The flight was smooth, although our plan to simultaneously watch Her on three different seat consoles didn't quite work out due to deficient headphones. My capsule review is that I thought it was effective both as a romantic film in its own right and a critique of the failure of many other AI-centric stories to incorporate the possibility of continued growth.
Upon arrival in Tokyo's Narita airport we united with our Canadian contingent, changed over some money, holding back because of a spike in the strength of the yen, and tra ded in our Japan Railways (JR) vouchers for full on JR passes. For those not familiar, the JR pass is a godsend for foreigners traveling between multiple cities in Japan. The very fastest four lines of the bullet trains, called Shinkansen, are off limits. However, a plethora of trains, including Shinkansen faster than anything in the U.S., traditional inter-city lines, and any number of local trains can be ridden for free. You'll still often wish to take the time to make a reservation for the longer hauls, but that similarly has no additional cost. The total charge is comparable to a single significant roundtrip ticket, so if you qualify and are train-savvy at all than its a can't miss deal that you've got to book ahead of time. If you're actively enthusiastic about trains, than I'd wholeheartedly endorse the Japan By Rail guide, version 3 of which has been one of our core references for this trip.
In continuing transit geekery, we then got Suica smartcards. Transit smartcards have proliferated since my first visit in 2002. The Suica belongs to JR East and is particularly fancy in that you can have your name printed on it. Different smartcards are issued by the various competing geographic divisions of the JR group, by department stores which sometimes have their own train lines, and by various regional cooperatives. As is becoming increasingly common, these smart cards can also hold money which can be used in local stores and the like. Given all the different systems, this could easily be a confusing mess. However, there is a fair amount of interoperability and cash registers and fare gates are labeled with the systems they'll accept. The biggest complicating factor is that it's tricky to have two in your wallet at once and getting a hold of one in the first place. Generally speaking, they're available at major stations if you find a machine that says 'IC.' Mercifully, a good percentage of the machines we've encountered so far have had a button for English.
With that out of the way, we were ready to ride into Tokyo on the Narita Airport Express. During my trip a dozen years ago I'd also flown in, though that time we'd then transferred to a flight to Kyoto. One of my first observations on that trip was that the escalator handrails were often blue. That had seemed like a fairly innocuous if curious distinction at the time as most every handrail I was familiar with back home was black. I later realized the reason, the flexible handrail material can easily get marked up and turn partially black with the combined residue from hands and machinery. I suspect it's easy to create an escalator with any color scheme you desire, but maintaining it will take real work. I suspect that's true of many of the modern wonders we'd see this trip; on-time trains and the like are not magic, they just require paying a lot of people to make sure it happens.
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