We are in Japan! After a 10-hour drive (to SFO), a 15-hour flight (across the Pacific), a 15-hour layover (in Shanghai), and another 3-hour flight (across the Japan Sea), we’re in a hotel in Narita. We’re resting up before our journey up to Sapporo tomorrow.
Our stay in China was short, but it definitely made an impression. From the moment we landed, Shanghai felt busy. In the airport, taxi drivers tried to scam us into paying 5x the going rate. The streets were full of near collisions and brave cyclists. Everyone was in a hurry to get somewhere and after a long flight, it was rather overwhelming. When we settled into our hotel room, it was 3:30am Pacific time, and 6:30pm in Shanghai. Annika went straight to sleep, but I was still pumped on adrenaline, so I decided to walk around a little. I wandered into a small restaurant by our hotel. The menu didn’t have any English or pictures, and the lady who ran the place didn’t speak any English. So, after a little bit of fumbling, she pointed to some chicken she was cooking in a pot, and I just nodded and smiled. There’s no taboo against openly staring at foreigners in public. So I was pretty much a zoo animal for the other customers’ amusement. But I was too tired and hungry to mind.
When we awoke the next morning, the hotel provided a complementary breakfast, which was way better than some lame continental breakfast of eggs and toast. Fried noodles, pork buns, rice porridge, broccoli. We left feeling full, rested, and happy.
On the plane to Japan, I couldn’t help but read a Chinese newspaper (Global Times) over some guy’s shoulder. He overheard me asking the flight attendant for a copy and very nicely offered to give me his when he was done reading it. I loved reading what journalists in China are saying about world news, and China’s place in the world. American politics also played a heavy role: Ted Cruz and Donald Trump didn’t warrant much introduction, so I can infer that most readers know their names well. None of the articles were even slightly critical of the PRC government, and went out of their way to defend its policies against critics. There was a piece about a proposed partnership with Southeast Asian countries (the Lancing-Mekong Cooperative) that other world leaders allege puts China in an overly-dominant position in the region; the author’s response boils down to “it’ll be good for the region, and we can be trusted.” There was another piece about how the recent terrorist attack in Brussels justifies China’s anti-terrorism policies. Another which argues that claims about the economic slowdown in Northeast China are “exaggerated,” that new and better econometrics prove that the region is doing just fine. I was last in China when I was 13, and this sort of censorship went entirely over my head.
We arrived in Narita and zipped through customs. We had pre-ordered a Japan Rail Pass and Pocket Wi-Fi, which we picked up at the airport. We passed the time before our hotel shuttle arrived by enjoying some vending machine coffee (surprisingly delicious!) and a hot dog (with lettuce on it?!). Our hotel for tonight was actually free, thanks to the Orbitz Rewards points I accumulated booking the flights. As I’m writing this, we’re getting ready to head out the door and explore Narita / Tokyo. Tomorrow, we board a train for Sapporo, with a stop in Aomori!