THE GREAT TOHOKU CATACLYSM: Tokyo to Beijing

Before getting into nostalgia, who is new UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak?

• 42-year old Hindu born in Southampton whose parents of Indian descent migrated from East Africa in the 1960s.
• Went to Oxford, then got an MBA from Stanford University as a Fulbright Scholar.
• While at Stanford, met his wife Akshata Murthy, daughter of Indian billionaire N.R. Narayana Murthy, who founded Infosys.

• 
  Rishi and Akshata have two children and are an almost billionaire couple, the 222nd richest people in Britain.
• First British Asian and Hindu to become prime minister.

• 
  While relatively young, David Cameron in 2010 was only a year older at 43, while the first PM, Robert Walpole in 1721 was 44, William Cavendish in 1756 was 36, Charles Watson-Wentworth was 35, Augustus FitzRoy in 1768 was 33 and William Pitt the Younger (right) in 1783 was 24.  Winston Churchill in 1940 was 65, Margaret Thatcher in 1979 was 53 and Tony Blair in 1997 was 43.
• According to Time magazine:

He bears none of the clownish antics of Johnson, nor the Libertarian zeal of Truss. What he does have, however, is an expensive wardrobe, a penchant for Coca-Cola, and, as The Atlantic’s Helen Lewis aptly points out, a fastidious and obsessive personality reminiscent of Frasier’s Niles Crane.

Last week I reached back to my posting of 12March2011, the day after The Great Tohoku Earthquake.  Today I continue that day with my landing at Narita.

It frankly occurred to me at this point, notwithstanding the immediate above, of my real life fantasy that, while drumming my feet on the floor to the beat of Ravel’s Bolero, I was at the peak of my life.  One wonders when this will be, sort of like Peak Oil, but, no doubt, this was it. Things can only go downhill from here, and certainly will when I land in the chaos of Narita.  But it was an incredible ride and I still think I was (am, yet?) the luckiest person in the history of Humankind.  Finally, I felt a kind of euphoria traveling at the speed of a bullet at 33,000 feet, maybe akin to a prisoner on death row having his last breakfast.  I was mentally prepared for the next stage of my life, the calmness before the catastrophe.

My plane landed at around 4PM after a flight of five hours from Bangkok.  I had four bags with me, one very large, for I'm on a six week trip in hot and cold countries.  After the customs check I looked around for the usual sign with my name.  Saw none, so walked around with my bags and asked questions.  Half an hour later after determining that there were no taxis, no airport limousines, no NEX, and no Tokyo Westin pickup, I tried to call the Westin, but failed.  There was only one option, the slowest JR trains from Narita to Tokyo: 

a.  I wasn't allowed to take the cart down the escalator, so that became a problem. After somehow getting my bags down one floor,  I stood in line for perhaps an hour to buy the ticket, but not being able to read nor speak Japanese, I wasn't sure what I was doing.  

b.  I finally figured out that I needed to find an elevator to take one floor down.  

c.  Half an hour later, I boarded the train.  But try getting four bags on.  

d.  After an hour or so, everyone got off the train at some obscure stop, so I lugged everything off, only to stand in line for another train.  

e.  Finally this second train got me to the Nippori Station for the Yamanote Line to Ebesu.  

f.  However, both the elevators and escalators were not functioning.  Amazingly, a nice man and a college student helped me carry my bags down.  She had just flown in from Brazil, and in conversation I found out that I should have used a delivery service to send my bags to the Westin.  I wish someone had told me that earlier.  I struggled on to the Yamanote train.  

g.  I've now been standing or in line for more than four hours.  Ah, there was an escalator to take me up to the walkway through Ebesu Garden Place, a path I have been  using for more than ten years.  

h.  Oh no, they now have this blocked off.  I asked, and they said take the escalator back down to the street level and walk to the Tokyo Westin.  

i.  The sidewalk was dark and bumpy, but, luckily, I was able to find a taxi for the final few hundred yards.  

I now remember that the cost of this taxi was higher than the total fares I paid from Narita to Ebesu.

I finally arrived at the Westin at almost 9PM.  It took me as long to fly from Thailand to Japan as to travel from Narita to the Tokyo Westin.  What an ordeal!

When I balance the good and the bad of the day, and consider that I am actually in Tokyo only a day after their largest earthquake in history, I feel blessed.  Supposedly there have been two 6.0+ aftershocks the past hour (there have been 83 of these in a little more than 24 hours), but I didn't feel anything, and things are quickly coming together in this city.  So catastrophe?  Not really.  Life remains great.

You might ask, where are the photos to recored this chaos and hopelessness.  Well, just shows I'm not a professional news photographer, as my focus on just getting from point A to point B, then adjusting to point C....

On Sunday, 13March2011, this blog site reported on the state of the catastrophe.  The Huffington Post later published my article entitled, The Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami:  The Aftermath.  This was my longest posting ever for them as I just kept updating the article for two weeks.  So about that Sunday:

I awake on Day 3 and see a glorious sunrise and am met with a smile from Mount Fuji in the far background... went down for an incredible brunch... and will next explore. However, don't expect any Anderson Cooper-like, CNN death-defying expose of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown or a Soledad O'Brien interview with a bedraggled tsunami survivor. I will report on life in general, perhaps on sake and bentos, and see if any cherry blossoms have yet bloomed.

Oh, by the way, at least one report has radiation already in Tokyo, less than 150 miles from Fukushima.    Whoops, I'm in Tokyo.  I was in D.C. in 1979 when the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, 100 miles away, suffered a meltdown, killing nuclear power construction in the U.S.  So how do you get iodine pills in Tokyo, and what do they do?  Amazon. com  sells them for $13.50 (14 pills).

My story continues in a second 13March2011 posting:

I heard that the French Embassy was urging its citizenry to get out of Tokyo as fast as possible.  As most of their electricity comes from nuclear power, I can only speculate that they know something I don't.

Thus, I skipped breakfast to catch the last Airport Limousine from my hotel, which was departing in a few minutes, hoping Air China would allow me to leave earlier to Beijing.   At worst, I thought I could stay at an airport hotel (this turned out not be possible as all rooms are currently taken).  The bus ride was gloriously uneventful.

I made it to the Air China check-in, but their flights were all overbooked.  So I went to United Airlines, and after a long wait, talked them into allowing me to catch their next flight to Beijing.  They happened to have a seat, so got me on.  As this was an emergency, there was no penalty.

The UAL Red Carpet area was closed because of lack of food/staff/whatever.  However, I was allowed into the the ANA lounge, which is beautifully appointed with an abundance of food and wide assortment of drinks.  The area was expectedly crowded, but I found a choice position in front of the CNN TV with a plug for my computer.  I had miso soup, clam chowder, soba (there is a special kitchen specializing in various noodles), musubi, kakimochi, Asahi Beer, Bloody Mary and a Japanese white wine.

I am leaving town, for the second explosion at Fukushima convinced me that the French, indeed, must know something.  This is the Chicken and Chicken Little School of Reportage:  take no chances and assume that the sky could fall.

So I got to Beijing and stayed at the St. Regis.  While emotionally wrought about all the turmoil in Tokyo, I nevertheless had a great breakfast the following morning:

The breakfast buffet is the Chinese equivalent of the Tokyo Westin, but better, for there is a larger salad bar, a noodle stand (where I had a bowl of wonton with vegetables) and a station where you can pick various meats and stuff for their preparation (lamb chops with eggs over easy on fried rice).  The only problem is that I couldn’t figure out how to signal to the staff that I was not yet finished…and, apparently, there is none.  For example, I ordered an orange juice and Oolong tea with my first course, but I forgot to add soy sauce to the bowl, so I left for 15 seconds, and when I returned, my table was cleaned.  So I ordered another orange juice and tea, finished the won ton, placed my napking on the back of my chair to indicate I would return, went to order my second dish and returned to see that my table was cleared again.  I asked for the third set of orange juice and Oolong teapot.  Not wanting to break the Guinness World Record for orange juice and Oolong tea, I left after finishing the lamb chops.

I ate well in Beijing, and you can read the details here.

The St. Regis has free cocktails for platinum members in the Press Club, so I had a chance to chat with Betty and Johnny over some Irish whiskey, for this March 17, St. Patrick's Day.  She is managing director for J. P. Morgan in Hong Kong and he is a film director with CCTV. We talked about colored pearls at Shunsai.

By the 17th of March I did not hear anything terrible happening in Tokyo, so I arranged to get part-way there through Seoul.  Next Tuesday, my exploits in South Korea to await my return to Japan.

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