Leaving Japan

We’re up and ready to go at before 7am.

Sam wants to get breakfast I want to go straight to the airport.

“Let’s just get to the airport and eat there.”

“I’m worried we’ll only eat McDonalds if we do that.”

“So what at least we’ll be there.”

“Don’t panic we have plenty of time.”

We get to the station at 7am, there is a 7.22 train.

We go to the bakery which we saw last night opened at 7am.

We get breakfast and walk back to the hotel, we are back there just before 7.15am.

We could get our bags and catch the 7.22am train. “Eat,” says Sam.

“Let’s go to the station and eat on the train.”

“Eat, we need to eat.

“No, let's go, for goodness sake.”

You’d think we’d get going after that, but you’d be wrong.

Sam needs to piss and then he says he needs to do the other.

“How about a facial?” I ask.

“Sit, eat, stop worrying, trains go every 20 minutes.

We get to the station just after 7.25am, next train 8.13am.

I look at Sam.

It’s one stop, but it takes 20 minutes.

“10am flight,” I say.

“10.30am flight,” says Sam. “Relax.”


So, you’d think a nice quiet sit on the station platform would calm our nerves, relax, stretch your legs, find the zen... oh but no, again you’d be wrong.

There is a chime that continuously goes bimp bonk, bimp bonk, bimp bonk, bimp bonk, bimp bonk, bimp bonk, bimp bonk, like an Avon lady having a breakdown, and there are two different continuous female voiceovers talking non-stop at the same time. Non stop, they never stop. They never stop! Then there are individual voiceovers for the trains arriving on the other platforms... all going at once.

It is nervous breakdown territory.

“This is what they do to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay,” I say.

OMG! It never stops, it never FUCKEN stops!


And when there are any other announcements they just layer in over the top and you get the last stages of a dire nervous breakdown.

And then there are chimes of varying tones and tunes that layer in over the whole lot.


8.30am. We’re at the airport. Sam gives me “that” look. “Perfect timing,” he says. He smiles broadly.

I give him a withering look. Nervous before a flight? No, I wouldn't say that.