Flying solo

Stop it, please I insist. Really there's no need to bow to me each and every time you offer me a refreshment, pillow, blanket, meal – in fact this is fantastic service and even in cattle-class I feel like a king. A "Samurai" according to some Taiwanese I've met, is how I sound with my Hollywood Japanese accent; but i blame Hiro Nakamura for making a cliché of the proceedings. Seriously though, I think the hostesses would carry me to the toilet and wipe my arse for me if I asked. There's a thought. Oh hang on; there's another.

They say (whoever "they" may be), that smiling uses fewer muscles than frowning. Perhaps, but clearly it uses less energy to frown, which must explain why fat people always look sad. You get fat by being lazy after all. In that case these girls – and they are all girls – dressed to utter perfection with each strand of jet black, perfectly straight hair placed with complete precision, must be fit as fiddles. Or each has suffered multiple jaw locks in their careers.

There she goes again, bowing even before seating for landing. This is Extreme Manners, like one of those awful scraping-of-barrel TV shows voiced over by a booming American Wrestler type. Exit the plane and little changes; much like the hacking of the Cantonese, here the manners know no bounds: I think I prefer the latter. And with incredible style, cleanliness and attention to detail and precision; this truly is the Asian Germany.

I'm suffering a little shellshock sat on the Narita Express, which is currently hurtling, tilting and positively bounding it's way along the steel railings at Warp 9 (that’s 130km/h measured), stemming from the quick turnaround of countries and differing cultures. It's not that I'm nervous, no hardly, more that I'm completely drained and soiling my trousers every 7 seconds wondering about my next move.

Through Japan by train using my £403 three week JR rail pass, I'm entitled to use any Shinkansen Magnum .45 “the most powerful train in the world” I like. I hear these formidable machines travel so quickly that you actually arrive before you depart. It's an expensive ticket certainly, but compared to a minimum monthly £1000 travelcard in London – solely for London commute – this is incredible value for the location.

So back to the airport; walking through immigration and security, my heart rate jumps rapidly. I'm not guilty of anything but they really don't mess around here. My bag is searched, I'm questioned and just as I feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead from the Gestapo gentleman interrogating me, he smiles and bows; "Thank you sir, have a pleasant day", and it's difficult to hide my relief. Any more sign of relief and I'm certain that my cavities would have been thoroughly inspected with an electron microscope. Either way they've got my finger prints now and that surely means the Old Bill back home are also in possession of my pinkies; no more drug dealing or pimping of pre-pubescent girls from Cambodia for me, then.

I depart with a thought; throughout Asia the public transport infrastructures have been incredible (I’ll overlook the cockroaches of Vietnam for now), able to both withstand and function in high temperatures and humidity along with monsoon rainfall. For the main pinpoint accuracy, efficiency and delays rare, I am left questioning why is it then that all public transport in the UK creates the same kind of misery and suffering on a daily basis that you might find in say, a concentration camp?