The Trunk Rider

Chapter 5

            There was certainly a lot of water in the South China Sea; so much that in four hours, the view had offered up nothing but expansive blue, ever since we left the shoreline over Vietnam.  I had already finished my book, and watched a film on the complicatedly controlled seatback television sets.  I had never actually seen a film before, and it was an exhilarating experience; like the storyline of a novel transcribed as a long dream, but clearer, and with none of the fading half-memory.  A uniformed man came down the aisle around what must have been lunchtime, handing out meals in small plastic trays. 

            “Is this Japanese?”  I asked Mum, poking at the odd, unidentifiable contents of the various tubs.

            “No,” she answered briskly, “It’s airline food.”

            The hours blurred together.  Here, with the only view being brilliant blue above and below, the world outside this small, artificially white tube ceased to exist.  I knew how fast we must have been travelling, but travel in this world was limited to the two aisles stretching between the rows.

At a point, I told Mum that I needed to go to the washroom; in reality, I just wanted to get out of the cramped window seat. Upon return I checked the television channel displayed a map and timeline of the flight, saw that we were already fairly close to Japan, and opted out of another film, choosing instead a short TV programme, which turned out to be in Japanese, rendering the storyline incomprehensible.

            A few minutes in, or so it seemed (already, my internal clock was beginning to lose track of time), the programme froze and my headphones issued a pilot’s warning, in Japanese and English, that we would soon be commencing our descent into Tokyo Narita.  Sure enough, a few minutes afterwards, the screen suddenly went black and the seatbelt sign pinged on.

            Once again, my stomach was filled with a dropping sensation.  I glanced out the window for the first time in hours, and was surprised to see that the cloud bank had reformed.  We dropped into it like a stone into water, passed through the murky whiteness, and emerged over a large, sprawling city.  Once again, buildings and streets grew larger.  From this height, no difference could be seen between Bangkok and Tokyo.  Were all cities in the world the same?  Or would the more subtle differences be revealed at ground level?

            Just as in Bangkok, the plane jolted onto the landing runway and began to howl in braking protest.  We pulled in, this time, directly to the building.  The plane turned at the last moment, so that my side was facing away over the runways, where the sun was sinking in the sky.  It must have been late afternoon here, in Tokyo.  It had been early morning when we left.  Had it really been that long? I thought of how far Japan was from Thailand, and how much farther away North America was.  How fast we had been travelling over towns and streets.  The world really was incomprehensibly large.  And then, I remembered, Earth was only one planet, circling one star, in one galaxy…

The herd-like mass standing as the seatbelt sign flashed off pulled me out of such macroscopic thoughts.

We shuffled slowly into the aisle, joining the line to exit the plane.  Dad joined us from the other side.  Slowly, the line crawled forwards along the rows of seats.

            Once outside and into the terminal, I took stock of my surroundings once again.  Narita seemed simpler in structure than Suvarnabhumi, but more cluttered; as we ambled along the terminal, searching for yet another indicated gate, I glanced into the shops that lined the halls.  Everywhere I looked, illegible Japanese writing glared incomprehensibly from glowing signs.  Most of the shops seemed to be selling electronics, and many had enormous-eyed cartoon characters dancing in the windows.  I saw one shop entirely filled with folded paper figures.  Dad enthusiastically bought a small supper at a booth, exclaiming that he hadn’t had this in years.  It seemed to be slimy, rice-coated meat wrapped in some sort of paper or leaf.