The exercise:
Better late than never... Hindsight!
Mine:
The journey from Montreal to Tokyo was long. Like, really long. Like after three flights and a day and a half of travel I would have been hard pressed to tell you where I was, when I was, or even who I was.
Philadelphia seemed like a nice city I'd like to come back and visit once life had settled down a little bit, at least from what I could see as we landed and then, two hours later, took off again. The airport, on the other hand, I could have happily skipped. But they wouldn't let me stay on the plane - even though I was super sleepy and very politely offered to sleep wherever would be most out of their way during the layover - so I had to deal with the crowded terminal.
At least I got to spend the night in Dallas. I mean I mostly spent it asleep in a hotel room but I did manage to squeeze a trip into the city for breakfast. The eggs were good, the toast disappointing, and the coffee badly needed. It was also powerful enough to keep me awake for most of the nearly thirteen hour flight to Tokyo.
Which was especially appreciated, because it gave me plenty of time to make small talk with one of the flight attendants. Her name was Melina and she was generous with the wine and her time. She had silky black hair done up in a ponytail and dark eyes I kept losing myself in. Her smile was sweet with a hint of mischief and, well, I'm a bit of a sucker for mischief, I think I've established that already.
I'd lucked into having two empty seats next to me and we talked long enough that she had to sit down for a while. I tried to get her to watch a movie with me - let me tell you, I went hard on selling the praises of Shrek 2 - but she had to get back to work even though everybody else on the plane seemed to be sleeping at that point.
She did come back to see me shortly before we landed though, telling me that she had a couple days off before having to fly out again so maybe she could show me around a bit, share some of the places that only flight crews knew about.
I could hardly say no to any of that, right? So of course I said yes. I'm not an idiot.
It's not like I knew we'd run into Nina at the very first bar Melina took me to...
3 comments:
I was wondering why he flies all over America to get to Tokyo, and then I remembered that he's on the cheapest available flight! I like the way you've laid out his itinerary, and his preference for sleeping on the plane, until the coffee keeps him awake. And I also like how he keeps meeting people -- our hero is quite the friendly-type! I suspect his mild naivety helps with that though. Melina seems interesting, but already Nina is returning....
Hindsight
Tokyo is busy. I'd actually forgotten how busy; that first work trip when I came here with just a Japanese-English dictionary in my back pocket and a briefcase handcuffed to my wrist -- that had been a culture shock. All those people, all intent on their lives, and none of them saying anything I could understand. Now, as Melina took my hand and dragged me down a side-street, past street-food shops that were little more than five or six stools lined up against a wooden table behind which the vendor cooked yakitori over a charcoal barbecue or served up enticingly-delicious smelling broths over finely-cut seasonal vegetables, I found myself staring this way and that as memories came back. I bumped into an elegantly dressed woman, with a severely dressed companion and muttered Sumimasen, remembering to dip my head at the end. Melina glanced back at me, and there was just a hint of admiration in her dark eyes. Then she stopped at a wooden door to a tiny little house and spoke briefly, in rapid Japanese of which I could only catch one word in five, to a short, dark-haired man at the door who had his arms folded and a face that looked like he practiced saying wa koto ga dekimasen for an hour every morning. He smiled at Melina, glared at me, and stood aside for us to enter.
I ducked; I discovered the concussion way on my first trip that I'm a bit taller than many Japanese people, and we entered. Inside was a medium-sized room with several table and benches suited for four people, all elevated slightly from the floor on wooden platforms. Melina took me to the other side, where the tables were smaller and fitted two, and we sat down.
"This is my favourite izakaya," she said. She adjusted her pony tail so that it lay over her left shoulder, and I felt instinctively that that was the right place for it. "They do an amazing tile-fish here. You drink sake, right?"
I nodded, looking around the room. The menu, in Japanese characters, naturally, was on the wall behind the kitchen, which was open and tiny and still had three people working in it. The noise wasn't loud, but practically everyone was talking to their companions, and it bubbled over me almost soothingly.
"Junmai ginjo?"
"That's warmed right? I'd love some." With a little bit of hindsight, I now think that the jet-lag was already starting, and I'd looked around the room twice now and what happened next still startled me.
"Mr Big Shot thinks he can drink sake now, does he?" The voice was acerbic, cutting, and speaking English, so we both looked up a little surprised.
"Nina?" My heart leapt for a moment, then pirouetted and swan-dived while my stomach just sank because it was more intelligent.
"Oh, you remembered my name! How honoured I feel! How blessed I am!"
I could see that Melina was puzzled by this short, green-eyed Japanese woman yelling at me in English, and to be honest, so was I. We hadn't left on the best of terms, since Gina had been in my hotel room wearing just a towel when Nina had come in to say goodbye. We'd said goodbye, but certainly not in the way I'd expected, and then Gina had said goodbye quite firmly as well, and what had started out as an evening of unexpected coincidences turned into a lonely night in the bar waiting for my plane (which is probably when one of them slipped that incendiary device into my luggage). With a bit more hindsight, I think maybe I should have gone after one of them and tried to explain a little harder but... in hindsight I have trouble believing how complicated my life gets in some places.
"Do you know her?" asked Melina, which I hoped was her being polite. I'm not sure I would have wanted to spend time with her if when I did random strangers would keep accosting me. "She seems upset."
"She might have tried to kill me," I said. Again -- hindsight -- that probably wasn't the right time to say that.
"What?" Melina and Nina synchronized so well that everyone else stopped talking and starting watching.
"When I came back from Tokyo last time someone had put a bomb in my luggage," I said. "Nina was one of the last people near it."
"AND that trollop you were hiding in your bathroom!"
"Gina wasn't hiding in the bathroom, she was in there trying to fix her bikini after it got torn off by the Australian who jumped on her in the pool because he thought she was his girlfriend, but she was actually sat at the bar talking to me...." I gave up speaking at that point because Nina was shrieking wordlessly. Melina got up.
"You two seem to have unfinished business," she said.
I got up. "No," I said. "I'm coming with you. This is all history."
Melina hurried out of the door without even listening to me, and I shook Nina's hand off my arm, where she'd grabbed me, and ran after her. Straight into the door-frame and another concussion.
Greg - yeah, I actually bothered to look up flights, which slowed the writing down a little but I felt was worthwhile anyway.
Hah, this is excellent. And, like our poor hero, I did not see that door frame coming at the end. I'm already looking forward to writing the next entry!
... which actually isn't all that far off, now.
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