Swine Fever Fever

If you have a cold or are "a lady of a certain age", don't whatever you do travel to Japan just now. You won't like what will happen to you. And neither will those around you, as you all find yourselves in quarantine for 7 days. Oh yes, it's swine fever fever all over again.

I got a note Sunday morning from United that my Tokyo flight was delayed by 50 minutes. I was a bit surprised as the weather was set clear and sunny both ends of the route, so just put it down to the normal on-going decay of United's fleet of 747s. ("Ah, no, sorry, that particular model is out of warranty now, and anyway with that mileage on the clock what do you expect? Stuff's bound to be breaking down and falling off.")

It was only when on-board that there was an announcement as to the real reason for the slippage: new health checks in Tokyo! Oh. Joy. In addition to the usual immigration and customs documentation, we now had to fill out a hastily printed (and hastily translated by the look of it) medical history form basically asking, "do you now, or have you ever, had a temperature?" Well hopefully I have some sort of temperature otherwise I'm dead, but I'll let that pass. It also asked if you were on any suspicious drugs. No, not methamphetamine, but rather anti-virals, anti-colds or I suppose anti-swine medication.

In true Japanese form, such things are not to be taken lightly. Failure to pass either the written or the infra-red exam - and more on that in a minute - will mean being in medical quarantine for 7 days. But on the plus side, you'll be accompanied by those seated within a 2 meter radius of your seat just so they can be doubly sure to have locked up all the likely suspects. Yes, it's pointless, but at least it's thoroughly pointless.

12 hours later we pull up to the gate at Narita. We are ordered to stay seated. We obey. A posse of booted-and-suited medical staff come on board in order to deal with the unclean load of foreigners who are now cluttering up their nice clean, sanitary airport. Not only are they wearing face masks but they have eye screens, nylon bunny suits, latex gloves and small rubber boots. Somewhere a British MP is probably dreaming of such things, but if so they were in First Class getting a private examination. We just wanted to get off the bloody plane.

First off, one of them whips out an infra-red camera and starts scanning the entire aircraft, row by row, looking a bit like some sort of post-apocalypse photographer trying to record the mayhem laid out before them. Heaven help you if you were a bit menopausal at the time because you'd really have a hard time explaining to some poor student why you didn't have swine flu but rather were pumping heat into the plane because of an untimely hormonal imbalance. English wasn't their first language, nor even the second; I think it ranked somewhere down at 47 just after that African tounge clicking thing. The poor girl checking the form was therefore running her finger over each and every line, slowly & meticulously checking every single entry, including seat number, destination and whether or not you were going to escape into the wilds of Japan to "go traveling about" as it put it. Engaging in a dialogue on any point whatsoever would undoubtedly lead you straight to medical jail, albeit with much bowing and apologising, so it's better just to sit still and stay cool. Literally.

Fortunately I passed, apparently chilled enough to be allowed entry despite the steam now coming from my ears at being stuck here for 40 minutes and missing the bus I planned to catch. I was given a green piece of paper that seemingly signified I was in rude health. And I quote, "This document is to certify that you have passed quarantine inspection". Well, good then. However, not so fast. "If you have any symptom such as coughing, you are requested to wear a mask for preventing the spread of infection. These requests are made to protect you as well as your family." Given my family isn't in Japan, "not so much" on this one.

Apart from now now having to stand in another line in order to wave the green bit of paper at yet more officials, I could now sneeze free from fear of incarceration, cough without concern. However, I should perhaps point out that standing in a corridor for 10 minutes, packed cheek-by-jowl with hundreds of other people from around the world, to hand in said bit of paper to said officials probably exposed me to even more risk of catching the flu that anything that I was going to see on the plane. Sigh.

No idea how long they will stick with this, but it's still a big story here so I expect it will be a while. It's not being applied across the board, just on flights arriving from countries with known cases of swine flu. On the plus side, no one yet seems to have realised that seasonal flu has way more impact than the swine kind so hopefully this is just temporary and won't become a much loved feature of every trip here. And at least it's being done very, very politely. Woe betide the poor traveller arriving into Paris if the French authorities ever think "that looks fun" and decide to join in. Doesn't bear thinking about.

Tokyo Sky Tree

One of the perennial stops on Tokyo tours is the omnipresent TV tower. Its bright red superstructure can be seen from many different city locations, despite the increasing proliferation of downtown skyscrapers. However, it - and likely many of it's ilk - are reaching the end of their useful lives. The switch from analogue to digital broadcasting will mean that existing towers like this are no longer able to cover enough subscribers to be that useful any more, especially in this age of satellite and cable content delivery.

However, it appears that Tokyo is still planning to stick with the tower option, only this time bigger. Much bigger. Therefore, please welcome the (still under construction) Tokyo Sky Tree. The design rendered in the Wikipedia article looks like one of those fancy pens that catches your eye in airport departure areas while waiting to escape to somewhere else. You know the sort, the one with the stainless-steel mesh covering and a price tag that looks like it is being quoted in yen even when in reality it's actually dollars.

I like it. Tokyo long since gave up trying to achieve the impossible and stop the march of progress in a city that's largely been completely replaced at least twice in the 20th century, and this just moves the architectural landscape forwards once again.

Here's to the Sky Tree. Long may it bloom.

Kobe Beef

One of the side benefits to travelling in Japan is that, in the interests of entertaining customers you understand, you get to do some things that are a rare treat. And in this case I use the words "rare treat" deliberately, as we shall see. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you Kobe beef. Actually, I don't of course bring you anything of the sort but I'm pleased to say that someone brought us some, even if we were the ones buying.

Quick recap: Kobe beef is a very expensive way of raising cows and is done with the express purpose of making them fat. Not normally a difficult job I'm sure you will agree. However, this isn't fat in the sense of a big ring of lard round the middle, this is fat as in the meat being deeply marbled with fat spread throughout the choicest cuts. Oh, and by expensive I mean a 100 gram portion at the place we ate was $50 (5,000 yen).

The hotel recommended a place in the Ginza district, home to Tokyo's most expensive real estate (just begin setting the scene for how much of a pounding your credit card is about to get) and was called Mikasa Kaikan. The restaurant itself was on the 7th floor of a small collection of shops and cooks in the teppanyaki style, with a large hot plate set up for each group of guests.

Being protective of the budget, three of us had the smallest 100g cut with some vegetables (extra charge!) so we spent about $75 a head with a beer. Another guest had more of a set meal with a 200g portion, and before drinks that was $130. Oh, and our local chap told us that this was quite cheap relative to what you can pay in Ginza for Kobe beef if the restaurant is at the fancier end of the scale, so be warned!

Is it worth it? For a one-off taste of Japan then I'd say yes. The texture is quite unlike any other beef you can find. The fat, being larded through the thin cut steak, turns the bite-size pieces the chef serves all creamy in the mouth, adding a very unique and enjoyable texture to the dish to go along with the wonderful taste. The seafood someone else had was also extremely good so don't be afraid to go even if someone isn't a meat-eater but does eat fish.

Tsukiji Fish Market

So there we are, two aging business travellers on the streets of Tokyo at 4:45 am, braving the wind and rain in order to watch some foreign chaps sell fish. Fair enough, probably wasn't going to sleep much more anyway, but it still didn't feel quite as good an idea as it had the night before!

The hotel we were using - Royal Park Shiodome Tower - is no more than 10 minutes walk from the fish market so at least it was no big deal getting there. It has two entrances and we picked the first one, going in by way of the fruit and veg market that's housed in the same building.

As you can see, there's a lot of water sloshing about so point 1 is to make sure you wear shoes that are waterproof. Point 2 is to wear shoes you don't mind ending up smelling of fish! Actually, having said that, the floors are remarkably clean considering all the piscene-based hacking that goes on there. Largely, I think this is because the fish is either sold whole or, in the case of tuna, solidly frozen when sliced-up.

So what could you buy? "Pretty much anything you can think of that comes from the sea" is the answer, combined with quite a lot of things that you would have trouble imagining could come from anywhere at all. I think we saw krill at the small end of the size scale right up to massive tuna. In between ranged everything from shell fish, through flat fish, octopus, sea cucumbers, squid, snapper - the list is virtually endless. Some retailers were wholesale, some retail. And no, I didn't feel like buying any of it to bring home thanks very much! Can't imagine what the sniffer dogs at SFO would make of half that stuff; lunch, probably.

The market itself is a warren of individual stalls, many of which are bi-level with an upstairs portion acting as the office. Running up and down the gaps between the stall are small powered trailers, each of which is clearly on some sort of mission that you, the foreigner, are interfering with. Beware these things! To be fair, you are wandering around their offices, cluttering up the place and not buying anything so given all that then actually the rightful occupants were quite understanding.

We went over to look at the tuna auction but it's all sealed off and no visitors were permitted. Glanced through a door that opened and it looked like there were shrouded corpses lining the floor. The frozen exteriors of the tuna, combined with their shape, made them all look like bodies that had been wrapped for burial. Fascinating stuff.

The overall impression left by Tsukiji is that there's no way the seas of this planet can continue to deliver such a bounty. This was one day of the six days a week worth of commerce that's transacted here. Japan apparently accounts for 10% of the worlds consumption of fish, the largest slice of which goes through Tsukiji.

Can we really keep up this level of supply? Tuna are getting harder and harder to find and it's not clear to me whether or not Japan practices much in the way of fisheries management and preservation. Either way, though, Tsukiji is doomed. The Tokyo government is planning to relocate it soon to another part of Tokyo. See it soon, therefore, before either it moves and loses the uniqueness it has today or the fish runs out.

Drug Bunny

Drug Bunny, Tokyo Hotel

I mean, what else would you call it? This was inside a very expensive hotel in Tokyo, placed at the entrance to a coffee lounge. Probably some deep symbology at work here that I don't understand ... either that or a significant quantity of class C drugs were involved when the interior designer came up with this one.

Tokyo Rain

Well I certainly got drafted to head here at just the wrong time of year. It's hot, humid and either raining or about to rain, except when the sun comes out when it gets even hotter and you now hope it switches back to rain very, very soon. Oh, and of course you are wearing a suit, and get to spend much of the day wedged into the Tokyo subway system with roughly half-a-million of your now very close-indeed Japanese friends. Having spent a number of years commuting by train in the UK, I now remember all too well just why I hated it so much.

Business aspects went OK, with the end of the week being better than the beginning. Even so, things move very slowly here, and coming from the USA the need to take that "longer term" view gets to be very frustrating, not to mention expensive. Still, Japan continues to be a place that is just too attractive to ignore so we'll continue to pay our dues, put in the time and see what we can make happen. I hope I see the returns before I retire, is all.

King Of The Road

Fixed it. With no more than some scrabbling around on the floor and a pair of nail clippers I was able to find a substitute mains cable in my room.

Turns out the PC, so thoughtfully provided by the management here, has a separate screen that is powered by a 16v DC "brick" type supply (shown here in grey.) The plug that fits into it from the mains side has a similar pattern to that required by my laptop power adaptor. Close, but not quite close enough it seemed - I couldn't force the plug far enough in. Turns out that the laptop supply has a ridge of plastic between the two mains voltage pins whereas the brick powering the PC screen does not. Hence the need for the nail clippers. By partly cutting away that plastic ridge, along with nipping a grove in the plug to match, I was able to just get enough contact to deliver power to the laptop supply. Success!

(Note to self: next time, remove plug from mains voltage before attacking same with metal clippers ....)

Old Friends

Tokyo Dawn

Out of the blue, I got a message today from an old friend who stayed with us in the UK when she was doing an MBA but then returned to Japan ("hi Yoshiko!") .


Great to catch up, and just serves to remind me that it's time I headed back to Tokyo to meet with our team there. September sounds good to me!