Flying Through Lemon Meringue Pie

The ground staff at Tokyo Haneda airport, tiny uniformed Lego people from the window of the 767, wave and bob and bow and salute excitedly at our Asahikawa-bound plane like they’re from the 1940’s when families still gathered to wave their handkerchiefs at departing airplanes.

We rise through so many layers of smog-yellow clouds that it feels as though we’re flying through lemon meringue pie, but when, an hour an a half later, we break through them again on the way down, I see a totally unfamiliar landscape. Someone has sliced the very top layer off of the Midwestern United States, big square plots and cows and crops at all, and set it down like a quilt over mostly rolling but occasionally jagged hills. But in the distance, flat-topped volcanoes rise through the misty clouds, and in the even farther distance, the sparkling curve of the ocean appears, a sweeping peninsula cutting into it. As we bank to make our landing, double-peaked Daisetsuzan suddenly rises close on the right, still slightly snowy in July.

The fact that American Airlines’ idea of a vegetarian meal had been white rice with boiled cauliflower on top, along with the fact that I had chosen to go to the Saryo Itoen at Haneda and eat matcha green tea ice cream with red beans and mochi instead of anything resembling an actual dinner, catches up with me in a big way as I ride the bus from Asahikawa airport to downtown. Briefly, I curse my luck arriving so late when there will almost certainly be no restaurants open to feed me, nor energy to sit down and have a meal even if any were, but when I alight I remember – duh – I’m in Japan, where the nearest 7-11 will give me delicious onigiri (rice balls) fit for a queen, and the nearest corner will overflow with drink vending machines.

So, at 9:00pm, munching on delicious cod roe and horseradish wrapped in rice and seaweed with one hand and drinking lemon-flavored coconut water with the other, I navigate the dark, deserted-but-for-the-occasional-businessman-on-a-bicycle streets to my hostel.