergone some remodeling since the last time I passed through (when going through US Customs at YVR, you don't pass by here). Nifty fish tank.
Luckily I was on a newer plane for the long flight this time, with a better seat and an individual entertainment screen. I took advantage of that and watched Ratatouille (wonderful) and The Simpsons Movie (lots of fun). After making an attempt at sleep, I watched a German film called Eden that was another take on the idea found in Like Water for Chocolate and Chocolat: a chef can cook food that transfers strong erotic feelings to those who eat it. He meets a waitress who is married to a frustrated, unhappy man and has a handicapped daughter. The woman becomes friends with the chef, her husband gets needlessly jealous, and catastrophe ensues, though not necessarily in the ways you expect. It was an enjoyable little film. I also watched a Hong Kong movie called Ming Ming that seemed like a kind of avant-garde martial arts experiment.

And returning, I of course encountered the flip side of the time zone shift, leaving Seattle Friday morning and arriving in Beijing late Saturday afternoon after about 14 hours of travel.

From what I’ve read, I just missed a couple of really horrid air quality days in Beijing. On Saturday when I arrived, it was pretty decent, and today is sunny and clear. Temperatures have been hanging just below freezing, and there is often a biting wind. Ah, winter in the capital!

Be my Yokohama

I return to the obscure pop culture references for a title, and catch up on the last bits of my trip to Japan. Pretend the date is 3 September.

I didn’t really see any of Yokohama outside of the short distance from my hotel to the convention center, but there are a few pictures I took in that area which seem worth sharing.
On the way to the convention center, I walked past this large sculpture located between two buildings.
This was not one of those buildings, though it was close by. If I remember correctly, it’s called the Landmark Tower, and it’s, well, a landmark. For a thousand yen you can take the elevator up to the top, where there’s an observation deck, a restaurant, and live jazz, but I didn’t.
The city is proud of its maritime heritage. This is the Nippon Maru Yokohama.
I saw a big group of school children doing exercises next to it one morning. It's probably too small to see, but they're in this picture. I think it was some kind of school outing where they went onto the ship and learned about being sailors.

The return to Beijing was relatively uneventful. I took the Yokohama local train one stop from my hotel, and got on the fast train at Yokohama Station to go directly to Narita Airport, where I discovered a massive line waiting to check in with Air China. I managed to make it to my gate with a few minutes to spare, and in a couple hours I was back in China. I am somewhat intrigued that my booking of a flight from Shanghai to Tokyo plus a flight from Tokyo to Beijing was called a “round trip” ticket.

Of acquisition and loss

Now on to the events of Saturday, 29 September. Pictures (some by D some by me) and more events added 10 November. How could I have forgotten the fireworks?

For the first time, I ended up taking a taxi to the Beijing Airport. All my previous trips the company driver was available to provide transportation. Not much to report here. The ride cost about $10, which included the toll for the expressway. Unlike my previous Shanghai trip, we got to board through a jetway directly onto the plane instead of having to take a shuttle out to the plane. And instead of going to Shanghai’s new Pudong Airport, we flew to the old one, which is called Hongqiao and is situated right in the midst of the city. It was very strange flying below the tops of buildings on the approach.

We had read about the taxi queue, so we followed the signs (no checked bags) and got into a big long line. There were about four lanes of taxis, with a uniformed person directing people to the next available one. There was also a guy who had a big car (not a standard taxi) who was trying to entice people to ride with him instead. I managed to tell our driver where we were going – it was pretty easy since our hotel was on a well-known street right across the street from a major park, and I knew the names of both in Chinese.
We stayed at the Radisson Hotel, a five-star tower that showed up in my pictures from Shanghai in August. It’s the one that looks like a UFO is landing on its roof.
There was some sort of confusion upon check-in. They seemed to think I work for Google. My reservation, which I made online a few days in advance, had got jumbled up with someone else’s. We ended getting upgraded from a standard king room to a deluxe king.
It was really nice, actually a small suite. We were on floor 18 facing towards the river, though other buildings mostly blocked the view. We could see a bit of the Pearl Tower and several other noteworthy buildings.
After getting settled, we went out to explore Nanjing Road, a famous shopping district I visited last time. We mostly just browsed, though we did see a few interesting things.
We were pestered almost constantly by people trying to sell us watches, bags, and whatnot, some of whom were very persistent. Like a store called Baleno that specialized in jeans and other casual wear for young people, but had a big display of items related to Doraemon and Astro Boy in the window, so like moths to a flame, we entered.
By the time we left, we had a sweatshirt and a T-shirt, and only a supreme exercise of will power kept the damage down to that.

Around the time it was starting to get dark, we met a friend for dinner. She took us to a nice Shanghai-style restaurant. It was on the way to dinner that D realized something was missing. She had been carrying her Zen MP3 player in her backpack, and someone had unzipped it and got away with the player. This put quite a damper on the enjoyment of the food.

Upon reflection, we have our own stupidity (or naiveté) to blame. First, there was no reason to have the Zen with us – we should have left it back at the hotel. Second, a backpack is like an invitation to a thief – easy to get into without being noticed, especially in a crowded place where there are jostling people. We’ve noticed many people who use backpacks actually sling them around the front. These are smart people. We can take some small comfort in the fact that Zen players are pretty uncommon here, so the lucky acquirer might have trouble finding accessories like a charger and USB adapter for it. They’re sure to find an odd selection of music on it.

Anyway, back to dinner. Our friend wanted to give us a good sample of Shanghai cuisine, and took us to a place called Shun Feng. It was huge, with well over a hundred tables, taking up what seemed to be an entire floor of a downtown building near the Marriott tower. Our waitress was a tiny little woman who was shorter than us even when we were sitting down, but she seemed to be in charge of that part of the place, ordering others around. Shanghai food is known for being sweet and rich, and we certainly found that to be true. We had a wide sampling of foods, meat, veggies and fish. The fish was a little spicy, and was our favorite. For dessert we had an amazing concoction of sweet black beans, glutinous rice and coconut milk which was ridiculously rich. It was either will power or sheer overstuffing that kept us from finishing it all.

Originally we had sort of planned on going to a pub or something after dinner for drinks, but after the theft, we weren’t in the mood for it, and wanted to call it an evening. But it was Saturday night in Shanghai, and it would be a shame to miss the lights along the Bund and across the Huangpu, so we made a quick little trip to the river.
Several things set this visit apart from my previous one. First, there was this:
It’s a big tourist boat with a water dragon theme, full of people cruising the river. Note the water gushing from the dragons’ mouths. Then we started hearing the sounds of explosions.
The Saturday night before a major holiday – fireworks! We hung around for the whole show, which lasted 20 minutes or so. Combined with the lights of the buildings, it was quite something.

After that, we said goodnight to our friend and took a quick taxi ride back to the hotel.
It was here that we discovered the addictive attraction of the National Geographic Channel. For China Day, they were doing a marathon of documentaries about this country. I watched one which I think must have been made at about the time when Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon came out. It was about one of the prominent wushu (martial arts) schools in China, and profiled several students from the ages of 8-18 or so. As far as I could tell from the credits, it was not an actual NG production, and while the subject matter was fascinating, I was constantly annoyed by the narrator’s consistent mispronunciation of virtually every Chinese name and word. It seems like a matter of simple respect to say people’s names right.

That was a pretty full day.

All aboard the Shanghai Express

Written 2 October and posted only much later. I have pictures to add as well, but will get to them later.

Update: Pictures added 6 November.

In the standard irony of my blog-life, the more I have to write about, the less time I have to write about it. So over the next few entries I’ll probably be tackling a wide variety of events in no particular order.

The quick recap, for those who don’t have my schedule memorized, includes:

• The end of my Japan trip to the World Science Fiction Convention.
• Various non-convention events and observations regarding the city of Yokohama.
• The arrival of D for an extended visit in Beijing.
• A quick trip to Tianjin to see the FIFA Women’s World Cup game in which the US beat England.
• Some sight-seeing, shopping, and going out with D around Beijing.
• A trip to Shanghai for the FIFA Women’s World Cup final game between Germany and Brazil, along with some sight-seeing, shopping, and going out in Shanghai.

For no reason other than it’s fresh in my mind, I’m going to start with yesterday, which was an amusing day in many respects.

October 1 is National Day in China, so most people had the day off. After a late night involving football matches, crazy taxi rides, and drinks in a UFO, we got up kind of late, and in spite of constant distraction from the National Geographic Channel Asia, managed to make it to the breakfast buffet before it closed at 10:30. Like the one at the Kuntai in Beijing all those months ago, it featured a wide variety of English, American, Chinese, and Japanese breakfast items, but all in all the quality was not very good (maybe because nothing was fresh by that point). Certainly not worth the $25 each it cost. We checked out just before noon and left our bags with the concierge, who, given our flight’s departure time, advised leaving the hotel at 7pm.
We started out by going to the multi-story shopping center next door. D was thinking of shoes. The streets were rather crowded with people out for the day off, and there was a magician performing on a stage set up along the sidewalk. Inside the shopping center was crowded as well, but at least you could usually walk without running into people. There was a sale going on, so D ended up buying two pairs of shoes at the Arnold Palmer booth. I didn’t even know Arnold made women’s shoes, especially cute non-sporting styles. With the discount, they came to around $75 for the both of them, and paying was a small adventure. In many of these Chinese shopping centers, purchasing works like this: the little shop gives you a slip or invoice that has the item number on it along with the price; you go to a cashier and pay for it; the cashier fills out a three-part duplicating form and stamps all three copies; the cashier keeps one, you keep one, and you take the other back to the shop; the shop takes the stamped form and gives you your purchase. As a further complication, only certain cashiers can take credit cards, so I had to traipse all around to find a place to use my American Visa card.
After finishing with Arnold, we strolled around some more, and I ended up buying a pair of shoes from someone named Alain Delon. I tried on a bunch of nice looking Jackie Chan shoes, but they didn’t feel right on my foot.
We eventually tired of that shopping center, took our bags to the hotel for safekeeping, and went outside. It was even more crowded out than before. When we came up from the pedestrian underpass to the Nanjing Street mall, it was a sea of people as far as you could see. Lots of them stopped at the top of the steps to take pictures, further adding to the lack of room to move.

We made our way to another shopping center just to get out of the heat and have room to move without bumping into people. We stopped at a Japanese style place for lunch, and then did some more wandering. We came across the FIFA Women’s World Cup Official Merchandise Store, where everything was half price. I bought a cool T-shirt. A bit later we came across a shop called Miiow where the sportswear has cat-oriented graphics. D bought a jacket there.

In spite of what you may be thinking, neither of us is really a shopaholic, and we were getting pretty tired of the endless stream of booths for oddly named brands. We decided to make our way back to the hotel and have some drinks in the lobby lounge while we waited until it was time to go to the airport. The crowds in the street had lessened somewhat by this time. It was nice to just chill for a while and sip a Manhattan, even if it was kind of a strange tasting Manhattan.
This is one of the decorations in the hotel lobby.

At a few minutes to seven, we went over to the concierge desk and retrieved our bags. He waved a taxi up, and when we said we were going to Hongqiao Airport, he asked what time our flight was. I said it was at 9, and he said with the street so busy for the holiday, it might take almost two hours to get there. Nothing to be done about that, so we hopped in and off we went. He took a lot of back streets, since the main ones were all clogged, and the first expressway onramp was blocked off, leading us right back into the surface streets. The second ramp was open, and we found the freeway to be only lightly inhabited, so we actually ended up getting to the airport in only ten minutes or so.

Check-in was simple with no bags to check, and we got to our gate with more than an hour to wait. We amused ourselves with people-watching and fashion commentary, standing the whole time because the waiting area didn’t have enough seats for a whole plane’s complement of passengers.

Just as a Fashion Police aside: The Number One Fashion Faux Pas all over the world seems to be the same. Over-tweezing of eyebrows. I don't think I've ever seen a natural pair of eyebrows that didn't look better than thin lines drawn on with a pen.

To return to the Hongqiao waiting area... There was a big Samsung TV showing a series of ads and movie trailers, but without sound it was pretty hard to tell what was being advertised sometimes. About a half-hour before boarding time, people started lining up at the gate. We all had reserved seats, so I don’t know why they felt the need. We took advantage of some vacated seats and got a little leg rest after standing so long.

We walked on easily at the end of the line, and managed to find space in the overhead bins for all our shoe boxes. We could tell it was going to be an interesting flight. Unlike the trip to Shanghai (where half the passengers were asleep before we left the gate), this cabin was full of very talkative people, including a number who seemed to be on their first air journey. The flight attendant had to keep coming back to one woman who was always speaking loudly and doing odd things like putting her tray table down as we taxied. We were sitting next to a couple of British guys from Beijing who had also gone to Shanghai for the football matches. As it was a late night flight, we only got peanuts and beverages.

A while into the flight they started a movie from Hong Kong called My Name is Fame. In between reading chapters of my book, I kind of watched it, reading the subtitles without listening. When they made the announcement to put up trays and return to seats for the descent into Beijing, the movie was still going, and the screen went blank before it ended. It seemed like a pretty good movie, so it’s going on the Netflix list.

In typical Chinese air travel fashion, the second the plane touched the ground, you could hear the clicking of seatbelts being undone and the noises of mobile phones being turned on while the announcement told us to remain in our seats and keep electronic devices off. The newbie flyer lady next to us stood up and opened the overhead bin to take out a package. A flight attendant came running, abruptly shut the bin door, and spoke harshly to the woman.

So all in all, an amusing day. I suppose some people would be annoyed by some of the things that happened, but part of surviving in China is learning to take such things in stride. You don't ask why, you just smile and accept.

I'll try to catch up on all those other events as soon as I can. I know the world is holding its breath, and I wouldn't want anyone to fall over from lack of oxygen.

Better City, Better Life

And now for the continuing stoooory of a doctor who’s gone to the dogs – oops, sorry, wrong story. (And a very obscure pop culture reference.) Our hero was last seen slaving over a hot computer in a Shanghai hotel room, wondering if he would be able to wake up in time to get to the airport, and looking forward to riding the maglev train again.

I had heard horror stories about Shanghai rush hour traffic, so I got up well before six and was checking out of the hotel a bit after seven. There was a taxi driver hanging around, and he asked if I was going to Pudong Airport. I pulled out my little maglev ticket with the picture of the train and pointed to it. He made a “Pfft!” sort of noise, obviously believing I should stick with the tried and true taxi to the airport. I stuck to my story and said I wanted to go to the train station. Then he pulled out his trump card. The train doesn’t start running until 9:00. I found this hard to believe, but in the absence of hard evidence one way or the other, I felt stuck. I asked how much he would charge to get there. He said ¥150, which was more than the train would have cost, but not outrageous. I was a little suspicious that he could be lying to me about the train just to get a lucrative fare, but I got in. Traffic wasn’t really that bad, and he took kind of a roundabout way (probably to avoid bottlenecks). I have to admit that we paralleled the maglev track for quite a way and I never saw a single train go by. I had read that Shanghai’s maglev, while an engineering marvel and thoroughly cool, is regarded in many circles as an expensive bid for prestige, and ridership has never been very good. If the blasted thing doesn’t run until nine in the morning, I’d say that takes a serious bite out of its practicality. According to Wikipedia, it starts at 7:00 and runs till 9:00pm but I know that is inaccurate, since it ran until 10:00pm when I arrived. Maybe I did get taken for a ride.
Did I mention that Pudong Airport is really big? I got there way too early, so I killed some time in the coffee shop and did some reading.
Once again I found myself in a shuttle bus going across the tarmac to board a plane. My ticket said Air China, but this was the plane. Dragon Air is based out of Hong Kong, and code shares with Air China on certain routes.

After landing at Narita, I managed to successfully use a cash machine. I bought a train ticket to Sakuragi-cho Station in Yokohama, which involved one transfer at Yokohama Station. I picked up some snacks from the kiosk and waited about an hour for my train. It was no bullet train, but it was nice and comfortable. It was very full, and I didn’t have a window seat, so you don’t get any more shaky pictures of the Japanese countryside. I got to my hotel pretty easily. It’s got a pedestrian bridge over the street that practically joins it to the train station.
The room at the Yokohama Washington Hotel is very small, but clean (aside from a slight cigarette odor) and has all the modern conveniences.
If you take the main room and the bathroom together it’s about the size of the spare bedroom in my apartment.
I changed clothes and walked over to the convention center where the World Science Fiction Convention is taking place, not sure what I’d find there. They were still open for registration, so I picked up my packet.
It included a lovely big Souvenir Book which reads from both covers. You turn it one way and read the English, and reading from the “back” you get the Japanese, since Japanese books are read in the opposite direction. The English side cover features a beautiful painting by Michael Whelan, who is one of the Guests of Honor. SF conventions typically have three GOH’s: a writer, an artist, and a prominent fan, but given the bilingual nature of this con, both Japanese and English were represented in the author and artist categories.
The Japanese side has cover art by Yoshitaka Amano, a well-known Japanese artist, who has done everything from manga to book covers to games.
The center has a full-color gallery of works by the two.

I went downstairs to the large theater just in time to catch the opening ceremony. I didn’t have my camera with me, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it was kind of fun. I saw Robert Silverberg down front before the lights dimmed, so I knew he’d made it, but didn’t manage to get anywhere near him.

The MC was a Japanese voice actress who spoke pretty good English. There was also a translator at the side of the stage to handle the guests’ speeches. One of the first guests was the mayor of Yokohama, who arrived on stage riding a rickshaw. Apparently he’s known for his environment-friendly policies, and he joked about proposing rickshaws to replace cars.

There was a very amusing opening animation piece that took scenes and characters from dozens of famous Japanese movies from Godzilla to anime and mixed them up, with all the monsters, aliens and robots converging on Yokohama. the Guest of Honor speeches started with American author David Brin. He’s one of my favorites (I just finished his second Uplift trilogy a couple months ago), and started his speech with a little bit in phonetic Japanese about being a “crazy foreigner” that got some laughs. He told about how he had just been in Chengdu China for a science fiction convention the previous weekend, and how he sees Asia growing in the SF world just as it is in the real one. The con in Chengdu would have been extremely cool to visit, but timing did not allow.

Japanese author Sakyo Komatsu was up next. He’s a grand master of Japanese SF, and has been writing since the 60s and has been involved in a number of movies. He’s in his 70s, and was wheeled in by an assistant. He gave a fairly long speech that must have been pretty amusing from all the laughs it got from the Japanese in the audience. The translation must not have done it justice.

Whelan and Amano both had speeches, and they were followed by an emotional reminiscence by fan guest Takumi Shibano, who has been at the center of the Japanese SF community since the late 50s. He had the convention chairman in tears, and was pretty choked up himself.

As I walked back to the hotel afterwards, I kept my eyes open for dinner prospects, and happened to walk right by the Hard Rock Café. That works – burger and beer. By this time I probably should have known better than to check my email (Blueberry and mobile phone are both incompatible with the Japanese network). Once again I ended up connecting to Beijing and working late.

Which makes for a good place to take a pause.

Will our hero ever get a break? Will he survive in the Land of SF? Only time (and the next episode) will tell.