Deutschland 2001
1. Departure

May 29 2001

  It was very bad morning for me. Headache, fatigue, and a heavy backpack. As soon as I got up, I thought why it was always worst whenever I must depart. Shit! But there was reasonable reasons for such worst condition. The day before departure I had job interview in the morning and prepared two papers for conference from the afternoon to the night. When I finished that job, it was already eleven o'clock in the night. My brain was almost paralyzed from hard working, and was screaming, "Noooo! I haven't packed anything yet." When I went back home and finished packing, it was three in the morning. "Is this what we do before departure for foreign country? Great! It's my youth." My brain and body hardly functioned. However, I departed at nine in the morning.

 9:00  departure from Akabane, Tokyo
11:20  arrival at Narita (Tokyo) Airport
13:05  departure from Narita Airport to London by British Airline

Tips: Narita (Tokyo) Airport

@The biggest international airport in Japan is called Tokyo airport worldwide. But to tell the truth, the airport isn't in Tokyo but in Narita, located east of Tokyo, more than 50km from Tokyo city center. It takes about one and half hour to get to airport from city center. And it costs 1,000 yen by local train of Keisei Line from Ueno station, or about 1,500 yen by local train of JR Line from Tokyo station.
  This trip is usually boring and train gets crowded sometimes. Moreover, airport charge costs about 2,000 yen (nowadays included in the price of flight ticket.) Then, most Japanese think that the airport isn't convenient to use at all. We need no less than 3,000 yen and almost half day for just escaping from Japan!
  There is one more airport in Tokyo, called Haneda airport, located south part of Tokyo, only 10km from city center. Haneda airport has been used for national flight except a few international flight. Some criticisms say that we should expand Haneda airport and should use for more international flight. But some criticisms oppose the plan from a point of noise pollution. A number of big and airport called Hub airport have being built recently in many Asian countries. And some criticisms say that Japan will lose its position as main point of airline transfer if we don't do anything. But unfortunately there is no more space to build a new runway in Tokyo metropolitan area without difficulty.
  We can see no progress of this problem. One thing is for sure, we have to prepare for unexpected expenditure at the time of departure/arrival as we have done before.

  I felt a dull pain in the head all the time on an airplane. The flight was 12 hours from Narita to London and it was a exhausting trip. But it's fortunate that the crew are all very polite and have a smile on their face. Whenever they serve something for the passenger, they always say 'sir' with a happy smile. "I was right to take British Airline. As I had expected, the British people are all lady and gentleman" I thought at that time, though I would be disappointed at in London 2 months later...

(It lost 8 hours)

17:20  Arrival at London Heathrow airport

Transfer from terminal 4 to terminal 1
  You know, Heathrow airport is one of the biggest airport in the world. I could spend time on walking around in the airport without boredom. And I came across a advertising corner of Microsoft Pocket PC. What's Pocket PC? I didn't know then I asked a person who have a piece of CD of Pocket PC. That was a pocket size computer embedded with Microsoft Windows. It was like PDA, the only difference was embedded OS. I frowned, "Microsoft still intend to spread its notorious Windows OS." because Microsoft will be my biggest enemy in my future business. But at the same time I was content to have conversation in English for the first time in this travel.

20:05  Departure from London to Hamburg by British Airline

(It gained 1 hour)

22:40  Arrival at Hamburg airport

  I came to Germany again. I had already been to Germany 4 years ago. but this time I came to live for 2 months, my heart was beating with hope.
previous  next