2/4 - 3/4 - The Longest Day

So, the ”longest day” (really 1.5 days) of our trip began that would take us from Tokyo Japan to the Greek island of Santorini. It totalled something like 36 hours door-2-door, including 2 car, 2 bus, 2 train, 2 plane, and 1 ferry legs… and as a sequence of major elements went something like:
6am(Tokyo) – Rise and shine on last morning in Japan. Tidy house, do final packing.
8am – Picked up by Mari, driven back to her place in Kichijoji.
8:15am – Meet Keiko and Jun at Mari’s, walk luggage into Kichijoji station.
8:30-9am – Ride Sobu Sen train into Shinjuku.
9:40-11am – Ride Narita express out to Narita airport.
11am-2:30pm – Do checkin etc. and wait around for delayed flight to leave.
2:30pm(Japan)-6pm(UK) – 12 hour flight to the UK.
6pm-9pm – Wait at Heathrow for flight to Athens.
9pm(UK) – 2:30am(Greece) – Flight to Athens.
2:30-4:40am – Wait in Athens airport.
4:40-6am – Bus down to port of Pireaus.
6-7am – Have breakfast and wait to board ferry.
7:30-12:30pm – Ferry trip to Santorini.
12:30-1pm – Picked up by Marika and George and whisked off to their place.

Needless to say it was quite a tiring and taxing trip, with little chance for any good sleep, and a fairly significant time difference (of -7 hours) thrown in for good measure; never mind a complete change of culture and language (Greek being a language we only know “a few words”) in.

Some memories that have remained inside my fatigued mind include the kids 'praying' to the Tatenocho Botsudan (for happiness for Keiko, Mari, and Yoriko; as well as a safe trip) just before we left the house - it was spontaneous and very touching. Also how pleasantly surprised I was at how the trip into Shinjuku had gone. Chosing the Sobu Sen over the Chuo Sen for the trip was a good move – while most of us had to stand the train wasn’t too crowded and while Shinjuku and Kichijoji stations were extremely busy, it wasn’t too bad. I recall looking across at the Chuo train on another platform as we pulled out of Nakano (?) and seeing people pressed against the doorways. Saying goodbye at Shinjuku was hard emotionally – we all really felt at home in Japan and amongst life-long friends – but I’ve written about that already.

On the Narita Express Zoe and Grant made a new friend – a young boy and his mother that, as it turned out, were travelling back to London, and hence sharing our flight. They visited with us a couple of times during the flight.

At Narita our flight was delayed by nearly an hour and a half, so we had a fair bit of time to kill. We had our last Japanese meal for a while – Katsudon for Zoe and I, a child’s special set for Grant (he often chose these while in Japan so he could get the free toy – seriously), and ginger beef for Maria. Then we wandered the airport shops, blowing our remaining Yen. Grant bought a small football shaped watch – which he subsequently lost somewhere along the trip (was it Heathrow?).

The flight to Heathrow was long (12 hours), but fortunately rather sparsely populated (many had picked earlier flights due to the delay), so we were able to spread out and have a row each. Everyone caught a bit of sleep on the flight, but not really sufficient. There was a good selection of movies (from absolute dogs like Eragon to modern classics like The Incredibles) that could be watched on the display on the back of each seat, as well as some very poor (and poorly designed interface wise) games of the hangman/backgammon school.

We had a couple of hours to kill in Heathrow and the depth of Grant’s assimilation into the Japanese culture and environment became clear. As we strolled the shops/mall environment inside the airport he remarked several times on how tall everyone appeared, how much variety there was in hair colour and clothing. It was very funny and very cute. Of course, by this time we were already quite tired (it being something like 3am in Japan at the time).

The Athens flight really showed to us that we “weren’t in Kansas anymore”. The passengers made themselves at home and as an example a guy one row down and across from us – after a few wines – pulled his laptop out and had it play an hour or more of clearly Greek music that filled our section of the aircraft.

We arrived into Athens airport at around 3am – it was quiet, but not dead. The largest surprise was how quick immigration was (there was no line and our passports were stamped immediately without us having to fill out any form), and the fact that the Customs station was completely unmanned.

The bus trip from the airport down to Pireaus was yet another graphic illustration of the differences between Japan (where we had caught many buses) and Greek. In Japan the driver will often announce that he’s going to break or slow down (in order for the passengers to be comfortable). Our Greek driver, who was quite surly when Maria went to ask about tickets (but perhaps we all would be at 3am in the morning being asked the same question [in English] for the 10,000th time), hammered along at hair raising speeds, slamming the bus over rail (tram?) tracks that crossed the street, so that people were almost tossed from their seats.

In Pireaus we spent a worried 30 minutes trying to find where our ferry was, before finally getting it sorted. At 5:30am it is a very chaotic and confusing area in terms of layout and activity (cars and trucks going every which way). Having breakfast inside an old café was also rather informative and fun – though Maria was becoming more and more distressed about how poor her Greek was proving to be (that’s what comes of being so good at Japanese, her “expectations” of what she could do in Greek, combined with simple fatigue, made it all very frustrating and depressing).

The ferry we caught – a high speed one – was interesting but also somewhat disappointing. Comprised of two fully enclosed main decks – the lower one for motor vehicles and the upper one for passengers – it was extremely chaotic and embarking and disembarking times, but very sedate (and removed from the natural environment) at all other times. Inside there was a bar, kiosk, seating somewhat reminiscent of an aircraft (though more spatious), a kid’s play room and roof-mounted TV sets.

Disembarking at the port (around 12:30pm) we were again disoriented by the sudden rush and (to our eyes) disorder as people who had been drowsing in their seats transformed into hives of energy and activity in their haste to get themselves, their cars, or their truck off the ferry (note, we walked out through the garage level and down the ramp used by the vehicles…so it was hectic and frantic).

Marika was truly a welcome sight and immediately put us at our ease, being as warm and friendly as though we’d known each other for years – despite the fact that we were meeting for the first time. Along with several tourists that she was looking after we were whipped to the top of the cliff, transferred to another vehicle, and before we knew it at Marika and George’s house.
Marika’s home proved to be a classic white-washed with blue doors (but then, that’s true of 75% of the houses on this island) 2-bedroom 1st floor building. We learnt that we had the use of Stavros’ (Marika’s 16-year-old son) room, with him sharing the living room with Grant and Zoe. Left to settle in we grabbed some lunch (ahhh, a simple sandwich – how I’ve been missing them), then decided to take a walk to keep ourselves awake till the evening. We walked through Marika’s little village of Pirgos, squinting against the brightness of the sun reflected off all the white houses, and up the hillside to a little abandoned church (there’s an aweful lot of churches about). The walk proved how fatigued we were by the trip – with all of us finding it hard going. However the prospect – looking back down and across – was extremely beautiful and brought home just how different Santorini is to any place we’ve ever been before.

Back to the house we vegged in front of ther TV – over 300 channels to pick from – with the kids rapidly succumbing to their fatigue, and Maria and I not doing much better. That evening I’m sure we weren’t great conversational partners, but we stayed up till 11 regardless talking with Marika about the Liontis side of the family, the politics of the village, her sisters, etc. Looks like we have interesting times ahead. Finally, it was time to get our heads down, and there have been few things I have welcomed more.