Yesterday morning, Yuko and I got back to Japan having spent the whole of last week in the UK (we flew out on Saturday 20th).
Wednesday and Thursday were spent in meetings with work, but the rest of the trip was a brief holiday.
We flew out with British Airways. Normally, we would fly out with Virgin Atlantic, but they were all booked up. Boy do I hate BA at the best of times, but what with the strike action going on with Gate Gourmet… we had no hot food on the flight at all. BA were ohh so generous and gave us a 1000 Yen (about 5 UK Pounds) voucher each, so we could buy some food in Narita airport. Just enough for a single meal at the airport then, but nothing to spare for buying food to eat on the flight. Bastards!
Next on the list of complaints is
1) BA staff are f**king snooty, arrogant gits. Unfriendly tossers.
2) In flight entertainment in Economy class (and I will call it Economy class, not this ‘World Traveller’ bullshit). No games, and the 17 video channels which just loop through the films… i.e not fully interactive video-on-demand like you get with Virgin in Economy.
3) The plane was dirty.
4) Giving that 50% of the passengers were Japanese, they don’t really seem to cater towards them. Only 3 of the staff were Japanese. Two chaps, and and old battle-axe of a woman. The Virgin flight usually has about 50% of the staff being Japanese (90% of them being really pretty mid-twenties to early 30s ladies. Mmmmmm, lovely Japanese air stewardesses!), offering Japanese food options, interactive entertaining system in Japanese as well. Boy was I annoyed when BA didn’t have a Japanese beer or Ocha (green tea) available.
To be fair the flight back was a bit better. We got a hot meal, though breakfast was still a really yukky ‘picnic set’. Also, thanks to my mate Alex back in the UK, who called one of his friends who’s a pilot with BA, we got upgraded to Economy Plus (World Traveller Plus in BA lingo) with bigger seats. Cheers Alex and Dave!
On arrival in the UK, we picked up our rental car from Hertz (who are also scum!), and drove back to the depths of South West Wales to visit my parents and nan. We stayed the Sunday, before driving over to Swansea to visit a couple of friends there, and then off up into the Brecon Beacons onto Brecon to visit my uncle, aunt and family (who are visiting Japan in December). Then onwards to Bath, where we checked into Dorian House B&B.
Tuesday was spent with friends from work during lunch, and the afternoon. In the evening, Yuko and I went to eat out in the Firehouse Rottiserie.
The only downside on all this was for the last few days I’d been suffering from a dodgy tummy, which had put me off my food.
Wednesday and Thursday were work days. Very boring. Yuko, spent her time going out shopping for gifts to take back to Japan. She brought a lot as usual! If I recall, our luggage coming back was about 15kg heavier than when we went to the UK.
Friday was some last minute shopping before shooting off to London.
A work friend of mine had pointed out that the Bath Waterstones had a special section full of Japanese related books, so I figured I would pick up a copy of Hokkaido Highway Blues to read on the plane on the way back.
In London, we met with an old Japanese friend of ours from Bath. We went out for some Japanese food in preparation for the trip home.
On arrival back in Narita, we were rather shocked to find Japan rather cool (relatively speaking). Still warmer than the UK, which was a rather ‘chilly’ 20 degrees!!
This last week back in the UK has been a strange experience. For some reason, Bath seemed to be populated with a lot more ‘chavs’ than I can remember from when I lived there before. I spoke to a mate about this. He said that it’s no different than before. Yuko was less impressed with Bath too. She really liked the place when she lived and studied there. The places we enjoyed the most was back ‘home’ in Wales. Maybe, I’ve being missing the vast, huge expanses of green land?
What I did find though is the distinct sense of ‘not belonging here’. I also get it in Japan too. Which all leads onto the next question. So where do I belong?