On Tuesday morning we hired a car and headed out of the city for a couple of days.  Tokyo is amazing but I wanted to see something different than the concrete jungle.   We drove towards Nikko and the Chuzenji Lake area.  Nikko is about 150 km outside Tokyo and has some beautiful mountains and forests.  When I went to Nikko before it was by train and, although the public transport system is fantastic, it’s not the best way to see a mountain.

Once we got off the Tohoku expressway we drove up through the mountains to the lake.  I loved the drive.  The scary road full of hairpin bends was one-way allowing us to enjoy the drive without being overly worried about other cars. The mountains are spectacular but I found it hard to take any good pictures.

Mountains Around Nikko

I really like the mountains in Northern Ireland but they are very different than Japanese mountains.  The highest mountain in Northern Ireland, Slieve Donard, is only 850 metres.   Lake Chuzenji is at the foot of Mount Nantai and the lake is about 1,250 metres above sea level!

The other thing I really wanted to see was a waterfall.  I had read about Kegon Waterfall but we didn’t manage to find that on Tuesday.  We did, however, manage to find Yudaki Waterfall.

Yudaki Waterfall, Lake Chuzenji

Chicago O’Hare is not one of my favourite airports.  Last year I ended up stuck here for over a day because of a cancelled flight.  But so far this morning things have gone to plan.  I got through immigration and customs really quickly.   Transferring to another terminal took a bit longer, because of the security queues, but it went smoothly enough.

At the minute I’m sitting in United’s business lounge.  It’s not particularly impressive but at least I’ve managed to find somewhere to sit and use my computer.

I was surprised by how unfriendly the staff are who check your boarding card as you enter the lounge.  Whilst I was waiting to get in a Japanese man approached the desk and asked about problems with his wifi.  No-one could help him and the response he got was “look, I just don’t know”.  And then they turned away from him and left him standing looking confused with his computer. I know that the staff may not be able to help with what they think are technical questions but they could have at least said that they were sorry.  Instead they looked really put out that he had asked them a question.

Unlike other lounges I have been in you are expected to pay for most of the food and drink.  It’s seems that you also have to pay for wifi if you are travelling with a Star Alliance carrier other than United.  I am flying with United but nobody offered me either drink vouchers or wifi.  I had to ask for the wifi voucher when I heard the other members of staff offer this to people they were checking in.  I miss the friendly ANA staff who treated me so well at Narita airport.

I’ve had enough of the business lounge.  Obviously I’m some sort of novelty as people keep staring at me.  I’m tired from hours of travel and it’s making me uncomfortable.  And the final straw?  I got up to walk to the ladies room and a man actually stopped mid-eating to stare.  He looked at me, with his mouth wide open, and the bread roll that he had been eating forgotten in his hand.  He just leered with food in his mouth!

Who knew that a YAPC::Asia T-shirt would cause such a stir?

It’s just turned 5am and I’m sitting by myself in the Asiana Business Lounge at Incheon Airport.  I’ve lost all sense of time so I find myself glancing at the clock every 5 minutes, which will be a dull way to pass the 5 hours between flights.

The flight from New York took nearly 15 hours.  It was mostly uneventful.  A couple of hours before landing there was announcement asking if there was a doctor on-board.  The passenger two seats away from me had taken ill.  I had noticed her during the night but merely to wonder why she had been given a quilt as well as a blanket.

We had two medical professionals on the plane who fussed around and asked questions in English and Korean.  I was impressed by the level of care given by the air stewards.  The lady was too ill to get to a bathroom and the air stewards not only held the sick bags but rubbed her back whilst she was sick.  They also pressed cold towels against her head and held her hand.  They were kind and I’m not convinced that this level of kindness would be displayed by every airline I travel with.

I worry sometimes about travelling through unknown airports but transferring through this airport is quite easy.  They claim to have the best transfer system in the world and an airport that has rest areas, play areas, museums, restaurants, shops, and massage rooms.  The transfer wasn’t difficult just a bit annoying.  The people in front of me were carrying four pieces of hand-luggage each and it got a bit chaotic when they tried to get all this x-rayed.  But it only required patience on my part.

Now I just need to find a way to stay awake.

I’m not back in Tokyo yet but I have already started to arrange my summer travel.  It needs to be done, because I want to travel using airline miles, but at this point I feel like I never want to travel again.  I’m out of luck though since at the minute I’m sitting at the airport waiting to board a 15 hour flight.

Registration has opened for YAPC::NA and I do plan to attend.  I have also been trying to work YAPC::EU into my travel plans.  That’s proving a lot harder as I have visitors this summer.  I’m trying to decide if it will be worth attending even if I only make the last day.  I really do want an opportunity to meet up with the European Perl Mongers.

I’ve just looked out the window and there are two people using cross-country skies to make their way up the street.  Apparently there is 2 and a half feet of snow outside.  I say “apparently” as there is no way I’m going out there to find out.

The worry though is that I do need to go out tomorrow morning.  I have a flight to catch to New York and I’m hoping that the weather improves so that the airport can open again.  I really don’t want to miss my flight home on Monday as it will be such hassle finding another flight.

When I first arranged this trip I had planned to go to the Perl conference that is on at the minute in Minneapolis.  A few weeks ago I changed my  mind because I was worried that the weather would be too bad…

Snowy Weather

Yesterday morning I went for a walk through the snow in Manhattan.  It really was postcard perfect, especially along the river front.

Hudson River Bank

This afternoon I decided to brave the Century 21 department store.  I had a pleasant morning and an enjoyable lunch with Marty and Nozaki-san, so today was a good day to try it.  I would love shopping to be a pleasant experience, but with a slogan of “fashion worth fighting for”, Century 21 is not the place to go if you are looking for calm.

The horror started as soon as I entered the store. I tried to find some new socks for Marty but got fed up really quickly of getting pushed out of the way by the men shopping there.  Maybe they didn’t see me, but it seems that good manners are left outside the shop.

I moved to the handbag section and tried to find a new bag.  There were some lovely things and they were certainly inexpensive but I didn’t see anything I liked enough to fight my way through the crowds.  I did overhear an argument between a member of staff and a customer.  The customer was asking the sales assistant to please not kick the baskets at her. The sales assistant was standing with her hands on her hips saying “I didn’t kick anything”, sounding horrifying like a defiant child.  I moved quickly away from that fight and went to look at ladies clothes.

It was chaotic and disorganised and I was disgusted by how much damage had been done to some of the dresses.  Beautiful dresses made from high quality fabric with plucks and tears.  I did manage to find some clothes and went to try them on.  Well, wasn’t that an experience.  Someone took the clothes from me to make sure that I wasn’t hiding items.  They don’t trust the customers to be truthful about the number of items they have.  They also take everything from you when you leave so they can count the clothes again, and then hand back the items you wish to purchase.  But the strangest thing for me was hearing the sales assistants talk about the customers stealing things, and the big signs up about shop lifters.  There are ways of checking clothes that don’t make your customers feel like suspected criminals.

My final stop was at the shoe department.  I haven’t quite worked out how you are supposed to try on shoes that are joined together with cable tags and I yelped the first time I didn’t notice the security tag at the back of one shoe I tried on.  I only managed to put shoes on my right foot, but even if I had managed to put on both it’s not like there was room to walk around.

When I went to buy the shoes the sales assistant didn’t actually speak to me or even look at me.  She continued a conversation with two other assistants about one of the customers in the store.  The words old and fat were used.  Truly delightful.

And why did I put up with this?  I’m now the proud owner of a beautiful Calvin Klein suit that cost me about 25% of the original price and a pair of Stuart Weitzman evening shoes that cost $21 instead of the retail price of $340.

There are times I wish that the world was a smaller place or that I lived closer to the conferences I want to attend.  Getting to Orlando took a long time.  I was flying from Tokyo via Seoul and New York.  The detour to Seoul added about 5 hours to the trip but it did mean that I was able to fly in business class.  I am willing to trade the extra time for the ability to sleep on the plane.   It was a bit horrifying though to fly over Tokyo 10 hours after I had left my apartment that morning.

I also wish that travelling was more pleasant.   To travel you have to be willing to queue for hours and to allow people to go through your luggage.  You have to be prepared to remove your shoes and belts and to let a stranger run their hands over your body.  You have to be pleasant while someone asks you questions about your intentions and takes your picture and finger prints.  And you have to be prepared to put up with whatever silly security precaution the airports are going to run with next.

The new procedures for flying into America seemed pointless to me.  All my hand luggage had been x-rayed so I don’t know what they expected to find by opening up my handbag and having a quick glance inside.

Thankfully, Perl Oasis was an excellent conference and worth the time spent travelling.

I attend a lot of conferences and I’m always on the look out for the things that improve the attendees experience.  At this conference I loved the basket of travel accessories that was at the registration desk.  The organisers had put together the sorts of things that people forget to bring with them and were giving them away for free.  It’s a lovely idea and I took a packet of anti-histamine tablets as I keep forgetting the air conditioners in hotels drive my sinuses mad.

Essential Items

Thankfully the trip back to Japan was uneventful.  I haven’t rang anyone to let them know that I’ve got back but then my voice hasn’t come back yet.  I lost it a few days before Christmas and by now I am thoroughly fed up with croaking and whispering.  The thought of travelling whilst ill fills me with dread but I didn’t have a problem on the long return flight.  The only problem I seemed to have was staying awake as apparently I was asleep before the plane had taken off.