Thu, 28 Aug '08 - Narita Express

The Narita Express serves Narita Airport from stations across the Greater Tokyo Area and runs about every half hour.

It's a clean, robust and functional looking train with an illuminated digital display at the end of each carriage that tracks your journeys progress.

Not quite able to live up to the ordered Japanese efficiency in our exhausted state we jump onto the first carriage we see, hoping to walk down through the train. Turns out you can only walk three carriages at a time so we just flopped into some available seats as the fifteen hours of travel fatigue started to take a grip.

A young ticket inspector in an immaculate and quite ceremonial looking uniform stopped by at one point, he was trying to explain that our seats were further down (in Japanese) but in the end he reluctantly let us stay where we were.

This was the first hint that while the systems and routines ingrained in the Japanese work supremely well, they seem to have a bit of a mental short-circuit when it comes to stepping outside certain prescribed actions.

The views en route to Tokyo are a dreary collage of mid grey greens, blues, beiges and pallid teracottas. Suburban scenes in army surplus, all the more mundane by the flat light of a white sky.

Though, here and there, this charmless parade is punctuated by a traditional house or garden, ornate little errors on a predictable production line.

Toward the end of the one hour trip to Tokyo station adverts and signage starts popping up with increasing regularity. 

This scattershot of colourful alien symbols and sleeping neon signage brings a welcome contrast to featureless blandscape that preceded it. The unitelligable quality seems to make it all the more intriguing. 

Thought

Even the most mundane Japanese logos and typography holds an exotic intrigue to western eyes.