kawagishi.com

I'm still alive

2010-09-05T11:38:29Z

I haven't written entries for almost half a year because I had nothing to write (nothing I wish to write). I'm writing this entry just because I want to tell you that I'm still alive :-o

My upcoming plan: going to Tochigi to see a musical play Oklahoma! at Kokugakuin Tochigi University High School on Sunday, September 12, and the trip to Singapore and Malaysia in Sept. 19 through 23. I'll upload pictures and travel logs after those trips.

US military bases in Japan

2010-04-25T06:25:54Z

As written several times in this blog, I like to visit US military bases in Japan when they are open to public. They are usually off-limits to Japanese civilians, but open a few times a year for friendship festivals. Once you pass through the gate, you can see the same landscapes in the United States as seen on TV which you can't see while off base.

Why do Japanese people find so amusing about what are seen in the United States? Going to the United States is, for most of them born after WWII, a dream and an exciting unordinary experience. They long, they attempt, and some lucky ones carry out, to do it. Yet most of them have not enough time, budget or physical strength to take a long leave from their employer, buy airline tickets for hundreds of thousand yen, sit on a plane for many hours and stay for one week in the mainland America or Hawaii. Visiting a US base in Japan is a one-day trip, costs only train fares to it, and offers visitors almost the same experiences as going actually to the mainland USA.

Yokota Air Base, Camp Zama, Atsugi Naval Air Facility, Yokosuka Naval Base, Negishi Heights, Sagami Depot, Naval Support Facility Kamiseya and Ikego Heights are all I've been, out of 85 US military facilities within Japan.

Yokota Air Base (Fussa, Tokyo): the only US Air Force Base in the Kanto Plain. There is the biggest Friendship Festival in late August every year, with the most stalls selling the most kinds of products. Visitors enter from the Supply Gate to the festival venue. Some hangers are open for a stage and stalls. Restaurants and food courts are not open.

Camp Zama (Zama, Kanagawa): opens twice a year, in early April for cherry blossom festival and early August for bon odori festival. Although no buildings but a food court, a theatre and a bowling centre are open to public, you can walk around in almost all open areas in the camp site. Soda vending machines (both Japanese and American) are available. ATMs are also available and you can withdraw cash with an ATM card issued in the US or an international ATM card. You can have access to mailing boxes so if you have mail with an American stamp affixed you can put it in the mailbox to send it to an address in the US for the same fare as in the mainland US. Food stalls are lower in number so you'll have to wait in longer lines to get foods.

Atsugi Naval Air Facility (Ayase, Kanagawa): opens a few times a year, in the cherry season, on the Independence Day of the USA, and in August. Entrance is narrow so you have to wait in a long line to get inside. Bag check is strict at entrance and there is sometimes a dog inspection, where a working military dog checks your bag put on the ground to smell it to check if there's nothing suspicious in it. David O. Taylor Field, a wide football field, is usually open for a stage, food stalls and a playground. In many cases, the apron area of the air facility is open and some carrier-based planes are displayed.

Yokosuka Naval Base (Yokosuka, Kanagawa): opens a few times a year, in the cherry season, in summer, and more. The entrance is the narrowest so there is the longest lines in front of it. You have to wait for more than two hours! Besides, the exit is narrow, too, so you must wait for a long time to get out. McDonald's and a food court are open to visitors in the base. There are various kinds of stalls, ranging from American foods to American sweets and cookies.

Negishi Heights (Yokohama, Kanagawa): opens in late April and in late August. The Community Center building, Negishi All Hands Club (a bar and restaurant complex) and the open space around them are available for visitors. An ATM is on the first floor of the Community Center and visitors can freely use it. US mailboxes are available too. There are fewer visitors than in any other US bases so you can have access to food stalls without waiting so much time. Bowling lanes, arcade games and a movie theatre are available for visitors. Billiard and dartboards are available at All Hands Club, but darts are not allowed to bring inside the venue.

Sagami Depot (Sagamihara, Kanagawa): opens not every year. I was there in September 2007 for Music Festival. Admission fee was 500 yen. High-pressure Japanese officers at the entrance refused my taking pictures of the entrance gates. Visitor's areas were strictly limited but there were no signs indicating where visitors may stay. Some visitors lost their way in a restricted area and captured by military police.

NSF Kamiseya (Yokohama, Kanagawa): opens in late March or early April. The festival venue is an open space where food stalls and a playground area are set up. People wait in long lines in front of the food stalls.

Ikego Heights (Zushi, Kanagawa): opens in May. The easiest-to-access site of military bases in the Kanto Plain, within a 5-minite-walk from the nearest train station. The festival venue is only within a football field, where food stalls and a playground area are set up. Visitors should stay within the field and aren't allowed to go any other place. There's no need to wait in front of food stalls so much time.

Presentation by Ryuji Yamada

2010-04-23T23:33:38Z

Last night I attended a meeting for alumni of Osaka University, where I graduated, to see the presentation by Ryuji Yamada, President and CEO of NTT DoCoMo, one of Japan's mobile phone operators. Mr. Yamada is also a graduate from Osaka University and was invited to this meeting as a guest speaker.

He talked to us about NTT DoCoMo's current circumstances, innovation plans and future strategies. He said in advance that the revenue from voice communications was decreasing year by year and so far the loss was not completely compensated yet by the revenue from packet communications, so innovations in packet communication was important. He also added that one of the important things right now was to change policies so as to meet the current situation where mobile communication market in Japan was reaching its full maturity. He said that he had launched the "All-DoCoMo Reform Plans", where more than 3000 current problems had been collected from every workplace, ranging from R&D divisions to local shops, and the problems had been dealt with 25 project teams for discussion and improvement. Some of the problems were solved by the plans. One of the solutions is a special assurance plan to dispatch an on-site consultant engineer to the customer who complained of dissatisfied signal reception at home, within 48 hours from the time of this customer's complaint call.

The most impressive point of his presentation was that mobile devices will be tools for personal activity assistance. Since the first era of them, YOU have done something with them, from voice communications to internet access and electronic wallets. In the future, THEY will do something for you. They will proactively help you do something. One of such solutions already in service is the "i-Concier", where text messages such as traffic information, weather information, and local event information, are automatically displayed on mobile phone's screen, according to date, time and phone's location obtained from antennas communicating with the phone.

Media for information distribution is, according to his speech, shifting from text-based message to motion videos. He said that, as smart phones was being more and more popular, video would be the key media used for not only entertainment but tourist information, online shopping, navigation, security and medical assistance.

For such advanced services by smart phones, high network performance is necessary. Mr. Yamada declared that in December 2010 NTT DoCoMo would launch Long Term Evolution, or LTE, a 3.9-generation mobile telephony service, starting with that for the 2GHz band and to extend to that for the 1.5GHz band, and would offer 3G/LTE-dual handsets next year. With LTE terminals, radiowaves can be used approximately 9 times more efficient than current 3G terminals. That is, you can enjoy 9 times smarter services than today's phones.

To prevent NTT DoCoMo's LTE system from making the Galapagos ecosystem, he emphasized that NTT DoCoMo also did international activities more energetically than ever. It founded research and development facilities in Beijing, Europe and the United States, for contribution to standardisation and normalisation in the projects of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, or 3GPP. At the same time, it's investing developing countries' operators like TTSL and TTML in India, in order to help do business with it.

It's greatly welcomed that mobile services will evolve to be more advanced and attractive for users. My hope is, as written in the last entry, to accept any terminal I want to use, as long as it meets the basic standards.

Some requests on Japanese mobile phones

2010-04-10T08:12:21Z

I heard the news that the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan started discussing a policy to require mobile phone carriers to release SIM-lock-free handsets from the next generation. As is often written in some other entries of this blog, I have been dissatisfied with the current cellular phones in Japan because they are far from the global standards.

Today mobile phones are widely spread worldwide, ranging from smartphones like iPhone or Nokia N900 communicator to cheap simple cell phones only for calling and text messaging. They are handy, convenient and easy to use even in developing countries where electric supply is not sufficient. Thanks to their size, you can carry them everywhere in the world. In spite of their mobility, there are two major countries where you can't use them as conveniently as in the rest of the world --- Japan and Korea. Especially in Japan, the mobile systems and services have been so unique that they are often compared to the ecosystem of the Galapagos Islands, where endemic species are seen.

]]> The history of popularised mobile phones in Japan began with Personal Digital Cellular, or PDC, which was standardised in 1991 by the Research and Development Center for Radio Systems (later became the Association of Radio Industries and Businesses). NTT DoCoMo, one of Japanese mobile phone operators, launched its mobile phone service called "mova" in 1993, and the other mobile phone operatoes followed NTT DoCoMo and began their own mobile phone services based on PDC. PDC is technically superior to other standards like GSM as it allows smaller phones with lighter batteries because of its weaker broadcast strength, but it is closed to Japan only, because NTT DoCoMo could neither do business with PDC cellular service in foreign countries nor apply for any patents related to PDC to patent offices of foreign countries due to legal restriction at that time banning NTT DoCoMo from going into business outside Japan. Under such circumstances, Japan's mobile phones could be used within Japan only.

In addition to the technical exclusiveness of Japan's cellular phones, mobile phone services in Japan were also original. The i-mode service, launched in 1999 by NTT DoCoMo, is the world's first web service using cell phones and rapidly spread nationwide because users can have access to the internet and special contents authorised by NTT DoCoMo with a portable handset instead of a PC. In spite of the convenience of the i-mode service, it was the service exclusive to Japan because the handset was available only in Japan.

Handsets are exclusive not only to foreign countries but to other carriers. In Japan, unlike other countries, they have been designed by mobile phone operators instead of handset manufacturers. They are designed so as to meet the specifications of a certain operator. Handsets for NTT DoCoMo cannot be used for au or Softbank Mobile, because the specifications required by such operators on voice communications and content services are a bit different from each other. If you are changing an operator into another one, you have to throw away the handset you used for the old operator and buy a new one for the new operator.

Minds on cell phone was not changed even after the so-called "third-generation" mobile phones appeared and international roaming service began in around 2002. Some operators designed the same type of phones as the rest of the world, which can be used by activating a SIM card stored in it, but the way is a bit different: an operator issues a user both a SIM-card and a handset, which is SIM-locked to the operator. If you pull the SIM card out of the handset and put it in one designed by another operator, you can't use it. Even if another operator's handset accepted the SIM card, you couldn't use any content services of the different operator but only simple functions like voice communications and short message service, or SMS. As for SMS service, it is also exclusive to other operators unlike the rest of the world. You can't send SMS from a phone for one operator in Japan to that of another Japanese operator (you can send SMS to a phone in another country, though).

Such operator-oriented development of Japan's mobile systems have helped Japan's mobile phones keep world's leading position. People can use the cutting-edge communicators on a daily basis. In spite of all the advantages, the exclusiveness of Japan's mobile infrastructure does more harm than good these days.

Forcing handset manufacturers to follow each operator's own specifications increases the burden on them. They have to develop different types of handsets to meet the each specifications. Development costs of them will increase and definitely be imposed to consumers, tangibly or intangibly. Costly development for Japan's specific handsets discourages the manufacturers to develop handsets for foreign countries.

At the same time, such specifications are also trade barriers for manufacturers outside Japan. They have to meet Japanese standards as well as global ones, and will probably give up making good handsets for Japan. Japanese people will lose chance to have good handsets made by Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, or Sony Ericsson.

Another problem with such exclusiveness is that Japanese phone manufacturers are being less competitive in the mobile phone market of the world. According to Global Handset Market Share for 2009, all Japanese mobile phone manufacturers have less than 16% of total market shares altogether, while Nokia solely has more than 40% of the market share. People using Japanese handsets are rarely seen outside Japan.

The MIAC seems to be trying to change such a situation. As much as I think highly of MIAC's efforts as the first step for the globalisation of Japanese mobile markets, I would like to propose some different requests.

At first, I demand Japan's mobile operators to open SMS gateways so that SMS can reach even other operators. In Japan, a handset of NTT DoCoMo can send SMS to another headset for NTT DoCoMo only, not to any headset for au or Softbank or Willcom. Texting using SMS is basic to the 3G mobile phone system and even a cheap phone in a developing country can do it. I strongly require this.

Secondly, Japan's mobile operators should allow users to use any handsets, domestic or imported, as long as they are based on the basic specifications for 3G. For this, operators should disclose access point name (APN) to users so that users can use MMS and web service with any handsets in the same condition as those using carrier-designed handsets. Operators should stop any discriminatory charging policy to non-operator-designed terminals, like NTT DoCoMo which charges higher rates for packet communications by non-DoCoMo handsets.

Furthermore, I would like to require government authority to revise Radio Law to allow imported handsets as long as they pass one of the certifications for terminals like FCC or CE. Under current Radio Law, any handset used in Japan is required to pass the special examination by the Telecom Engineering Center, or TELEC. As mobile phones can be easily carried to and from any other country, it is not feasible to exclude all phones which are not passed TELEC certifications before hand.

Compulsory SIM-unlocking as is discussed in the MIAC is, in fact, unnecessary. It is more important to give users more options to choose a cheaper SIM-locked handset or a unlocked phone which is expensive but free to change operators at any time.

Providing cutting-edge, second-to-none services in Japan which no other countries can offer is greatly welcomed. Such services would be competitive when provided on the globally equal platform and infrastructure. For the benefit of Japanese users and manufacturers, operators should open the door to the world.

How can I pray for getting such a big one?

2010-04-04T09:18:43Z

First of all, I'd like to ask you if you are of AGE 18 OR UP? If so, you can continue reading. Otherwise, please leave.

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The Kanamara Fertility Festival, one of Japan's special Shinto festivals well-known worldwide, is held on the first Sunday of April every year at Wakamiya Hachiman Shrine in Kawasaki, Japan, praying for safe sex, prosperity and fertility. This shrine has a deity of a male sex organ enshrined, so it has divine grace of getting a child, and giving birth safe and sound to a healthy child. This festival is described in every guidebook on Japan like Lonely Planet or Rough Guides, so thousands of people from all over the world come to see it. US military bases have adult-only tours to this shrine for their residents.

Japanese society was originally less strict on sex or sexual activities until Western culture was brought to Japan in the late 19th century. In the Edo Era and before, sexual activities were considered as important for prosperity and information related to sex was taught more frankly to youths as folktales, fables or other forms of stories. At the same time, people often held Shinto festivals related to sex in every part of the country as a token of gratitude to the sex deities, their parents who gave birth to themselves, their grandparents who gave birth to their parents, and their ancestors. Besides, such festivals were important to remind them of the pride of being born.

Nowadays, such kinds of festivals are very rarely seen. People of Japan now hate to talk openly about sex and sex education has been considered as taboo. Actually this festival is known to foreign people rather than Japanese. As for me, although I have lived in the Kanto area for over ten years, I had no idea of it until last year when I happened to know of it from a newspaper issued by US Navy at Atsugi Naval Air Facility. At that time I couldn't be there because I was sick. This year is the first time for me to attend it.

I took Keikyu Daishi line and got off train at Kawasaki Daishi station. I arrived at the Wakamiya Hachiman Shrine at 9:30 am. It was a little cold but fine. Cherry blossoms were at their full bloom.

The first thing I saw there was these big cannons.

The wooden phallic timbers represent stronger sex ability. Guests could ride on them if they wished, like this:

There were some temporary souvenir shops in the Shrine selling goods related to sex or sex organs. A shop sold candies shaped male and female organs. Another shop sold wooden ornaments carved to penises. Even UNICEF built the stall for public relations for HIV prevention campaign.

This shopgirl who sold towels printed male and female sex organs posed for pictures, licking the phallic object put on the table of the shop. It's my best shot!

Guests were also enjoying this festival. They drank beer and made merry seeing the curious items.

At 10:00 am, the fire-taking ceremony began. A priest led the holy ritual to show gratitude to the Kanamara deity, who is also a god of fire. The staff set fire in the sacred stove.

As the festival was well-known to foreign people, there were many guests and TV crew from abroad. This is the TV crew of Reuters.

When it was 11 am, the shrine ground was packed with thousands of people. I went out of the premise to the front of the torii to prepare for the mikoshi procession.

At noon, the miko ladies began dance performance in front of the sanctuary, followed by procession of the sacred mikoshi and the divine figures. There were many people with cameras in front of the torii to take a shot at them.

I left the Shrine after seeing them off because there were too many people in the premise and I got a little tired. Such kind of penile festival was my first experience and was very exciting. The only regret is that I can't buy souvenirs for my colleagues of office because they would regard as sexual harassment if I did so.

Video for the Kanamara Festival is here:

The rest of the pictures are uploaded on Flickr.

Camp Zama Cherry Blossom Festival

2010-04-03T20:21:14Z

Every time I begin to visit a US military facility I feel that spring has come. Yesterday I went to Camp Zama for US Army Cherry Blossom Festival as this year's first visit to US military bases. It was a little cold but fine. Cherries were almost at their full bloom and looked the most beautiful. There were plenty of people coming the venue.

Here's the video recorded by a camcorder of my cell phone at Camp Zama yesterday and you can see what went on there.

US Army Cherry Blossom Festival in Camp Zama 2010 from Masayuki (Yuki) Kawagishi on Vimeo.

This is yesterday's lunch eaten at a food court Camp Zama Bowling Center because I didn't want to wait for many hours in line in front of the PX to get Anthony's Pizza :-(

I've got an iPhone!

2010-03-22T00:35:31Z

I've bought an iPhone. I ordered it from a broker in Hong Kong who got it at Apple Store Hong Kong, because the iPhone sold in Hong Kong is locked to no particular mobile carriers. In Japan, you can buy an iPhone at a Softbank cell phone shop but they sell only the iPhone locked to Softbank. Softbank does offer international roaming service, but if you go out of Japan and use it with a Softbank SIM card in a foreign country they will charge tremendously high international roaming charges to your bill (It costs as high as hundreds of thousand Yen per day! Crazy!). That's why I've got an unlocked iPhone so that I can freely replace a SIM card into that issued at the country I'm in when I travel abroad.

]]> When I put a black SIM card issued by Softbank for iPhone use into the iPhone I had bought and turned it on, it recognized the SIM card and the phone number recorded in it activated. When I plugged it into my MacBook Pro, it downloaded music, photos and data via iTunes.

Of course it recognizes either a Softbank SIM card or NTT DoCoMo's one because it's SIM-lock-free.

I think the iPhone matches to my MacBook Pro more than any other mobile devices like Blackberry or Nokia cell phones. More than that, there are more applications for iPhone released from both Japan and other countries so it is easier to use even in Japan.

From now on the devices I use on a regular basis would be:

iPhone with Softbank for web browsing and researches
Nokia N82 with Softbank for talking
Blackberry Bold 9000 with NTT DoCoMo for mailing
Galapagosian NTT DoCoMo N906iL my employer makes me keep for emergency contact

Advice: when you use an iPhone with Softbank, you need a special SIM card designed only for iPhone (the Black SIM Card), NOT a normal SIM card for other Softbank cell phones (the Silver SIM Card). If you put a Silver SIM Card into an iPhone, you'll have extremely high packet communications charges. To get a Black SIM Card you'll have to buy one locked iPhone from a Softbank shop because they won't solely issue a Black SIM Card without selling any iPhone. You may want to keep it unpacked so that you can resell it to anybody else.

Unlocking my Blackberry

2010-02-25T15:03:33Z

I've made my Blackberry Bold SIM-unlocked, because the Blackberry I bought in Japan was locked to NTT DoCoMo, a Japanese mobile phone carrier, so when I was abroad I had to fear the phone bill charging highly expensive roaming prices.

Unlocking was easy: I got an unlock code for my device at http://expressunlockcode.com/bbexpress.aspx by paying $19.99 and giving the IMEI for my device, phone model, carrier name locked to and my country to the unlock code provider. Several hours later from paying I got an unlock code for the IMEI I gave. Then I unlocked it by following the instructions at http://www.mobileslate.com/blog/2008/11/14/how-to-unlock-rim-blackberry-9000-bold/. Once unlocked, you can use not only NTT DoCoMo's SIM card but Softbank's, as shown in the above picture.
(Blackberry services aren't available with Softbank's SIM card, though)

Returned home from Taipei

2010-02-02T02:40:58Z

On the last day, I gave up sightseeing in the downtown because I had not so much time, then I went straight to the airport from the hotel.

What I ate at the airport until the flight to Japan:

Luroufan, xiaolongbao and roasted duck.

See you again, Taiwan!

Note: all photos taken in Taiwan are uploaded on Flickr.

Hotel where I stayed

2010-02-01T13:49:43Z

I stayed at Novotel Hotel near Taipei International Airport for this trip. I took this hotel online on Expedia.co.jp. It was super gorgeous, with a clean and modern room and a wide bed with two pillows.

You can see an airplane taking off from the guest room window because this hotel is located right beside a runway.

One problem: as it's very close to an airport, when a plane takes off at midnight its roaring sound will wake you up :-( It's recommended to avoid staying near an airport.

TAIPEI101 and Shilin Night Market

2010-01-31T13:41:47Z

This is TAIPEI 101, which HAD BEEN world's tallest building until Burj Khalifa was built in Dubai. It was closed to general people but employees of its tenants.

It's Shilin Night Market, one of Taipei's famous night markets crowded for thousands of people from around. At stores of both sides of the main street clothes and wallets were sold for cheaper prices than at department stores. If you get on a branch road you have stinking stalls selling foods.

I got chicken rice at one of the stall. It tasted nice, although stalls around there stank.

Cell phones in Taiwan

2010-01-31T13:38:18Z

The Shizilin building in Ximending is a complex of cell phone shops, arcade game shops and a movie theater. The first floor of it has plenty of shops selling cell phones, cell phone accessories, cameras, electric devices etc., like Sincere Podium in Hong Kong. The staff doesn't understand English, though.

I got Nokia 6120 classic at a shop in the building, just for NT$5000. When I looked into my wallet I found enough money I can afford to buy it. It supports HSDPA.

When it comes to cell phones in Taiwan of these days, I found that Nokia wasn't dominant. I saw not so many people used Nokia handsets. Instead, Sony Ericsson, LG, Samsung seem to be popular among Taiwan's people. Among them, Samsung's Anycall brand handsets were seen in many places.

Wanhua and Ximending

2010-01-31T12:53:02Z

It's the Wanhua district. There are old Chinese buildings and stores in the area. I like it.

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If you walk northward from the Wanhua district and cross the Zhongdu street, you have modern and up-to-date buildings with hair salons, apparel shops, Japanese magazine stores, anime shops and many antenna shops for Taiwan's teenagers. It's Ximending, which has been Taipei's downtown area since the era when Japan ruled this island.

Ximending is now the area just like Akihabara in Japan.... Some people walking on the streets had a big tote bag which anime characters were vividly printed on it. Some people had cosplay. Even a "maid" stood on the street as you see in Akihabara. She was very cute. I hope I could've been fluent enough in Chinese to speak to her ;-)

I ate Luroufan for lunch at a food court of this district. It costed NT$40.

Sightseeing in Taipei --- Longshan Temple

2010-01-31T12:47:41Z

Taipei International Airport looked as if it had been a major airport in Japan. Signs looked almost as same as those in a Japanese airport, except that they were written in traditional Chinese characters.

If you go to the bus stop on the first floor of the airport you can catch a route 705 bus to HSR Taoyuan Station, costing just NT$30 (almost 1USD). It's too cheap!

There were no other passengers but me in the big double-decked bus.

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No sooner had the bus left the airport than it ran on a highway for about five minutes.

I saw a new MRT line was under construction to be connected from HSR Taoyuan Station to the airport. If complete, you can get to downtown Taipei from the airport much more easily.

It's HSR Taoyuan Station, within a 15-minute bus riding distance from the airport. You can see nothing but a bus terminal and a taxi stand around the station.

The HSR train is almost the same as Japan's Shinkansen train, because HSR is based on the technique of Shinkansen. For me, HSR trembles a little more than Shinkansen when running, though.

About 15 minutes later it arrived at Banciao Station. It costed NT$110 from Taoyuan to Banciao. It's much cheaper than Shinkansen!

At Banciao I changed the train to MRT Bannan Line to get to Longshan Temple Station, where I got off train and went up, seeing the Longshan Temple, which was one of Taiwan's famous Buddhist temples.

I saw the people worshipping the deities of the temple, holding a dozen of long brown incenses put on fire on their tops and bowing a few times in front of the sanctuary with the incenses. I guess it's a Chinese-style worshipping manner.

The below picture is one of what impressed me.

The old woman in the picture knelt in front of the temple, lay down on her stomach, prayed, and got up. Then she walked a few steps forward and knelt down, lay on her stomach to pray, got up, walked a few steps forward, knelt down, and so on.

How different the decorations of the Buddhist temple was from those of a Japanese temple!

Going to Taipei

2010-01-30T04:30:21Z

I'll be in Taipei until next Monday to see my brother working there now. The airplane will depart in an hour. I'm typing this entry in front of the gate. Flight attendants are chatting very loudly.... Anyway I'll enjoy being abroad because it's been almost three years since my last trip to a foreign country.