May 12, 2005 – June 1993: Tokyo Where East Meets West

May 12, 2005 – June 1993: Tokyo Where East Meets West

It’s Tuesday, June 14th, 1993 and JA my boss at the Cleveland publishing company I work for and I are checking our bags and getting our boarding passes in preparation for our journey to Japan. Traveling in Southeast Asia back then, the plane of choice was a Boeing 747 and it was a favorite of Singapore Airlines, the carrier that would wing JA and me to Tokyo Narita from Hong Kong Kai Tak. I recall reading a story in the Atlantic Monthly magazine about Boeing. What I remember of the story was how the finished 747 got delivered to the customer—the customer was Singapore Airlines. You can imagine that delivering a 747 would require a bit more than say delivering a top of the line automobile. In fact, I was struck by the ceremony that revolved around the sale. Representatives from Singapore Airlines as well as a complete 747 crew were flown to Boeing’s huge manufacturing facility in Everett, Washington. Boeing spared no expense entertaining these buyer’s representatives.

Once the buyer’s representatives were assured that the plane Boeing was delivering was what they had ordered, they boarded the fully fueled plane with a Boeing flight crew at the controls—the Singapore Airline flight crew strapped in as passengers. The plane took off and headed for Singapore. Once the Boeing pilot determined that the plane was 150 miles off the U.S. coast line, he informed the Singapore Airline representative and Boeing in Everett. At this point, an electronics funds transfer took place from the Singapore Airlines bank to the Boeing bank, once the funds had been deposited, title of the 747 transferred to the airline. The Boeing flight crew left the bridge and the Singapore Airline crew took control of their plane. The tax savings from making the deal in international waters was sufficient to offset the expense of this elaborate transaction. For me, the ceremony of the two flight crews swapping control of the bridge in mid flight after an elaborate electronic transaction occurred resembled the traditional changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace.

I told that story to JA a year earlier in one of our BS sessions over dinner. It had now become part of his repertoire of stories. The Cleveland publisher also owned a trade magazine covering the commercial aviation industry and Boeing was an advertiser. JA was an airplane buff as well and the story tickled his fancy as it did mine.

When we touched down at Narita, JA and I took at cab in from Narita to the Imperial Hotel 1-1, Uchisaiwai-cho 1-chome, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. My first recollection of the hotel was seeing it during a walkabout in June 1965. I had arrived in Japan after being assigned to the USNS Michelson and was awaiting my ship in the transient center on Yokosuka Naval Base. On a weekend pass, I took the train into Tokyo, got myself a room at the Shimbashi Station Dai Ichi Hotel—the yen-dollar exchange rate was 360 to $1 but on my meager salary, I was lucky to afford the Dai Ichi, considered the “Holiday Inn” of Japan back then—and started touring the city outward from Shimbashi Station. As I walked in the general direction of Hibiya Park, one of the places in Tokyo I would frequent quite often during my time in Japan, I saw the hotel. It was built in 1890 to be a western-style hotel—the first ever in Japan. The wooden Victorian-style Imperial sat across the avenue from the Emperor's palace on the same site the hotel occupies today. In the early 1920s a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed stone and steel structure replaced the old wooden Victorian. The architect employed a motif in his design that made the hotel resemble the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza in the Yucatan. In 1923, the day the hotel opened, a massive earthquake killed 70,000 in the Tokyo, Yokohama, Yokosuka corridor. Miraculously the hotel survived unscathed. Foreign embassy staff and western news correspondents made it their home in the aftermath of the quake. And the hotel did its parts feeding refugees of the disaster. The art-deco hotel, however, did succumb to later natural disasters and Second World War bombings. It was replaced by the modern high-rise hotel we were now checking into.

JA and I had dinner in one of the hotel’s restaurant. I don’t recall much about the dinner except that JA had a bit more than usual to drink and became loud just before his entree arrived. A full stomach sobered him sufficiently so that we were not ejected from the establishment.

The next morning we were meeting the magazine’s Tokyo correspondent, BP, for breakfast. BP was an ex-patriot American with a Japanese wife and a young son back then. He resembled a character from a Somerset Maugham or Joseph Conrad novel. He was dressed in sport coat over sport shirt and slacks and shod in Hush Puppies or something similar. He was clean-shaven and his brown hair was short but in need of a hair cut. The year before I had come alone to visit Japanese companies for purely editorial reasons and BP accompanied me on each visit. He knew his way around the city and how to survive in a very expensive place on the modest income of a freelance writer. He took me to the foreign press club where he was a member in good standing, showed me a few sights I hadn’t seen in over 20 years. However, this morning BP was hungry. After having a plate of bacon and eggs, he ordered pancakes with a side order of sausage. This was as close as he was going to get to an American breakfast and he was going to get as much as his stomach could accommodate. JA was amazed at BP’s capacity for food. I wanted the two of them to meet so JA knew we had someone in Tokyo and that he was competent. Once the meal was over, BP bade his farewell after thanking us for breakfast.

Our first meeting of the day had been arranged by our sales rep in Japan, Mr. HM of the firm JAC. I had known HM for over a decade and I’ve not found his equal among space sales people anywhere. He was doing a great job for my sister publication but having a difficult time selling anyone on my magazine Electronics, for a whole variety of reasons. Nevertheless, he continued to try and our meetings on Wednesday and Thursday was to sell all the Cleveland publisher’s technical publications. Having an editor in tow made it easier for HM to get companies to meet with us. Japanese companies put stock in titles and positions within companies.

HM speaks very good English. In fact he is so competent as to be able to joke in the language. His favorite jokes are at his wife’s expense and JA and I wonder if HM uses the humor to cover the fact that he is a devoted husband with two kids of high school age. Back then, he and I shared that experience and we would compare notes on child rearing in the U.S. and Japan. We found we faced all the same problems, just slightly different cultural twists. The meetings were productive. HM had pending business at several of the companies we visited and JA help convert some of it into firm commitments.

After our meetings were completed on Wednesday, HM and his boss at JAC took us to dinner at an Italian restaurant close to the JAC offices. In the Japanese tradition we would have been drinking afterwards until the bar threw us out, but JA suggested an early ending to the evening shortly after a nightcap following dinner. Our hosts were probably disappointed that we did not want to get drunk but secretly glad to get home at a reasonable hour. Thursday evening HM and his boss were intent on getting us drunk. They had decided to treat us to a Japanese meal of Yakitori, followed by an evening of karaoke. To my surprise JA did sing after a few rounds of drinks and he held his own when it came to handling whiskey, the drink of choice for karaoke. We finally made it back to the Imperial Hotel around midnight after profuse thanks to HM and his boss for arranging our visits and for a wonderful night of entertainment.

We had afternoon flights out of Narita on Friday. I was going back to San Jose, JA returning to Cleveland by way of Chicago. The trip had been exhausting and I was looking forward to attending a recital our younger daughter was having at UC Irvine—she’s a dance major and the kid can dance.