My first experience of Japan was the quietness of my fellow travellers aboard BA7 to
Narita Airport. The English man behind me seemed so loud and unsettled and boisterous - and then it dawned on me that he was merely chatting to the air stewards, settling his seat for the flight and getting his entertainment organised - but he was such a contrast to the stillness of the rest of the cabin of Japanese people - and already I had assumed their composure and silence as the norm to be followed. Maybe it was because of my childhood on a Naval Base that I have such a capacity to become instantaneously institutionalised.
I was met at the baggage
carrousel to be told that my bag was still in transit and would be delivered to my new address between 5-9pm the following day. I felt so exhausted that I was tempted to suggest a similar remedy for moving me from
Narita Airport: I would happily lie down to travel around on a baggage
carrousel for the next 24hours and my bag and I could be delivered to the address written on the small yellow post-it in my coin purse. I find foreign addresses disconcerting at the best of times: I'm not sure I believe that the few words in those few lines can actually lead to one distinct place among the millions of potential other places I have never seen.
I had assumed the gentle kindness and the courteous thoroughness of the 6 airport staff who were deeply involved in the case of my delayed case was because they felt very very sorry for me. Today I am in Japan a fortnight and I have come to realise that the focused kind attention of a team is how chores or problems are addressed here.
I had an hour to wait for my bus and spent it in the deserted, immaculate terminal, eating triangular rice cakes wrapped in seaweed - one had a stewed plum in the centre and the other had smoked fish.
Shino Koyama San, from the University International Office had told me that the bus would take 145 minutes to its terminus where she would meet me. Time here is sliced precisely. I sat at the front and had a magical sight: cherry trees were breathing their blossom for miles along the deserted dual carriageway. The road drifted through mile after mile after mile - lined by anonymous 7-8 storey concrete and glass buildings housing business corporations and the fragile tissue-white flowers were swirling apart and suspended with no witness but me and the impassive bus driver.
Then I saw a group of 30/40 salarymen/women - they seemed to have stepped up from some underground stairwell - moving like a phalanx of clones in their nearly black suits and gleaming white shirts - and they were smiling and laughing in the blizzard of late blossom. Salarymen was one of the curious terms that all of the guidebooks used and never explained - but I knew immediatley what they were when I saw them - 'managers' we call them - in management of the multi-form transnational corporations. Salarymen - the word makes perfect sense - even for the women. At that time I smiled to see the salarymen's delight - but a fortnight later when I replay the image now - seeing their upturned palms and laughter and the ways in which they dusted down the petals from each other's immaculate hair and suits - I know now I saw a rare moment of exuberance.
I was looking for a memory stick. 
