Lost In Translation
I have no idea what day it is, or what the alphabet means, or when I'm going to sleep again, but I love it.
The Week
… has been a blur.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CRin1NDJHZv/
People keep telling me that nobody wants us journalists here, but this is Japan, and politeness is part of the DNA.
The people are so friendly and helpful, even without a shared language and when Google Translate fails.
Arriving into Narita Airport was a trial, as is to be expected during a pandemic. A missed tick in a Covid test box led to me spending eight hours trying to straighten out the paperwork to gain admission to the country after a ten-and-a-half hour flight, but for once I wasn’t that bothered.
I meant I got to my hotel at about half-past five in the evening, which was perfect timing. Scrabbling around with Uber Eats yielded no harvest, so I grabbed a ticket for some chicken and noodles from a vending machine and it was duly delivered out a window to me.
After a day of struggling with bureaucracy it turned out to be one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.
Since I was a kid I dreamed of visiting Japan, and though I deserve no sympathy whatsoever, it’s a bit of a shame that we are not a bit more free to enjoy the city and to see what it has to offer.
Local journalists are keeping an eagle eye out for foreigners transgressing their quarantine terms or going out partying without masks, and we have quite rightly been told not to become the story.
The Californian
I went to the sailing venue in Enoshima before being shifted to the Chiba prefecture, where the surfing competition is taking place.
On Saturday I met Kanoa Igarashi, who is one of the biggest names in the competition.
Others may be ranked higher, but Igarashi has a spritual link to the Tsurgasaki surfing beach that may prove pivotal - this is where his father learned to surf, and where he in turn has also ridden the waves in his young life.
You can read the full story here.
The Quarantine
… is complicated. We’re on a modified quarantine regime with all sorts of different rules that seem very open to interpretation in some places, and not at all up for discussion in others.
Here in Kujukuri some of the hotel guards don’t mind you nipping out to the store or two one of the restaurants on the hotel campus - it’s a spa resort spread out over several buildings - whereas others want to confine you to your room.
These are the politest people on earth, so if you argue very gently they’ll usually compromise a little bit, and even if they don’t it doesn’t really matter. After working 10, 12, 14 hours a day we’re not in much of a hurry to go anywhere anyway, so a trip to the supermarket to get some suncream and a takeaway pizza is about the limit of our ambition right now.
The Podcast
… this week was a tough one.
It was made to mark the tenth anniversary of the terror attacks on Oslo and Utoeya, a story which has been almost ever-present with me since then.
I’ve spoken to a lot of the survivors, read all the books and reports and been at the trial of Anders Behring Breivik. What he did was frightening, but its effect on politics in Norway and further afield is even more so, and it’s something that we have to start dealing with.
Survivor Vegard Wennesland, a Labour Party politician, took me through the day and the intervening decade, and it’s well worth a listen.
Right, back to the sport.
Have a great week, wherever in the world you may be.