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Full Circle
Day 23: Vladivostok to Toyama
On the Sado Island Ferry.
The customs area is immaculate and empty, like an operating theatre awaiting its first patient. Toyama is a provincial airport and they are not used to dealing with British film crews, especially ones coming from Siberia. My bags are politely and thoroughly searched. I have to mime the function of every pill in my toilet-bag. After a particularly graphic portrayal of the reasons for taking Immodium, I am politely, but firmly, waved through.So we pass from Russia to Japan, from the land where everything is difficult to the land where everything is easy; where there is a machine on every corner dispensing drinks hot and cold, and snacks, hot and cold, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year; where restaurant windows sport not just menus but spotless acrylic models of every dish on that menu; where packaging is an obsession yet litter virtually non-existent. A free, open, affluent, sophisticated society in which, according to a recent poll, eight-seven per cent of the population wants to look like everyone else.
At the hotel I make the mistake of ordering a particularly revolting cocktail called 'Around The World In Eighty Days' and take to my bed with a severe case of culture shock.
Choose another day from Full Circle
PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Full Circle
- Day: 23
- Country/sea: Japan
- Place: Toyama
- Book page no: 47
Bookmarks will keep your place in one or more series. But you'll need to register and/or log in.
RELATED LINKS
- Japan
- Day 51
- Around the World in 80 Days
- Day 52
- Around the World in 80 Days
- Day 53
- Around the World in 80 Days
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