David Frodsham

It’s been a bit of a blur since leaving San Jose after little more than 36 hours in that great place. Two of the highpoints were lunch at Mings with Paul (who is settling in well to his new home here) and dinner at The Blue Algarve Club discussing Bentleys (the cars) and salmon (the fish) with David, Betsy and David's niece. Another highpoint of course was Avis deciding to upgrade me to a Ford Mustang (“sorry Sir, you requested a Ford Focus with stick-shift, but we only have Automatics here [for “here” read the whole of the US], would you accept a Mustang instead? It is automatic though”). It’s a good head-turner, sounds great and goes like stink, but otherwise it’s a bit of a disappointment, especially the suspension and handling.

American Airlines is apparently stopping their service between San Jose and Tokyo Narita, and I can see why. The rather oddly designed (too much legroom, but not enough reclining seats made out of 80’s over-sombre blue leather) 777 is barely half-full, although I do meet an old Phoenix colleague on board.

Narita airport is, as I’ve observed before, rather a long way from Tokyo. I have 3 hours until my next flight, which leaves from Haneda, Tokyo’s national airport. The only trouble is that, according to the train timetable, it takes 2 hours to switch airports and trains are not frequent. Fortunately the omnipresent “Friendly Airport Limousine” steps up and offers me a bus transit which leaves every 10 minutes and takes just 70 minutes. The hostess bows to us as the coach pulls away exactly on time, driven by a man wearing white gloves. This is definitely Japan.

Haneda airport has a shopping mall above the terminal, which is very convenient for my couple of hours until the flight to Nagasaki. I drink tea and eat pasta for err… is it dinner? Not sure. I get another typical Japanese mannerism on leaving the restaurant, with all the waitresses and waiters chanting something unintelligible (“Goodbye”, perhaps?) as I leave. It’s almost in harmony.

The flight to Nagasaki is absolutely packed and I seem to be sitting next to a sumo wrestler. As he oozes over onto my adjacent seat, it’s getting very tight for those of us who weigh less than 200kg. If I had a tape measure, I would work out how much, or rather how little space I have. It’s inhumane and probably contravenes EU guidelines on veal rearing in Holland.

I believed from the map I downloaded from the Internet that Nagasaki airport is right next to the city, but it is a long taxi ride that exhausts me and most of the Yen cash I am carrying. The hotel, a Best Western, is quite grand and has some nice touches including free (yes, free) mini-bar and broadband.

Nagasaki is on the south west-most tip of Japan. Discovered by Portuguese and Dutch traders in C15, and still with a Dutch garden is one part of the town, the town nestles in a valley surrounded by mountains, leading to a port at the estuary.

The next day, Saturday, Dan is on time to meet me in the hotel lobby. We head out to the Ropeway, a cable car that leads up to the mountains that surround Nagasaki. It has spectacular views of the town, port and surrounding mountains. Dan takes a photo of me next to the cable car operator, who is dressed in a rather fetching orange striped uniform. She is half surprised, half shy, but smiles anyway. There are photos at the top to compare the view with earlier years, and we spot a bridge which clearly has only recently been built, leading to an extension to the port on the other bank.

The architecture of Nagasaki is typical post-war Japanese, with many of the buildings looking rather like the inside of a cheap bathroom, having white tiles, or perhaps white bricks, on the walls. Somehow every building seems to lack a little something, with some combination of rusty window frames, dirty windows, a ramshackle outhouse or dirty walls. Rather like Italy, it could do with a good lick of paint, but there’s no denying the underlying charm.

Our next stop is Dan’s flat which is about 20 minutes north of the centre, and we take the tram. It’s a fixed price of ¥100 – about 50p – irrespective of the distance traveled. The trams are similar to those found in many European countries and, other than the Kanji symbols on the outside, the trams would look at home in Zurich or Vienna. On the way to the flat we pass one of Dan’s 3 schools where he is teaching, and we are invited to watch a basketball tournament. We are cheering for the right team (called rather quaintly the “Team of Boys”), but watch them get slaughtered 21-8. Dan is quite the centre of attention, with pupils trying out their English on him, mostly “do you like basketball?” and “do you play basketball?”. I think Dan may need to work on expanding their vocabulary a bit. Outside the school the various teams each have their own large mat, where they change, eat, drink and wait for their turn to play. It’s like a huge picnic outing.

Dan’s flat is on the 1st floor of a relatively modern block. He has his own front door, leading to an outside walkway. On the other side of the flat is a narrow balcony about the width of a hanger and, with an unexciting view of the opposite building’s car park, I’m sure its primary use is to dry clothes. The flat is laid out like a hotel room, with a bathroom on the left and a miniscule kitchen on the right, where in a hotel you might normally have clothes storage. It’s so small that the fridge blocks the door into the main room. The living room / bedroom is covered in Tatami mats, and Dan in good Japanese fashion stores his bed in the cupboard during the day. At the balcony end, there’s a sofa, TV (with 5 Japanese channels only, but a Playstation) and a small table. It’s small but functional, and Dan is quite house-proud. Once his washing machine arrives and the broadband is connected, he’ll be in good shape. After spending rather longer than we intended fixing his light (not helped by taking too much of it apart and struggling to put it back together), we leave for the Peace Park.

The monument to the Atom Bomb consists of a memorial, park and museum. The memorial is a marble pillar at the bomb’s epicentre, with circular pavestones depicting the radiation, and the reconstruction of part of the nearby catholic cathedral that amazingly was not completely destroyed. Nagasaki was not the first choice of target (the other was obscured by smoke) and the bomber mistook a munitions factory in the suburbs for the town centre. The surrounding mountains also cushioned the effect somewhat, so ‘only’ 75,000 people died, about half that in Hiroshima, where the bomb was within metres of the intended target. The museum is less political than the one in Hiroshima, focusing on the human suffering that was caused. It’s a necessary but pretty gruesome place to visit and in my view should be compulsory viewing for any head of state or senior politician. The park on the other hand is delightful, with a large statue depicting peace, a fountain in the shape of a dove, and some statues from countries that were at the time probably trying to curry favour with the Japanese, but have since disappeared or had their borders radically redrawn: USSR, GDR and Yugoslavia.

We head back to the hotel for a mammoth 2½ hour Skype session for Dan, who has barely spoken to his parents and Katie since arriving in Japan. Afterwards, we go to the seafront, where there are a number of restaurants, which Dan is eating his way along. The Mexican restaurant gets the thumbs-down, and we choose instead one that is called a Coffee Shop, but is really an Italian restaurant. We eat Japanese lasagna, made with rice instead of pasta; Fettuccine Carbonara, which includes some of those delicious Japanese mushrooms in the recipe, garlic bread and err… Spring Rolls. Odd perhaps, but it hits the spot.

Dan is having a great time in Japan, has made many friends (called A.L.T.s whatever that means). He even claims to be enjoying the food. I leave him to go the Crazy Horse bar to meet the others and head back to the hotel for a relatively early night before another long journey tomorrow.