Sylvia's Journal

If Australia is down under, then we must now be up above. We arrived safely in Nagasaki after a very long and exhausting trip.

In our non-existing Japanese and the waitstaff’s non-existing English we managed to order lunch in a nice fish restaurant across from our hotel. We arrived at 11:30 AM but the rooms are not released until 2 PM. That we travelled more than halfway around the world was apparently no cause for some leniency on this rule. We could have paid our way into our rooms but the restaurant beckoned.

There too was a time constraint; we were 8 minutes ahead of the start of lunch hour but they let us in anyways and served us a nice hot cup of tea. We found all our favorite Japanese dishes (and more) on the menu.

Earlier, what now seems a life time away, We had landed in Tokyo, in a dark and rainy drizzle. It was cold, after LAX. We were glad we brought our warm coats and gloves.

Haneda airport was a new experience for both of us. It is pristine, immaculate and totally sanitary. We wondered whether that makes the Japanese more vulnerable to infections. Many walk around with masks.

Just before landing we were told by the airplane crew that avian flu is back in the news in this part of the world. We had to walk through a temperature detector and over a disinfecting mat. Would it mistake a hot flash for an avian flu risk?

At the domestic airport, equally clean and full of the most polite people, we tried a Japanese breakfast and an American coffee before boarding a half full plane to Nagasaki. As we circled up from the runway that is built like an enormous bridge, sticking out into the harbor, we had a breathtaking view of Tokyo going on forever in each direction. I think we saw Mount Fuji or else a mountain with a Fuji profile.

We flew over a winter landscape southward to Nagasaki. The palm trees and the still flowering bougainvillea hinted at Southern France. But on all the north-facing slopes the pine trees were more than dusted with snow – much like we want Christmas trees to look like – even the palm trees had a light snow cover.

A colleague of my friend, host and ex-colleague waited for us at the bus stop, hailed a taxi to take us to the hotel and pointed us to the fish restaurant after which she bid us farewell to return to the university.

Still to early for check in we took a digestive walk in the hotel’s neighborhood. We are in or near the Chinese quarter. It is decorated festively with lanterns for the Chinese New Year. According to a historical marker this is the old Chinese entertainment quarter. Now it is full of bars, sometimes multiple bars on top of each other. In the olden days (1870s), we learned, there were more than 1400 geishas and prostitutes working here. An ironworks frame over the alley way shows a scene of a gentleman in a pull-rickshaw being taken to his entertainment with shy geishas fanning themselves on the side. Just as I remember from the “Memoirs of a Geisha” movie.

Finally checked in we had hoped we could stick it out till an early bedtime. We thought that we ought to try to stay awake or else we will never get used to being 14 hours ahead of ourselves. But we both succumbed to a deep sleep from which only a phonecall could wake us up. It was Miho who had to sit for a PhD exam and is now ready to party. We are of course totally ready for our next culinary adventure.