So tonight I was at a huge party at the Imperial Hotel welcoming one of the international bigwigs of PricewaterhouseCoopers to town. It was a major affair. They booked an enormous banquet room, and provided foreign guests with earphones so they could listen to simultaneous translations of Japanese speeches from the major partners in the tax and advisory wings of PwC. Then the bigwig came up to speak, and he had a Japanese interpreter copying each sentence of his English speech. A slightly more stilted performance.

Finally came the guest of honor: the Foreign Minister himself. He wandered out onto the podium, looking slightly drunk, and proceeded with his speech… in English. Now, Aso doesn’t exactly speak perfect English to begin with, and being red-faced didn’t help too much either. He stumbled around a talk about international business for a couple of minutes, then turned to the interpreter (who was still hanging around from the last speech) and shouted “All right, now translate it!”

One of my companions looked down at his simultrans earpiece and said “I wonder if he’ll get the message if I put this on?”

That’s the gist of his latest interview. Maybe he just wanted to make the otaku cry.

If you go out in the world, it’s filled with sensitivity, and it’s much more interesting. For example, there is no fun in seducing a female robot who only acts in a certain way. But it’s fun to seduce a human, because you can only predict, but not know what will really happen. When it comes to seducing, it is fun to think how you can successfully reach the heart of the target.

Lest you be misled, he still knows where Japan’s strengths lie:

My plan for the Olympics is to fully utilize robot and computer technology. For example, it wouldn’t be too bad of an idea to have Astro Boy fly with the Olympic torch.

If JAL’s shoddy maintenance doesn’t kill you, this guy might:

A 55-year old driver of the “Airport Limousine,” operating between the Haneda Airport terminal and aircraft parked on the apron, was found to have continued driving for nine days in May and June of last year despite having had his license suspended for drunk driving.

Tokyo Airport Transit, the bus operating company, ordered the driver dismissed.

According to the company, they had not been informed about his license suspension for drunk driving. As the buses operate on the taxiways, a “Restricted Area Driving Permit” is required in addition to a regular driver’s license. However, because on-field inspections only check to see whether the permit is being carried, it was not discovered that the driver had no regular driver’s license. The company checks its drivers’ personal violation records once per year, and only noticed the man’s violation in November.

For double the fun, take his bus to your next flight on Northwest!

And it looks good for the rest of us, because he speaks of cheaper domestic and international flights out of Haneda. Which means that people in Tokyo can save a few hundred bucks on their airfares, plus the money and time it takes to get to Narita.

“We think we will see low-cost carriers in Haneda in 2009,” President and CEO Mineo Yamamoto told journalists in Tokyo last month at an event organized by Star Alliance. Speaking through a translator, he noted that current plans call for the number of operational slots at the airport to increase by 40% vis-a-vis the current level to 407,000 annually.

ANA accepts that it will lose some travelers to budget carriers but intends to maintain focus on higher-yield passengers. However, this may not be possible. “What we are most afraid of,” Yamamoto explained, is that Japan Airlines “will follow the strategy of LCCs like Skymark and enter the low-fare quagmire.” He said ANA is studying launching a domestic low-fare airline, although it appeared from his remarks that this more likely would be a countermeasure.

The carrier also is concerned that Tiger Airways or another Southeast Asian LCC will be given slots at Haneda to operate discount flights in Asia. ANA is evaluating using Air Japan, its leisure/holiday airline, to counter this threat. In this case, it would look at opening a base in Bangkok or Singapore staffed with foreign cockpit and cabin crews. In spite of the concern over LCCs, Yamamoto told ATWOnline that ANA is asking the Japanese government to double the number of new slots dedicated to international operations at Haneda from 30,000 to 60,000 annually.

In related news, the BIG CHANGE NAA took place earlier this month, in which the South Wing of Terminal 1 opened up for ANA, United and the other Star Alliance airlines. (The ads for it, with a girl deplaning from a hot pink Learjet followed by a badly-rendered Colonel Sanders-ish porter carrying her shopping bags, seem to personify all that is fecked up about Japan to me, but anyway.) The reshuffles will continue later this year when American, BA and the other oneworld airlines move to Terminal 2. Hopefully Keisei will use this as an excuse to change those old and busted seats on the Skyliner.

They’ve been selling special “simplified” mobile phones lately, targeted at old people who apparently don’t “get” all the bells and whistles of typical models.

To this, reality responds:

“Get out of the way, whitey! I need a better signal so I can e-mail the jpeg to my grandkids!”

These were out in bloom last weekend by Kitanomaru Park, the area on the north side of the Imperial Palace around the Budokan (across the road from Yasukuni, which also has some gorgeous flowers in bloom).

This is the first sakura season I’ve seen since high school. Very, very natsukashii. One of the partners in our office, a retired judge who’s been practicing law since my parents were in diapers, insisted on taking a walk down Uchibori-dori after lunch the other day. Quite an excellent idea; nothing but pink flowers and gawking pedestrians in either direction. Times like this make me feel like there’s no place I’d rather be in the world. (Then I get on the Ginza Line and I just want to choke people.)

I bought these on a hanami (flower viewing) excursion to Yasukuni Shrine last weekend. Tie pins aren’t quite my style, but the cuff links are great. (And Lady Curzon, a true aristocrat, gives her approval.)

Other items on sale at Yasukuni:

• Japanese flag cuff links. I didn’t buy these because they seemed too loud. I now regret that decision, and plan to purchase them the next time I visit.
• An authentic-looking Imperial Rescript on Education you can put up in your home for that classic fascist feeling. (Framed with a portrait of Hirohito: ¥9,000. Unframed: ¥1000.)
• Special manju, packaged with a caricature of Koizumi on the box and parodies of LDP slogans. Here’s a photo, because I love you:

Anyway, if you see a honky walking around Tokyo wearing chrysanthemum cuff links, you’ll know it’s me, so be sure to say hi.

I leave in a few hours to spend my spring break in Florida—actually one of the last places I expected to spend spring break, but Ms. Joe has a new, difficult job and needs someone to give her backrubs at night.

Anyway, Narita is a really inconvenient airport. No matter how you do it, it takes at least an hour to get there from the city. Then there’s the time you have to spend getting to wherever you’re boarding your transportation, and the time you have to spend wandering around the terminal to get where you need to be. If you’re like me, you also have to factor in the time you spend being held for questioning.

It used to be worse, actually. Back in the day, the trains to Narita didn’t even stop at the terminal. You had to get off on the edge of the airport property and then take a bus. Fortunately, the Transport Minister figured this was daft, and he opened up some underground platforms that were originally intended for a Shinkansen line. (He’s a great guy—his name is Ishihara.) So today, the trains drop you off inside the terminals… but you still have to go up four stories to get to check-in. Hmpfh.

So what’s the best way to get to and from the airport? Read the rest of this entry »