That Fabled City

I’m on the Narita Express and I’ve just discovered they have discontinued the food cart.  I was looking forward to my only-eat-it-here, cheese-and-squid snack.  I walked all the way to the back of the train to find the push-cart gal, but I came, instead to the end of the last car.  Tapping on the door to the conductor’s area and they dutifully opened the door.  “Where-u, is-u, the food-u cart-u, kudesai?”  He frowned and I knew it wasn’t going to be a happy answer.  “No cart-u.”  “Oh.  Why?”  “Ohh.  No cart-u for one year.”   “Ah-so.   I see. “

The Narita Express was the obligatory fashion for getting in to Tokyo from the airport, for so many years.  Haneda was purely a domestic airport or for flights to Gimpo, in Seoul.  But ever since Haneda’s refurbishment, and expansion Narita airport means nothing but extra travel time.  And with my growing familiarity with that routine, I’ve dropped out of touch with the way things work on this line. 

“That’s alright” I think I’ll be good and hungry when I go to the “last-chance-sushi” place I always head to, once I’ve checked in at Narita.  But now I am reconsidering:  What if that too is closed?  And the extraordinarily cool tee-shirt shop I always go have a look at, and the English language section of the Tsutaya Book store, there before check in . . . what if Narita Terminal 1 is also shuttering services? 

I’m flying Ethiopian Airlines this evening.  The flight to Hong Kong was a bargain and I’ll have the Star Alliance box-tick with this flight, (he noted, cravenly.) From there, that plane will continue on to Addis Ababa.  How I would love to continue on to that fabled city.  Someday I will be there, listening to local music, considering the Coptic faith, and Emperor Selassie.   I’m hoping they will have teff or some interesting, if not well-prepared Ethiopian mezas on the flight.  

Green seats and golden trim.  The colors certainly trumpet something vaguely ‘African.’  The food was in no discernable way “Ethiopian” and I didn’t bother with the inflight entertainment that featured a channel of “African” movies.  But the staff was lovely and seemed to fit my rough notion of what Ethiopian’s somehow looked like.  And sitting there, waiting to take off, Alemayehu Eshete came on; "She Stirs Up Covetousnes." (the one with the opening line that sounds like he's saying "the downtown satcha er mu",) and I had everything I needed.  Next time onward to Addis.