| Submitted by: Mark Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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Somewhere a few rows back is a baby who has just discovered vocalization and the ability to make noises loud enough for a plane full of people to hear. She is not happy, we are not happy, ain't nobody happy.
11:05 PM (Tokyo time, this is 10:05 AM Newark time) the Captain has said the fluid is dripping from a switch and the switch is being replaced. There is no word on how long this will take. What kind of a brake switch has fluid to leak?
Estimated time of departure is now 1 hour and 45 minutes late. While our flight continues on to Japan, we do have an equipment change, which means we change to another plane. That was to be after two hours in San Francisco. So we are in the peculiar position of possibly having the second half of a single flight leave before the first half can get there.
OK, our plane will leave two and a half hours late. Connections may be screwed up, but not the second part of this flight. We just will be delayed a few hours.
The plane took off about three hours late. For the people on the plane it is now past noon, but we are going to be served breakfast because that is what was loaded. I spent the extra three hours with the Japanese flashcards. It was boring and I found myself nodding off. Evelyn may have spent the time more wisely talking to other passengers in the kind of camaraderie that forms quickly between travelers who share inconvenience. Luck of Leeper has given her plenty of opportunity to meet people under similar conditions over the years. I would say that it is probable that most people run into similar luck when they travel, but we do seem to have even worse luck than most.
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I think this is about the point that I should go to a new day. It s 5:30 AM by destination time and we are about 40% done with the travel a I estimate it from door to door. Because of the lateness of the flight they gave us free earphones to hear the movie. The movie was DRAGONHEART which was a decent film to see once in the theater but was not worth the effort to try to watch in a plane with a really obstructed view of the screen. I pretty much ignored the film. My dinner was apple pancakes, some fruit, and a Sara Lee muffin. They had Starbuck's decaf and vile, bitter stuff it was. Hey Starbucks's, if this is the best you can do for decaf, I am not going to ever go to one of your outlets. And if your excuse is that this is not the real Starbuck's, you should not let United defame you in this way. The time was that you had generic food on airlines. Now the airlines have taken a cue from bad movies and have decided there is money to be made with product placements. The video program is solid ads, the food that comes had brand names all over it. Evelyn thinks that gives you some confidence in the food, but I get tired of the barrage. I slept a little and went through my flashcards again. More than most other languages I am having trouble picking up the words and phrases. They do not come from Western root and there are a lot of syllables to remember. I am not picking up the pattern of what words end in 'su' and what ends in 'sen'. I may see a pattern in some, but it is still too early. For example 'Gomen Kudasai' is 'excuse me (in the hello sense)' rather than 'excuse me (in the I'm sorry sense).' But if you want to say 'I want some X' you say 'X o kudasai.' It is the same word but I cannot figure out what its literal meaning is. So there is a lot of rote memorization. And as I get older my memory is not as good.
Evelyn woke up and I asked her how she slept. She said she had trouble and her head kept slipping to the side. That's not what I was asking. I really wanted to know how she slept so I could try the same technique myself. I was able to sleep a little. I brought along a sleeping mask. The infant in back still keeps screaming with a sound a lot like you get from abusing a rubber balloon.
Breakfast was a roast beef sandwich and a bag of brand name corn and wheat chips. It is now 6 AM and we just flew over Yosemite. We will soon be descending into San Francisco.
I have slipped off my shoes in the Japanese style and will soon have to locate them again.
Let's see. If it is about 6 AM in Tokyo is about 5 PM in New Jersey, so it must be about 2 PM here. I was wrong about them holding the continuation of this flight. Supposedly they may not hold the continuation of this flight if we cannot get from gate 81 to 58 in time to check in. They are not holding that plane for us. That plane is leaving at 45 minutes after the hour and it is now 10 minutes after. Naturally we are a little tense. Just what makes that a continuation of this flight is not clear.
7:01:39 am OK, now I have something of a minor adventure to relate. The flight crew was giving us contradictory information as to whether the next connection would be held. We knew the gate to go to and the flight magazine said it was all the way on the other side of the terminal. Somebody would take us over as a group. The last we heard the plane would be held. The landing is often beautiful coming in over the water of San Francisco bay. But of course we were worried about our connection. We landed and we sat. There were planes sitting in the 'alley' the plane needed to go down it to get to our gate. More delay. That took about 10 minutes. We Looked at a map of the airport in the flight magazine and the gates were at opposite ends of the terminal. It was going to be a mess. True to their word there was a guy in a red jacket who was there to take us to the right place and was hurrying us up. There was a Chinese couple with canes and their daughter. They were going to have a hard time keeping up. Evelyn suggested I walk with them and she would make sure the plane did not leave without me. I at first decided this was a bad idea because the couple would be a lot slower than the rest of the group and I would end up missing the plane. Almost as immediately I realized that I was being selfish and these people needed help they might not otherwise get. They would likely miss the plane without my help. The attendant was not paying attention to them, he was just trying to get his 15 or so people to the plane, or as many as could go. I took it upon myself to make sure the rear end of the group made it. When I could manage it I walked with the three. When the group got too far ahead to see I went ahead far enough to see both the group and the three at the back. With four people out of 15 being left behind the attendant had to stop and get the group at least in sight of each other. When we got to security I let the Chinese ahead of me, then I got pulled aside for a check. The daughter thanked me an then thanked Evelyn when the three caught up to her. She waited for me. So did the plane. The plane was something like 85 degrees and after the exhausting run we were really sweating. It was tough to find a place to put my luggage, but a flight attendant from the plane helped.
We got off the ground about two hours late at about 7:30 AM. This is a 747 suffering from impacted passengers. The movies will be TWISTER and MOLL FLANDERS. I made the mistake of seeing TWISTER in a theater. I have not seen MOLL FLANDERS, but was not anxious. Apparently the filmmakers wanted there to be a great classic of English literature about a strong-willed courageous woman. There wasn't one that fit their needs so they used only a title in much the same way the Bond films do.
Dinner at 9 AM was chicken and powdered whipped potatoes with solid potato pieces added to simulate lumps. As with diamonds, mashed potatoes are supposed to have minor flaws. It they are too perfect they are obviously artificial. In this case the flaws in the artificial potatoes were added to give the impression of reality. The trays that dinner were served on clearly had a problem. They had some sort of protuberances underneath so they did no lie flat. It made it very difficult to cut the chicken.
At home the sunrise we saw has given way to sunset and darkness. Still it is light outside the plane. There seem to be a lot of Japanese teens on this flight, walking the aisle and talking to each other. You don't see nearly as many American teens. I guess the Japanese economy is pretty good. You keep hearing that there are signs that the Japanese economy will falter, but I have not seen any signs that is any time soon.
These teens seem a lot like American teens and certainly are from a first world country. It is hard to see much left of the great traditions of samurai chivalry (or lack thereof). I wonder if we will find any who cling to the old traditions. It sure seems like Yukio Mishima lost.
Perhaps something should be said about Yukio Mishima, who is perhaps for us in the West the most enigmatic Japanese in modern times (with the possible exception of Emperor Hirohito). He was born Hiraoka Kimitake in 1925 Tokyo. He went to Tokyo University and became a civil servant before turning to writing. Mishima was predominantly a writer of novels, writing 40 though also he was an actor, an artist, a poet, a playwright of Kabuki and Noh, and a politician who because of his militaristic philosophy brought himself to a spectacular end.
There is a certain sameness to many of Mishima's novels, at least from the viewpoint of Westerners. They seem to portray characters, usually under powerful emotional stress, who resist action until finally the pressure becomes unbearable and they release it in a melodramatic and an almost orgasmic explosion of violence. Yukio Mishima probably would have enjoyed the Godfather films.
When a country with a warrior tradition is forced to be peaceable and non-militaristic as Japan was at the close of W.W.II, there has to be an outlet somewhere. There were many people, old and young, who longed for the chivalry and romanticism of the past with a powerful militaristic government and Mishima became the focus for them. He organized the Shield Society, a private army of about 100 youths dedicated to returning Japan to its previous glory. Then it all ended in melodrama like the stories that Mishima wrote. On November 25, 1970 he and some of his followers broke into the Ichigaya army base and from a balcony he told all who would listen that the time had come to throw off the government and return to the old values. He got little reaction from the soldiers present and it is not clear if he expected it or not. However, when his coup failed he committed suicide by the time-honored method of seppuku. His followers tried the same method of suicide, but could not do it correctly. Mishima's opinions still remain controversial today. Many still feel like caged lions and look wistfully at this possible alternate course their country might have taken.
1:46:34 PM I watched the end of TWISTER but I was walking around and missed the beginning of MOLL FLANDERS. Just as well since this version is probably cut and it will soon turn up on cable.
They keep bringing around water and fruit juice. Evelyn an I got up to use facilities and we talked to a woman going to China and told her about our trip there. One thing she told us was that this plane had been held up for a missing part as well as waiting for us. I wonder if whenever there is a delay they just say it is mechanical failure since it makes them sound conscientious rather than poorly organized.
One of the many airplane ads disguised as entertainment is a look at special effects created by Silicon Graphics. They did effects for films like INDEPENDENCE DAY and TWISTER. They showed a piece from SPACE JAM, a new film combining Warner Brothers cartoon characters with live-action basketball players defending the earth against basketball players from outer space. According to them this is the future of film-making.' I have been feeling somewhat depressed since I heard that. |
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