Watched the Puddles Form

I haven’t been on this Narita Express for a while.  These days there are just as many regional flights in and out of Haneda Airport, which is so much closer to the city.  I almost always return to China these days from Haneda.  The ride out the window feels like “classic” Japan departure from a time gone buy when this was the only way to enter or leave Japan. 

Outside it is raining.  A colleague and I walked through Shiba Park, walked up hills, passed trees from the Edo period and shrines and parkways got to our destination only a few minutes before the rain began to fall.  We sat by the window for lunch and watched the puddles form and considered ourselves fortunate.

Outside, it must be Chiba we’re passing now, with all those tracks for trains in to the city for work to be done, day after day.  The train isn’t crowded where I hopped on at Shinagawa Station.  Though once we stopped at Tokyo Station things filled right up.  I had budgeted time to buy a ticket at Shinagawa.  One is supposed to purchase a seat before once get’s on the Narita Express, but by the time I’d found a cab, with the rain, I only arrived at the station with three minutes to spare.  If you use your general payment Suica card to get into the train area, you can or at least you could, ultimately pay it when you reach Narita.  So I did that.

Now I am quietly waiting for the ticket man to come.  I will conduct myself as a dim gaijin and see if that is sufficient to solve . . . It was.  A nice young lady in a cap allowed me to pay cash.  Certainly didn’t seem like there were any penalties for this.  We’re cool.  Fortunately I had just enough cash for this ride.  I was wrong when I guessed the station name before, the map says that we are going through the commuter community of Chiba now, ten minutes later.  It all looks rather similar to the city we just left. 

But from here on in we’ll get more trees, and bamboo and the suggestion of farmland beyond the greater Tokyo ring of Honshu. 

Later now, check in, through immigration, settling in for last-chance sushi.  I’m not overly hungry, but have essentially arranged the day around this stop off.  The slabs of raw fish are laid out in delicate little trays of display.  Some are sitting atop a piece of bamboo skin, or is it another flat leafy plant.  There are small, cedar-like ferns arranged in front of the fish dishes.  The shrimp are decapitated and standing with their tales in the air resting on their sliced throats.  The egg doesn’t invoke the same consideration.  It sits in a square block of omelet with sugar and bits but I won’t be ordering that and filling up with ovals. 

Saba-des.  Buri-des, Kohada-des.  I’ve got another fifteen minutes to enjoy before boarding begins.