Day 28

30 September, 2003

Wake up to sunshine, but my windows, as well as the decks, handrails and everything, are coated with a thick layer of crystal salt from last night. We have reached the headland of Tokyo bay. A beautiful green upsweep, like the mountainside in Maui, from a cliff, with some beautiful agricultural type estates, like the Hana ranch. The angry ocean does a shooting The Edge Of Night act on the cliffs.

We come into the bay, and as well as the woodprint waves and whitecaps, there are birds, even ten miles from land. Not the same guys from before, but skimmers, flying low over the waves looking for opportunity, the wind not seeming to bother them at all. The whole scene seems right off a japanese tea cup. That same freezing fifty mile an hour wind clears the air, so that I have Mount Fuji framed perfectly like a postcard in my porthole for two hours. We pass a lot of military ships in all the traffic, including a submarine coming out. A tug boat delivers a pilot and then goes ahead of us with a “you, your coming with me” officiousness. Okay, okay!

Two hours up the bay, small villages here and there on the side. The bay closes down into a neck, maybe from ten miles across to five, just before it opens into a huge industrial bowl of cities that is Tokyo (Yokohama, Chiba and such). Right at the top of the neck, perfectly placed to catch any unobservant pilot of a ship towards Tokyo, is a low and flat island, long and thin across the middle of the opening into the bay. Well sure enough there is a light house for at night. But in the day, with all the light houses and industrial lights some one might miss it. To overcome this, about every five minutes, a device starts spraying fuel oil which is lit and watered at the same time for about thirty seconds before burning out. This creates a big black smoke blob that goes up. And any captain would see that, pick up his binoculars and say “Vas is dis, oh, dat’s an island yah!”

One of these asian industrial size dragonflies is trying to maintain himself in this wind and he falls, motionless, on the deck a few feet from me. I create a windbreak around him for about ten minutes but still no motion. I bend down and touch him and vaVAM, he is back off furiously flying, and is still zipping about an hour later when we dock.

At a slow speed, the bay seems interminable. In the distance, I think I see the old Queen Elizabeth at dock, although I always thought she had finally burned or something. When I was a lad, she was the Queen of any harbor she sailed into. And when in New York visiting my grandmother, I would always watch for her or the Queen Mary at the Cunard Pier on the Hudson, poking their bows over the traffic besides the elevated expressway (all gone now, expressway, ships and pier).

All refineries, distilleries, tank farms and industry. Although the water does not have the visible trash that was so apparent in China, it’s olive green, brown cast is not inviting. A nice touch, in the middle of the channel, an artificial island for ventilation of a tunnel is set up like giant sails, looking like a sailboat from afar. We hang a left around the faux sails. The mouth of the harbor has Tokyo airport on it’s side. Not Narita International, but the La Guardia to Narita’s Kennedy. A never ending stream of planes in and out, we come in and dock at a situation similar to Osaka’s, at 1330.

As I already have my landing card, I am headed for the gangplank at 1400 being informed to return by 2100. On the way out I run into some official looking young Japanese men, in brilliant uniform (why must all officials seem so young these days... sheesh), who inform me in very broken English, “we are Japanese customs, we must speak to your captain” (take me to your leader)!. For a second, I am pondering what I might have done already, but then realize they are lost. I take them to the ship’s office and wave good-bye. I have gotten comfortable with the gangplank, but today it is about three feet away and two feet above an indeterminate landing spot with some Tokyo harbor inbetween. I jump, ready for Tokyo!

Tokyo is by leaps and bounds the largest city in the world! Who knew! It must have incorporated some neighboring city or sumpin’, because I had been laboring along thinking it was some where like Såo Paulo or Mexico City. Mexico City according to my 2003 edition atlas is second with 18 million. Our Los Angeles is sixth with 13 million. But Tokyo is number one with 26.5 million souls. Count ‘em (not)!

The Hanjin agent in Tokyo had prepared, for passengers and seamen, a small map and guide (in fractured English) to the port area and instructions on how to get into town, . Most importantly it has the address and phone numbers of the dock in Japanese, so if worse came to worse one could jump in a cab and point at the address. It also spelled out how they wanted one to get across the lot. So I followed instructions. Easy peasy as some might say.

The docks are on a man made island which includes a Meridian and Nikko Hotel, some big shopping centers, an amusement park, a Cirque du Soleil, another maritime museum and all connected to the heart of Tokyo by the Rainbow (suspension) Bridge. A monorail runs around the island, spectacularly crosses the bridge and along the waterfront to Shimbasi train station, a major point in central Tokyo.

After a twenty-five minute walk through the now familiar container world, I get to a stop on the monorail, and enjoyed my trip into Tokyo. The views are great and I am surprised how my anxiety over hights has lessened so much in the last month or two. Everything is wonderfully organized, efficient and clean, although the seating is designed for people a little smaller then myself. I find a bit of a mad house at Shimbasi where a man on a truck bed in the square in front, is shpeiling a probable political rant to a hand full of luke warm onlookers.

I had planned to go to the Imperial Palace but never got there. I just started walking the streets, for hours. Perfect walking weather. Something about the city felt like the eastern US cities of my childhood. Every possible space open for business. No boarded up windows. Whether the strip clubs, brightly lit pachinko clubs with lonely gray besuited men in front of their machines, and small open six stool eating places in the narrow streets around the station. I marched up and down the streets of the Ginza district. Of course the same shops as in the 8th arrondissement in Paris, New Bond Street or Knightsbridge in London, or even Rodeo Drive, but a lot of good people watching. My friend Roger, in spite of his frenchness, will be happy to know that there is a Subway sandwich shop right across the street from the Ginza branch of Au Printemps. Otherwise, I am definitely not in an acquisition mode these days.

By 1730 my little fear machine started making me want to drift in the direction of the ship, and I was worried about rush hour. I squeezed onto the monorail with many beautifully dressed people. All the men over twenty in Japan, wear suits. Even if they keep their hair a little freaky, they will have a suit on. By thirty they sink into a faceless elegant solution. The woman can be wonderfully outfitted, and with no fear. I saw very shapely young women in the shortest skirts and high Barbarella boots, or dressed in perfect English country gentlewoman or Parisian perfection get on the monorail with out being hardly looked at or accosted by all the men in any way. The men were almost comically unaware. Yet I believe these good manors is what allow the women the freedom.

I got off the monorail a couple of stops early, at a shopping complex on the bay called Aqua City. Many US outfits, both faux and real. There is even a miniature statue of liberty in front. A big Sony center where I looked and found nothing I needed, a cinema, nothing I wanted to see. After perusing all the eating choices, I settled on an almost empty sushi and tempura place. The young waiter with spiky hair was most attentive and eager to speak English. I splurged out on a tempura spread including everything from congor eel to octopus. It came with many more accouterments then I knew how to handle. I then stumbled on a massage shop (has a branch in Redondo Beach!) at around 1900. Had a half hour massage that did wonders for my back, but as I felt it was time to head back, I forewent other parts of my body, like my legs, that have now replaced my back for problems.

At my monorail exit there was a AM/PM store. I stocked up on Japanese junk food, bottles of coffee drinks that are much less sweetened then the American ones. I start walking in the now dark, almost deserted office and industrial zone. A small interesting crowd, hovering around the lobby of the World Telecom building, bring my attention to a classical music concert, chamber orchestra and two pianists. But it seems like some kind of master class as they stop and start, talk and start again.

I was feeling pretty good when I climbed back on the ship with a half hour to spare.

If one were to take the financial pundits of the world to heart, one would expect Japan to be a cold and gray world of sackcloth and ashes. For some reason their silly bankers won’t do things our way! Hmmmmmm!? Well they’re doing something right I would opine.

I watched our 2300 departure, but it was freezing cold, I had my winter coat on, and once we were out in the bay I went to bed. Next stop home, where the deer and financial genius of the world play.

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