Narita

Noisy Neighbours

23/05/11 For various reasons Air NZ now aren't operating a direct flight to KIX so we had to spend a couple of hours at Narita. This airport has got to be the biggest fuckup since....oh that's right most Japanese airports are fuckups. This place sucks more than most however. The Runways are too far away from the terminal meaning a 20 minute taxi to your parking spot. The highlight of this is the ongoing standoff between a farmer who refuses to move and the airport authority. You can see his farmhouse out the window as your airplane rolls past. It is slap bang in the middle of two main taxiways and is accessed through a tunnel. The owner of this place is the definition of stubborn. He would rather live on a runway than move house. When the airport was built back in the seventies there was a huge protest movement from the locals......riots, people killed, equipment trashed, the whole nine yards. This guy is still holding out. On his back fence he has erected some protest signs. The airport has built a guard tower which is manned 24 hours just to keep an eye on him. As a counter measure the farmer has built a tower of his own with a clock on it. All day long the airport guards get to watch this clock which probably makes for a long day for those guys. The issues with the locals mean that the airport has never really been finished. It's not operating 24 hours. One of the runways is too short so can't be used for takeoffs. The approach is long and torturous as you can't fly over anyones house. The ride into town can take up to 2 hours. My own personal gripe today was that we had to walk for 15 minutes to go through a checkpoint so we could walk back to the plane we had just got off. Seems they've not heard of a transit lounge. Then theres the story of Ibaraki Airport. 80kms from Tokyo, it's twice the distance from town as Narita but guess what......theres no rail link or frequent bus service. When it opened last year it had only 3 flights a week. By now they've got a whopping 5 destinations available. After all the messing around at Narita we finally got into Kansai at 8pm. As usual KIX is a ghostown with hardly anyone around. With such a low level of traffic we of course landed on the unnecessary, unused second runway which is miles from the terminal and meant another endless taxi. Speaking of unnecessary crap, the photo/fingerprinting ritual that all foreign devils must undergo is the worst system in the world. Nobody seems to be able to get it to work first time. Today it took me three attempts to look into a lens and put 2 fingers on a pad in a fashion acceptable to this stupid machine. Judging from the exasperation form all the other foreigners in the neighbouring line this is par for the course. To top it all off, its raining. So begins another adventure.