lingqi's Journal: September 2nd, 2004

September 2nd, 2004 (0:03am)

Actually I have no intention to be doing journal at such an unbelievable hour... but it seems to have becomming the norm as of late...

-- continues --

The night in tokyo was a tricky one. The flight from Okinawa was the last to arrive at Haneda, and it was nearly 11pm when the plane finally landed. As the outside is pitch black and it was of such a late hour, again I slept deeply on the way, only to be awakened by the jolt of the landing gear hitting the runway, with that loud screech and shudder that shook the entire plane.

Haneda airport was all but empty. Passengers from my flight and a few other late runners streamed toward the Monorail station with haste - it would not be fun if they missed the last train out. My flight to Hokkaido was 6:20am the next morning though, a mere 7 hour away, and as there was no way I could have made it into the airport for such an early flight, I decided that I should just find some way to crash in a waiting area and somehow get over this 7 hours.

When I say empty, though, actually it was more like an intermission, a quiet and calm segue into the next phase of the airport's daily activities. After most of the passengers have left, maintenance crews came out of nowhere, and instantly the airport became a construction area. I walked from the arrival section up a floor to the checkin section in hope of somewhere to lie down, and the checkin area was already in a more advanced phase of the maintenance. Ladders are erected in various places, and many of the ceiling lights were lowered to reachable heights, no doubt for the replacement of some burnt-out bulbs. Workers in hard-hats hussled about with tools and replacement parts, and some were congregated around one light that seemed to have been particularly problematic. The airport was alive, not in the sense of the normal daily flow of passengers and their luggages, but as if it was a whole new ecosystem - like how you peer into the ocean at night and nothing familiar greets your eye - the same spaces were filled with the hussle and bussle of a completely different sort that made me feel they could have disassembled the entire structure and rebuilt it before the first flight. It felt like I was some microscopic particle inside a large living creature, and seeing first hand at its cells undergo repair during its unrestful slumber.

Some security guys noticed that I wasn't part of this ecosystem, however, and waved me down. After realizing my intention to stay the night here, he pointed me toward the JAL end of the arrival lobby, and told me that another security would be there to greet me. Without fail, when I decended the escalator, another security guy was already there waiting. It seems that out of the millions of passengers every day, I was not the only one with silly ideas like spending the night in the airport. There were about a dozen others with the same idea every night and there was a special area dedicated to us. They wanted us to fill out a small form - "permission for after-hours stay in airport" or something. Everything has an associated form in japan.

The extended waiting area was bright and filled with some seats one can lie down on. Bathrooms were nearby and I took the opportunity to briefly wash my face. Honestly speaking, this was already the best I could have hoped for, even exceeding my expectations. The chairs welcomed one to lie down laterally and take a rest, and a nearby bathroom. What more could you ask of a waiting area.

However, I soon became dissatisfied with my current situation. The pragmatic portion is that since I will be car-camping in Hokkaido, my chances of taking proper showers may be few and far between, and I did not exactly start off well as the day of walking around in the hot weather of Okinawa had soaked my under shirt. However, I think the honest reason was that I found the place to be boring: nothing possibly interesting could have happened lying on a well-lined couch in Haneda-airport. I wanted to explore, I wanted adventure, and I kept toying with the idea that I should seek out a capsule hotel and stay there, as this would have been a perfect chance for it.

Making the decision to go ahead, I got the direction from the security guard and was on my way. Luckily, I was fast enough so that I still was able to catch the last train out of the airport, but it means that if my venture fail - i.e. if i was unable to find a capsule hotel - I would have had no way of returning to the airport for those comfortable chairs waiting for me.

Hesitantly, I verifed that I have all of my belongings, and stepped into the train station. Fighting the butterflies in my stomache, I stepped onto the train with some other passengers, all look like they have had the longest day in their lives, eyes downcast and body placed in the most energy-preserving position. The last train is always like a train of zombies, and there I was, half in fear and half in doubt, wisked away on it to somewhere I have never went before.