We left Narita at 12:00 noon on Friday 10th June 1994. We arrived in N.Y. at 12:00 noon N.Y. or 2:00 a.m. Japan time on JL006. This was my 3rd visit to the U.S. Just before we landed I could see the Empire State Building and the twin towers of the World Trade Center (I will never forget the attacks of September 11, 2001) from the left hand side windows of the plane. Then the plane flew over a place where bushes were growing. I was surprised that there was so much greenery so near to the big city. Shortly afterwards, the plane landed at JFK.
New York City, with a population of 8 million, is the biggest city in the U.S. and is called the Big Apple. Why is it called the Big Apple? What is the relationship between N.Y.C. and apples? Anyway, apples are one of the world's most important fruits. Also, importantly for Japan, apple trees, growing techniques of the apple growing areas of places like New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina, were brought to Japan starting around 1868.
A train soon came and we got on it. It took less than an hour to get to Manhattan. We fell asleep while sitting on the train because of our long flight from Tokyo. We got off at Grand Central Terminal. We walked around the terminal. It was 4:00 p.m. It was easy to get the Empire State Building from there. But we didn't have enough time to go up it. No sooner had we entered the building than we headed off along Broadway. We walked towards Times Square. I was very surprised that everybody was jaywalking across the intersections. I didn't follow them, but just waited for the walk signal. There were a lot of extremely tall earth colored buildings, so we could see only a little bit of a blue sky even on a fine day. Now I knew what they meant when they talked about the dark canyons of Manhattan. It was like being in the middle of a dark concrete forest. We were worn out after a long walk, but we were only too happy to walk these streets of Manhattan. If I had had more time, I would have seen more of N.Y. We hadn't had much time of a chance to see N.Y., but we would have the chance to see more when we returned to N.Y. some weeks later. We finally reached the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza and drunk a glass of beer. We then took a taxi back to our Hilton Hotel JFK. The fare was $25.00.
Back at the Hilton Hotel JFK Airport I went up to my room. There was a TV set in a large dark wooden cabinet in my room. I had never seen such a TV cabinet in Japan. Probably because there is not enough space to put this type of a large cabinet in an ordinary Japanese hotel room. I then switched on the TV set, but there were so many TV channels, including cable channels, that I didn't know which channel to select. The first channel 1 had a political program on it. Then I pushed the channel buttons, which were in a line, in turn. After switching channels, I saw a picture of some airport. Before long I realized that they were talking about Atlanta. Anyway, on that same day, 10th June, when we had boarded Flight JL006 at Narita, our Emperor and Empress had boarded their aircraft at Haneda Airport, to fly to Atlanta. By chance, all of us had flown over the Pacific Ocean at the same time. The TV news showed their arrival in Atlanta. The state governor was welcoming them to Atlanta. I had promised my colleague to have dinner with him at 8:00 p.m. So I turned the TV off after a few minutes and took a shower.
There was a bar and restaurant in the basement. In the basement lobby there was a piano and some sofas, but there was nobody there. We sat down in the restaurant at a chic square shaped wooden table. A young waiter soon came up to us with two glasses of water. We then ordered two medium steaks and two beers. There were not many guests in the restaurant. It was bit dark in the restaurant, but the walls were a particularly brilliant white. While we were eating dinner, we listened to some quick tempo music from the bar, not knowing whether it was popular music or not. At 11:00 p.m., after dinner, I got a phone call from Guyana Airways saying that tomorrow's flight would be delayed and that we should wait until they called us back tomorrow at the hotel. The long first day of our trip finished with me falling asleep on the bed at the Hilton Hotel JFK Airport.
The next day, 11th June, we still hadn't received any phone call from the airline by 10:00 o'clock. Our departure on GY713 had been scheduled for 16:30. So we had enough time for some sightseeing if the flight was on schedule, but we needed to know what was happening at Guyana Airways. I tried to phone Guyana Airways, but I could only get a tape-recorded answer. The message was the same as yesterday's. We decided to go to the Guyana Airways counter at JFK, because we needed to find out the flight details. We left the Hilton Hotel and proceeded to JFK by a courtesy bus. It took about 10 minutes to arrive JFK. There are about eight passenger terminal buildings at JFK. /font>
The bus passed by the Terminal One Building, then stopped in front of the International Arrival Terminal(I.A.T.) building which we had come out of the day before after landing there. Guyana Airway shares the same counter, located at the far end of the I.A.T. building, with Aer Lingus (the second largest airline in Ireland). We had to carry our luggage all the way there. There were quite a few people in front of the counter which was still not open. Opposite the counter, near the main entrance doors, there were some old wooden benches. We sat on a bench and waited until the counter opened. It was 11:30 in the morning. While we were sitting on the bench in the I.A.T. building, a short American approached us. He looked to be in his 50s and was wearing a gray hat. He said that this kind of delay was normal for Guyana Airways. I didn't know what to do about it. I asked him, "Where are you from?" He said, "From New Jersey." I asked him next, "How far is New Jersey from here?" He answered, "About 1 hour." "By car?" "Yes, by car." I had not known that New Jersey was next to New York, until his answer. I learnt that you really need to look at a map of N.Y., or else you'll end up staying somewhere very inconvenient.
There was another American standing next to us. He seemed to me to be in his mid 30's. His eyes were a little bit small and round. According to him, he was working for some department of the U.S. goverment.
I remembered seeing him that morning in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel. We soon became friendly with each other. While we were talking with him, I mentioned to him about my first service trip 30 years ago to Brisbane, Australia. Brisbane is about a one hour flight north of Sydney. Nowadays, it is famous for the Gold Coast, but there were no tall buildings along the coast at that time. We had stayed at some two- story flat on a hill near the center of Brisbane. In the morning, when I caught a taxi in front of the flat going to see my colleague, it was easy for the taxi driver to understand my pronunciation of the destination's address. But on the way back to the flat, it was difficult for the taxi driver to understand where I wanted to go to. The flat was located on Upper Edward Street. One day I realized that it was better to write down the address on a piece of paper because it was the quickest way to communicate with the taxi driver. After about a month passed, I was able to pronounce the address well. This was my first difficult experience speaking English abroad, but now, in retrospect, it seems to me to have been a very valuable experience.
For almost two hours, we talked about our foreign travels. At least, a counter agent appeared at the Guyana Airways counter. It was 14:00 o'clock. We approached him right away. He said, "The aircraft won't be flying today." He put a pile of photo-copied notices with a heading 'AER LINGUS MEMO.' on the counter.
It said: "To: Passenger Service Staff, Date: May 27, 1994, Subject: Guyana Airways Flight Information. Please be advised that Guyana Airways has introduced a flight information phone line. Anyone who calls Aer Lingus requesting arrival and departure information should be given this number and advised to call here for details."
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We walked to the bus stop for the free JFK Airline Connection Bus to go to the British Airways Terminal so we could check B.W.I.A.'s flight schedule. This was the first time to get on this bus for us. Just like the pamphlet said, the bus was free and came approximately every ten minutes. We learnt that when we got on the bus, we needed to first tell our destination to the driver. We carrying nothing, and a couple, carrying a big blue bug, got off in front of the British Airways Terminal. This building is shared between British Airways and United Airlines. The right half-side of the building is used by United, and the left half-side of the building is used by B.A. We got on the nearest escalator and reached the British Airways Reservations Office. Three pretty receptionists wearing colorful uniforms were sitting behind a counter a little bit apart from each other. I sat down in the chair located in front of the middle receptionist. This kind of comfortable chair felt like the one we had sat on the day before on the plane. I asked her, "Are there any flights to Georgetown?" She said, "B.W.I.A. has four weekly flights, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, sir. Today is Saturday and today's flight has unfortunately already departed." The departure time was 9:20 in the morning. We would have to wait until next Tuesday if we were to use B.W.I.A. I asked her next, "Are there any seats on next Tuesday's flight?" "Wait a moment, sir." she replied. She quickly typed on her keyboard and soon afterwards she answered, "A lot of seats are available."
We arrived at the hotel at 18:30. The location of the hotel was a few minutes closer to the airport than the Hilton Hotel. The hotel was a shorter and longer building than the Hilton. The Travelodge Hotel was built in the shape of a 'Y.' There was a main entrance at the center of the 'Y.' The entrance and the front desk were on the first floor and there were also some elevators opposite the main entrance. After we checked in, we got on an elevator. The elevators' speed was very slow, so if the building had been high, everybody would have had to wait for a long time to use them. We got off the elevator at the third floor and pulling our own luggage. Getting off the elevator, we could see three corridors, because we were standing at the center of the 'Y.' One of the three corridors was longer than the other two because it was the tail end of the 'Y.' There were many rooms on both sides of all the corridors. My room, 367, was located at the end of the left branch of the 'Y.' We began to walk on a red carpet to our rooms pulling our own luggage. It was difficult to pull my big suitcase, because the carpet was a bit old and had some creases in it. I finally reached room 367. I then look out the card key from my pocket and put it into the door lock. To open the door, you need to insert the card key and then take it out. A green light then flashes and you need to quickly open the door while the greenlight is flashing. This action was difficult for me and was the same system as used at the Hilton Hotel.
After a quick shower, I went down to the first floor to have dinner with my colleague in the hotel's restaurant. The restaurant was off to our left at the far end of the hotel's lobby. The restaurant was open to the lobby. There was an eye-level row of plant separating the restaurant from the lobby. The meal was courtesy of Guyana Airways because our flight had been cancelled. It is only natural that we would order two medium steaks. They were delicious. We had received hotel vouchers with meals for two nights from the airline, so we were going to enjoy our free meals.
At the end of the restaurant, there was a little bit of a dark bar which had an old large round wooden counter and some separate small tables. Above the counter, there was a TV set hanging from the ceiling. The TV was showing an NBA (pro basketball) game. Almost all of the people sitting around the counter were excitedly watching the game. Nothing was as delightful to them as watching this game, I guessed. It was so brilliantly lit around the counter that I could see all of the colorful faces of the people sitting at the counter, except for those people sitting at the separate tables. There was a young couple, two pairs of young men, and some other businessmen sitting at the counter. We ordered 2 gin and tonics, which were delicious.
We had also ordered gin and tonics last night at the Hilton Hotel. At that time, when I first ordered a "gin & tonic," the waiter couldn't understand my pronunciation. But tonight we realized that last night I had forgotten to pronounce the "&" between gin and tonic. Japanese people always pronounce it without the "&" in Japan, so I did the same thing in N.Y. Anyway, I enjoyed very much drinking gin and tonics. After the waiter served us our gin and tonics, I used to shake it to make a high sounding tone like "ting-ting." The sound comes from the ice clinking against the glass and each other. I like to hear its nice sound and become relaxed. Before long the basketball game finished and the TV was switched off.
Instead of the basketball, we could now hear the slow rock song titled "Enigma." This was the first time I had ever heard this song. Later on, in August of the same year1994, after coming back to Japan, this song was used as background music for a segment called, I think, "Japan's Agriculture" shown on T.V. Asahi's "News Station." On this "News Station," the newscaster announced the name of this song and that this song had come from Europe and was still popular over there. It seemed to me that some sections of this music sounded something like Japanese Enka.
The next day, Sunday morning, on the way to the B.W.I.A. counter, which we had gone to the day before yesterday, we ran into a lot of passengers who had just flown into J.F.K.'s I.A.T. building. They had just loudly come out of the building and were behaving like we had been two days ago. They had stopped and were looking around to find their hotels' courtesy bus stops, which were in fact, only a few minutes' walk away.
While we were waiting in front of the I.A.T. building for the Airline Connection Bus, a small cargo truck stopped in front of us. A large fat man quickly got out of the truck. He went to the rear door and opened it up, then he quickly took out all the white canvas bags from the rear of the truck. I realized that the truck must be a mail van. He was a hardworking man, even on a Sunday. He put the bags on the side walk, one after another. They were clearly labeled in black as "West Virginia," "New Jersey,""Ohio,""Kentucky" and so on. I suddenly remembered that when I had been in Virginia the previous year, that I had seen similar bags. It had been mid-winter there and I had heard that they had had the heaviest snowfall there for the past ten or twenty some years. At that time, all the trees in the Appalachian Mountains were heavily covered with snow.
Before long, the Airline Connection Bus came and stopped in front of us. We got on the bus while still looking at all the mail bags on the sidewalk. After we got on the bus, a loud taped male voice started announcing, "The next stop is..." It seemed to me that the voice had been deliberately recorded in a mechanical voice. On secondly hearing it the voice now seemed to me to have been computer generated. To my regret, I was not able to tell which one it was. The voice was not soft and was rather blunt. I had enough time to mull this matter over, as I had gotten on this bus several times since last Friday. At any rate, after we hear the voice announcing "The next stop...," if we need to get off, we must say, "Let me off," or whatever, to the driver instead of pushing a button like on other buses. We asked our bus driver to stop the bus in front of the building where the BWIA counter was.
At long last, we were able to buy tickets for Tuesday, 14th June on BW427 to Georgetown, Guyana. The plane would be, though, stopping only at Antigua in the Caribbean. I was disappointed, as I wanted to stop off at more than one airport. No matter how hard our trip was, I wanted to look around the Caribbean as much as I could. Some decades ago, I had in Manaus, Brazil for some weeks. On the way to Brazil, I had stopped over in Mexico City, then flown over the Andes and landed at Manaus. At that time, I hadn't flown over the Caribbean Sea.
When I first saw the beautiful drawing of a Caribbean island on my airline ticket, I badly wanted to walk along the coast of Caribbean island. Because we were on a service trip, though, we didn't have enough time to go island hopping. Besides, we didn't have much information about the Caribbean, so we needed to find out more details about it. Our first plan was to fly to Guyana directly from N.Y. by Guyana Airways. But now, because of the strike at Guyana Airways, we had a chance to stop off in Antigua.
Reading up about the Caribbean made me excited. There are a lot of islands there. The island of Antigua is located the middle of the Caribbean. It takes about 4 hours to fly from N.Y. to Antigua. Our B.W.I.A. flight would stop over in Antigua on the way to Guyana, but most other flights would stop over in a city called "Spain" on their way to the cities of northern South America. When I first heard "Spain, "I thought that the plane would land in the European country of Spain. At that time, I had a vague idea of the distances between N.Y., Spain and Guyana. To me, these countries are located so to speak, on the other side of the world. This seemed to me the same as the fact that probably many people living in America don't know exactly how far Japan is from China. In fact, when I was an elementary school student we only learnt that the Caribbean was below and to the right of the U.S. Therefore, we had only a vague idea of how far the Caribbean was from the U.S., and the U.S. from Europe.
Having made our flight arrangements, we returned to our hotel to stay for Sunday night. That would be our second night at the Travelodge Hotel and our third night in N.Y. We spent the rest of Sunday relaxing and having a quiet drink and talking in the hotel's bar, which we had gone to the day before. Our first night was at the Hilton. We also needed to stay a fourth night in N.Y., but that night would not, unfortunately, be courtesy of Guyana Airways. We talked about spending our fourth and last night at the Holiday Inn. The Holiday Inn was near the other two hotels and was the tallest of them and it seemed to me to be the new one.
The next day, made a reservation at the Holiday Inn and then we went into a coffee shop in the International Terminal and talked about N.Y. John F. Kennedy International Airport, which we had landed at, is located to the east of Manhattan. As you well may know, Manhattan is a long narrow island running south to north. It is a little less than 20km long and at its widest point is only about 4km wide. It has the East River on its east side and the Hudson River on its west side. There are many very tall buildings between the two rivers. These sky-scrapers are what I have always wanted to see. There are many ways of getting between J.F.K. and Manhattan. One of them is by subway, which we used on Friday. It runs under the East River, north of the Brooklyn and the Manhattan Bridges, into midtown Manhattan. N.Y.C. has three airports, J.F.K., La Guardia and Newark. J.F.K. is to the east of Manhattan on Long Island, as I've said before. La Guardia, also on Long Island, is mainly for domestic flights. Newark is in New Jersey and is for both domestic and international flights. Walking around Manhattan, I could see overhead many planes landing at the three airports. Unlike Narita, these airports are very close to the city. Talking and reminiscing, we had a good time at the coffee shop.
We then caught a taxi and went to the Holiday Inn. There is a big lawn in front of the hotel's main entrance. They have a circular road leading to the entrance. Unlike Japan, cars drive around to the right to reach the entrance. The surroundings of the green garden made me calm as soon as I got out of the taxi at the hotel's entrance. When I reached the hotel's entrance, I realized that this night's stay would be our final one before going to Guyana. It would also be our fourth night in N.Y.
The front desk was on the right hand side after I passed through the entrance. I wondered why at these three hotels, where we had stayed, the front desks were always located on the right hand side from the entrance. This seemed to me to be some sort of US hotel regulation. This hotel's elevators were far away from the front desk. I felt that everything was bright as compared to the other two hotels. This holiday Inn seemed to be newer than the other two hotels.
It was exactly noon when we reached the 8th floor of the Holiday Inn. I parted from my colleague saying, "Meet you at the gift shop on the first floor at 12:30." My room was No.828. Upon opening the door, I noticed at once that some planes could be seen through the window curtains of my room. Being curious, I approached the windows and threw open the curtains. I realized that my room faced J.F.K. Airport and it wasn't far from one of the runways. There was only one big highway and some grass. On the taxiways, lots of colorful planes-white, red, green, silver and so on- were slowly moving here and there. Planes often flew overhead, but my hotel room was not noisy at all, as could be expected of a hotel located near an airport. We were also shielded from the noise of the busy and speedy traffic flowing on the highway.
I met my colleague on the first floor. Turning left from the elevators, at the end of the corridor, there was the gift shop. It had magazines, drugs and some souvenirs. The news of the O.J. Simpson Case had yet to reach the newsstand. I opened up a newspaper to read it and I was very surprised that, unlike Japan, there were hardly any ads for books. There were, however, many ads for furniture, for example, teak and mahogany outdoor furniture.
I left the gift shop without buying anything at all. My colleague, though, bought a postcard. We then walked back past the elevators to the other end of the corridor. There was a restaurant Claudine's, and a lounge Apres, at the other end of the corridor. Both places were located two steps up from the corridor's floor level. They had an eye-level partition separating them from the corridor, but otherwise were open to the corridor. It gave me a difficult feeling from the other two hotels' restaurants.
We entered Claudine's stepping two steps up from the corridor. We then saw a garden which wasn't an American-style garden, but which looked familiar. We then sat at a table located in the middle of the room. I looked at the garden again. I then realized that it was a Japanese garden, but this wasn't a Japanese restaurant. The garden had a calmness to it, and even though it was not a large space, it was the main focal point of the restaurant. There were only few people in the restaurant. The lighting was suitable, not too bright and not too dark. I suddenly saw that there was a man at another table typing into his notebook computer. He was totally absorbed in his computer, and never took his eyes away from it. He seemed to me to be in his 30's, probably a business man, and who was wearing a short sleeved shirt. He sometimes put down his cigarette in an ashtray for a while, then picked it up and started smoking it again. We ordered two steaks medium done and waited for them to arrive.
My mind began to wander. I thought about my computer at home. I imagined that nobody was using it, because I hadn't instructed anyone in my family on how to use it. I had been using it to mainly keep safe a lot of data. Regarding my experience of using computers, I started to learn how to use them in my early adolescence. I assembled an (-bit-type micro-computer kit manufactured by Toshiba. That consisted of just one circuit board with an 8 letter LED display, and no TV monitor. At that time, that kind of computer was called a micro-computer, and not as now, a personal computer. There were probably 15 keys on the key-board. For example, when we typed "k," we had to push two different keys.
I then though about how I hoped that I would begin to use the Internet as soon as possible. An old university classmate recently had told me that he accessed the Internet for his job. He emphasized the importance of using the Internet. I had read much about the Internet whenever I reread about computers. It was a good method to get or send information, to be sure, but with my old computer, not so practical for me, at that time.
In fact, a year later, another old classmate, out of the blue, visited my home with a notebook computer. He plugged his computer into my phone line and, then started to access the Internet, with a small amount of pride on his part. At that time, it was more than 20 years ago, from now.
We were talking about such kinds of computer stuff when our meals were served. The man in the short sleeved shirt was still alternatively typing and smoking while we ate our meals. I would really have loved to have known what kind of things he had been typing. As for us, we were still talking about computers.
As for the corner of the Japanese garden in the Holiday Inn, there was a lantern carved from a gray rock. It silently stood on a flat bed of tiny pebbles. It made me feel calm and quiet. My colleague seemed to have the same thoughts. Looking at the Japanese garden, especially the lantern, made us feel as if we were in Japan. We were proud that this garden had been built in this hotel, because Japan has such lovely traditional gardens. If the hotel's restaurant hadn't had the Japanese garden and hadn't had such customer as the one who had the notebook computer, we would have talked about a different subject at dinner, not one relating to computers. Anyway, our trip to Guyana was hopefully to start tomorrow.
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