Ten years ago exactly, I had just emerged from the Piccadilly Line at Heathrow Airport, having travelled there from my flat in South London. It was a Saturday morning. I was about to embark upon my first business trip to Tokyo.

I was excited, but apprehensive, because this trip meant that I'd be seeing my brief romance from the summer of 1996, Minako. She worked in our Tokyo office, and I'd met her when she came to London for training. I'd mostly spent my time since then pining for her quite honestly, and I'd longed see her again, though I thought I probably never would. Now I was about to, but I knew that it would be awkward. And it was.

The following is an email sent on 24th August, the Monday I arrived at the office, to my friend, a young woman from Tokyo living in London, with whom I was in a 'sort of' relationship. By 'sort of' I mean that weren't actually in a relationship, but we hung around with each other and slept together a lot.

Well.. so much to tell you about..

Had a great flight here, all the usual BA business class comforts - the only irritation being that the person I was sitting next to (an elderly Japanese gentleman) appeared to be the rudest individual on Earth and never uttered a word of thanks to the attendants when they brought food drink newspapers etc.

Yet to my surprise just after we landed he perked up and wanted to chat.. turned out he's a golf-course designer and had come to Britain to examine our courses at close hand.

During the flight, just as it started to grow dark, I got up to stretch my legs and wandered back to the galley to take a look at the view from the window. I exchanged smalltalk with the flight attendant there, a cutie from Yokohama called Naoko, and she asked me if I would like to visit the flight deck! So I said yes, I'd love to (of course) & she phoned the captain and we went up there. So I sat in the cockpit talking to the pilot & copilot for 15 minutes or so.

I think they were bored and appreciated the chance to have a chat.. they showed me all the instrumentation and I asked intelligent questions about the auto-pilot - to my amazement and discomfort, the co-pilot claimed that it runs on an Intel 80286 (a 10 year old processor used in PCs in the late eighties).

Anyway the best thing was the view from the 'windscreen' - the front windows of the 747 - Siberia, in the darkness, with lights twinkling from distant oilfields in the distance.

I took the Limousine Bus from the airport, and was so impressed by Tokyo on the way in. I know you know this already, but miles and miles of futuristic industrial landscape.. kind of unreal.

Got to the apartment about midday (I had a long wait for the bus) then I made the mistake of speaking one tiny Japanese phrase to the girl on the front desk as she was having difficulty speaking English. After that, she refused to speak English and it was hard work I can tell you.. but we managed to communicate somehow. I was surprised though because they must get a lot of Westerners staying there. Well, so far the Firm has failed to send me anywhere where I haven't managed to get by in the local language, including Manchester (I'm a native Northern English speaker as you know).

The apartment is great - very modern, very new, everything (including the air-conditioning) remote-controlled.

Yurie dropped by about an hour after I got there - not actually to the apartment but to the front desk, where I talked to her over the phone. She asked me if I'd like to go to a party & the Town Festival with her that evening, so after taking a couple of hours sleep, I did.

The party was kind of low-key - at an apartment at Azabujuban (where the town festival was). Yurie said that it wasn't a typical Japanese party, as most of the people there didn't know each other and it was sort of 'open-ended' with people turning up and leaving at random times - maybe because half of the people who lived in the flat were Swedish. They had a balcony with a great view of the city, and I was struck by the constant chirping of the insects.. reminded me of Spain. The festival was very crowded, but fun.. jazz bands playing and people selling food from stalls by the roadside.

It's so amazingly warm and humid here, isn't it?

Minako is here.. it's really odd to see her again after all this time.. I'd mostly forgotten what she looked like. Actually we are at desks diagonally next to each other, though she has been away from her desk most of this morning.

She gave a quick wave when we made eye-contact, a kind of 'oh hi' wave, very low-key (she knew I was coming so there was no big surprise) which considering the emotion when we last parted is kind of sad I guess.. but it's too late to care now. I don't know.. I thought it would be very difficult to see her again, but instead it's just been sort of 'matter-of-fact'. I'm so glad to have seen her again though because I've been haunted by the idea that our farewell at Heathrow two years ago would be the last time we ever saw each other, and I feel as if an evil spirit has been exorcised. I think I've been feeling sorry for myself for two years, as if I was the victim in a tragic play of my own making, and I can feel the weight slipping off my shoulders now. To tell you the truth I don't even find her that attractive this morning, although she is wearing a truly dreadful yellow dress with a brown flower pattern, which probably helps. The memories are still powerful though, but I think this visit will help to put them in their proper place (the past).

What else?

I showed Yurie the photos I took of her in NY, and she has confiscated them.

The phone number of my apartment is 34246885 - I guess you know the area codes etc, and I can't remember them just now. The office number is diverted from 0171-823-3972 as I'm sure I told you.

Well, as the robot waiters in Yo! Sushi say, gotta go.. gotta job to do..

Hope to talk to you soon,

James x

I took quite a few photos while I was there. I'll try to scan some of the negatives this weekend, and publish them here.

It's a crying shame that the heart breaks
And you've only yourself to blame
And you'll never go to Heaven
You'll never do it again

^{Francis Dunnery, 1986}

Not many people, I suppose, would go to the trouble of coating their bicycle handlebars with anti-climbing paint. Yet that's what I did this morning, albeit not willingly, or particularly deliberately.

As usual, I pushed my bike aboard the 0808 train to Nottingham at Spondon railway station this morning. Unfortunately a few moments after I did so, my sunglasses slipped from my head and dived into the narrow gap between the open train doors and the platform. I stared down at them for a moment, briefly contemplating the probability that they would still be there on my return visit to Spondon station this evening. It didn't seem very high.

So, not really wanting to part with my oldest pair of Ray Bans^TM, a cynical gift offered as an enticement to purchase computer equipment from a particular supplier during my early days as a system administrator at Rolls-Royce fifteen years ago, I hurriedly left the train with my bike so that I could retrieve them.

Once the train had left, I determined that it was safe to descend onto the track. The level crossing 50 metres further up the track was allowing traffic across, and there's no live rail. I jumped down, and picked up my sunglasses. By the way - jamesgibbon.com doesn't condone or recommend this sort of thing, which is illegal, and potentially highly dangerous.

The platform is slightly lower than waist height. Or at least it is when you're standing down on the track; normally it's slightly lower than shoe-sole height. I pushed down firmly on the edge of the platform to propel myself upward to safety, and that's when I found out that those attractive white lines which decorate its edge are composed of anti-climbing paint, some of which now adorned the palms of my hands.

The next train due to condescend to pick up passengers at Spondon wouldn't arrive for another hour and ten minutes, so I set off to cycle to Derby railway station, about three miles away.

And that's why my handlebars are presently equipped to deter unwanted climbers.

I have to say that anti-climbing paint seems a perverse choice for a railway platform. I can well understand a need to deter people from jumping down onto the tracks, but it doesn't do that. It only deters people from climbing back onto the platform again. Not really what you want.