LONDON ALERT (10 page)

 ‘I will leave you now,’
said Sachiko, ‘so you can have a rest. I’ll come back tonight around six to
take you for drinks at the Park Hyatt Hotel’s New York Bar, not far from there.
It was there that many of the scenes in the film
Lost in Translation
were filmed. It will give us a chance to talk about what you want to see and
do. Then we can come back here for a light dinner at the Chinese restaurant on
the ground floor.’

‘Good idea. We are a
bit shattered.’

The delightful Sachiko
left them to their own devices, whereupon the two of them took the lift up to the
10th floor and walked down quite a long corridor to their room, which though
not large was comfortable. After a nap and a shower, they were ready for action
when Sachiko returned to pick them up at 5 p.m. – 9 a.m. UK time.

The Park Hyatt Hotel,
some six minutes’ walk from their lesser Keio Plaza Hotel, was on the 41st to 52nd
floors of the Shinjuku Park Tower, one of the tallest buildings in Tokyo. They
took the
e
levator up to the lobby on the 41st floor and noted how
impressive the reception area was. Even from there, the view from the coffee
shop was remarkable, and as they walked the fifty yards or so to the elevator
to the top, they had a great view of Mount Fuji.

As they were arriving
just when the New York Bar opened, at 5 p.m., they were able to get a table
right by the window, facing out towards Shinjuku and the rest of Tokyo. They
could even see the lights of aircraft landing one after the other at Tokyo’s
Haneda Airport.

‘It’s good,’ said
Sachiko, ‘to come now. Not only can one get a good table but one also avoids
the cover charge that applies from 8 p.m. onwards.’

‘What a wonderful
place,’ remarked Celia.

Few words were said as
they also drank in the view. Only when they were on their second round did
Sachiko broach the main purpose of their visit.

‘Dad told me the
general purpose of your visit, but—’

‘It’s not,’ interrupted
Holt, ‘a great secret. We just do not want to broadcast it or get noticed, as
it could cause some friction, due to not going through the formal channels.
After all, mine is just a training mission, not a high-powered visit.’

‘I understand. I also
know that you are not a real couple, even though you share rooms and claim to
be on your honeymoon, which is a pity – you fit so well together.’

‘We are not,’ said
Celia vehemently, ‘fitting together.’

 ‘I am sorry for my poor
English. I didn’t mean it in that special way.’

‘I know, continued
Celia, ‘it must seem odd to you, but Jeremy here has been programmed by the
psychiatrist so that we are like brother and sister.’

‘In my humble experience
big sisters are not too keen on sharing rooms with their brothers. I am sure you’ll
be glad to have your own room at our place – we’ve plenty of spare rooms. Also,
when we go to Kyoto, let’s share a room at the hotel. We can enjoy some girl
time together. I don’t get much chance for that nowadays.’

‘I’d like that,’ replied
Celia, to Holt’s dismay. ‘Maybe we could do some shopping together.’

Holt had dreaded the word
‘shopping’ ever since his mother, an otherwise intelligent woman, had dragged
him round London’s Oxford Street department stores when five years old. It was
not only the boredom that got to him but the memory of his difficulty in
breathing when his nose and eyes were level with women’s protruding bottoms,
which sometimes poked him right in the face.

Realizing the
sisterhood was making Holt feel uncomfortable, Sachiko tried to come up with
something to tick his box.

‘Do you know what a
Narita Divorce is?’

‘No,’ they replied in
unison.

‘Well, many Japanese go
abroad for their honeymoon – Japan is terribly expensive – and for some it is
their first time; I mean, for going abroad as well as for the other thing. Anyway,
the honeymoon abroad is sometimes so disastrous that as soon as the bride has
her feet back safely on Japanese soil at Narita Airport, she declares her
intention to divorce. That’s why it’s called a Narita Divorce.’

‘Poor girls,’ said Celia
sympathetically.

‘Why don’t you say poor
men?’ interjected Holt. ‘It takes two to tango.’

‘Because you cannot
imagine,’ explained Sachiko, ‘what some of us girls have to go through with
these momma’s boys, who have spent all their time swotting to get into a top
university and then a job with a prestigious company or government department.
There was one case where the groom phoned his mother back in Japan from Sydney
to ask whether he should wear his pyjamas to bed with his bride!’

They all laughed,
dissipating the tension that had built up.

‘I’d heard about Japan’s
kamikaze taxis, but not that,’ commented Holt.

‘According to my dad,
Japan’s reputation for kamikaze taxis came about because a foreign journalist,
having found nothing to write about, described a slightly scary ride to the
airport in the hope his editor would sympathise. His editor published the article
under the title
“
Japan’s Kamikaze Taxis
”,
and the myth of Japan’s terrifying
taxis was born. The article went all round the world.’

‘We had heard about
them and were a bit nervous,’ commented Celia.

‘In fact, Japanese taxi
drivers would usually never even think of breaking the speed limit. Part of the
reason may be that in Japan it is not the custom to give tips, though during
the bubble, when the economy was booming, businessmen on expenses getting a taxi home
late on a rainy Friday night from the Ginza would put up two or three fingers
to show they would pay double or triple fare!’

‘Point taken,’ replied
Holt. ‘Sorry to have changed the subject. It must be the jet lag.’

‘The fault is on my
side. I am behaving like a tour guide when we have more important things to
talk about.’

 ‘Don’t worry. We need
to relax and have a bit of fun. Would be different if we were on a real
honeymoon, wouldn’t it, Celia?’

An awkward silence followed,
before Sachiko continued.

‘My dad…told me to show
you some of the places he will be talking about when he sees you. The first is
a toilet in an underground walkway not far from here. We have thousands such
walkways here in Tokyo and other cities to avoid the heat, cold, and rain, and
to make the most of the little space we have in Japan. Much of our country is
mountainous, so the actual space where people can live is limited.’

 ‘Why do you say
“
our” when you’re half-English?’

‘It’s just that I was
brought up here and got used to saying
“
our” and “we” when showing
visitors from abroad around. I thought it sounded friendlier than saying
“
Japan” all the time.’

‘I agree,’ Celia said helpfully.

‘Anyway, my dad’s the
one who knows the details. He said that apart from showing you one or two
special places, I should just let you get the feel of the country. You and Dad will
be able to talk at length. Reporting on the Red Army and terrorist incidents was
once his speciality. I only hope he doesn’t bore you. I have heard the same
stories hundreds of times.’

‘He sounds very
interesting. I’m sure I won’t be bored.’

With that, they went back
to the Keio Plaza Hotel, and after dinner at the Nan-Yen Chinese restaurant in
the basement, they said goodbye to Sachiko and returned to their room. The
experience of the night at The Loughty and their proximity during the flight
meant there was no sense of awkwardness as they prepared for bed, though
aesthetically speaking, Holt would have appreciated another show. The time
difference with the UK meant they did not feel sleepy, and they watched some
local programmes on their TV, which seemed very strange, very different from
those in the UK.

Again, because of the
time difference, getting up the next morning was not so easy, but luckily they
had arranged to meet Sachiko after lunch. She had suggested they go for a walk
round on their own, saying too much hand holding would not be good for them.
Despite being brought up in Japan, she was a very forthright young woman. So
they lingered over breakfast, buffet-style, involving a lot of getting up and
sitting down. There was a wide choice, both Western and Japanese.

The rest of the morning
was spent wandering around. The first place they came across was a shop, or
rather a complex of shops, called Yodobashi Camera, selling cameras and
every imaginable item of electrical equipment, from computers to washing
machines, at a discount. The choice was unbelievable. They then visited a
department store, with the basement taken up with counters selling an enormous
range of different foods, much of them destined to be gifts. The Japanese
seemed obsessed with gift giving. They returned to the hotel quite shattered.
How nice to have a room in which to recover.

Sachiko rejoined them
as they were having a snack in the hotel coffee shop and said the first place
they would be visiting would be the underground walkway where members of the
Aum Cult had left a poison gas
-
generating device following
their relatively unsuccessful sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system
in 1995.

Holt signed for their
food and coffees, and they set off, with Sachiko leading the way, down into the
labyrinth of underground walkways that she had been talking about, many of them
with shops and restaurants on either side. As they passed under the Shinjuku National
Railway station, they noticed the Marunouchi Line subway station on a lower
level, with exits to their passageway at either end of the platform.

Sachiko stopped near
the far exit before speaking. She explained that the police, fearing another
nerve gas attack, had saturated the nation’s railway stations and tourist
spots, particularly Shinjuku, one of the busiest. A member of the public
reported that something was burning in a bag in a toilet located off one of the
walkways above the Shinjuku subway station. Staff quickly doused it with water,
only to find that resulted in it beginning to emit acrid fumes. Finally, a
specialized team from the fire brigade rendered it harmless.

On closer examination,
it was found to be a crude device consisting of two condoms, the outside one
containing sodium cyanide, and the inside one filled with concentrated
sulphuric acid. It had been the concentrated sulphuric acid emitting the acrid
fumes, giving the impression something was burning, which of course had given
off even more fumes on coming into contact with the water sprayed on it. The
intention had been that the sulphuric acid would eventually eat through the
inner condom and react with the contents of the outer one to generate hydrogen
cyanide gas, once used in death chambers in the US.

Placing the device in a
location somewhat away from the subway station, where the police would be
concentrating their efforts, was a clever move, as even there the gas could
have killed over a thousand people once sucked into the ventilation system in
the normal course of events.

 ‘The layout,’ said
Sachiko, ‘is now somewhat different from what it was then in that the location
of the toilet has been changed, but that does not alter the fact that with it
just here, many people could have been killed or injured. So many people,
including myself, used to pass through this passage every day. It made me feel
bad every time I walked along here.’

‘Seems a very busy
place,’ said Holt.

‘I used to come through
here regularly to visit the Kinokuniya bookshop to read the English magazines
for free. Did you know the Japanese have a special word for that? It’s tachi-yomi.
Literally translated it means
“
standing reading
”.
Some people spend hours
reading without buying anything. Some company people or academics note the
details and buy the book through their organization or through Amazon. In no
other country would shops allow people to do that. I think some people abuse it.
I always try and buy something.’

They then went down onto
the subway platform and took an underground train to Yotsuya station so that
she could show them the Geihinkan, the State Guest House, where foreign
dignitaries stay. Set in spacious grounds well back from the public
thoroughfares, it seemed a safe enough place.

She then took them to a
street a little back from the main road and pointed to a fairly low apartment
building with balconies facing the guest house grounds.

‘It was from there that
they intended to launch the rockets from the drainpipes using timers. They were
just primitive mortars, according to my dad.’

The following day they
visited several other places mentioned by Sachiko in the New York Bar and went
on to the Ginza to have a tempura dinner at Tenichi. Though pricey, it was well
worth it as everything was so light and the materials so fresh. Sachiko then went
home, as they had to be up fairly early the following morning to take the train
to her home.

A true Japanese, she
was there right on time, and she took them to Shinjuku Station to board the so-called
Odakyu Romance Car to Fujisawa.

‘It’s called the
Romance Car, but that simply means it is a more luxurious train going to
tourist places, such as Hakone, near Mount Fuji. The great thing is that you
can reserve seats and not have to stand up, as on most commuter trains.’

‘Call
me Jim,’ said
her
father
on
picking them up a
t
Fujisawa
S
tation
.
To Holt he seemed a delightful
man and not the c
hinless wonder his name might
suggest. No wonder he preferred to be called SH.