Virtual trip to Japan safer than the roads

WHAT an honour! I was invited to a special hotel launch this week in Japan and I went along with my face mask, my ornate fan, green-tea-bags, a stick of oriental incense and a Japanese calligraphy pen.

When I say “went along”, I mean I sat at my desk in a kimono looking as Japanese as an old Exmoor yokel can, so that I could join the world’s first ever virtual hotel opening ceremony.

We live in a strange new world. I was one of a handful of journalists invited to attend the virtual event and, when I said I’d oblige, the Fujisan Mishima Tokyu Hotel sent me a package full of goodies so I could get in the right mood.

A bottle of sake would probably have helped more than three greentea-bags, but you can’t have everything.

I realised that when my friend from the Tokyu Hotels Group said: “We would have flown you over and hosted you at our new Mishima hotel - but because of the pandemic we’ve decided to do the launch on Zoom instead.”

I know which I’d have preferred. Apart from the long flight, I’d have been happy to go because Japan has almost vanishingly small Covid-19 numbers compared with the UK.

I’m still, for the most part, in lockdown, but if I lived in Japan I’d be out and about doing all the normal things.

A speaker at the virtual launch explained why they have such low coronavirus figures; cleanliness and sanitary matters are a compulsory part of the Japanese curriculum. Kids study the subject throughout their school years.

And get this – teams cleaning the famous bullet trains do the job in just seven minutes! Even during the pandemic when they have to clean and sanitise the whole caboodle - including changing headrests and decontaminating armrests - a small team renders an entire go-fast train as germ-free as an operating theatre in just 420 seconds.

Can you imagine the folk at Paddington turning around the Atlantic Coast Express in seven minutes?

Maybe they can, I have no idea. But you have to be impressed by the

Japanese. I’ll tell you who does go fast in this country. It’s the army of van drivers who have been busy delivering everything from pressure cookers to calligraphy pens - and that’s just to my house. Hat’s off to them for their sterling work over the past few months.

But last week I had my first day out since March, and I can vouch for this: there are an awful lot of vans and they go fast.

They have to, just to keep up with the horrendous schedule the drivers are given. I’ve chatted to them and can’t believe how many drops they’re expected to make in a shift.

However, here’s a Things We Didn’t Know Would Result From The Lockdown type fact… Take a drive anywhere in the West Country at the moment and you will find yourself reversing more often than ever before.

To reach the rest of the world I use a number of small single-lane ratruns. So do delivery drivers. And because they drive fast and they’re in big vans, they hurtle at you, then gaze imperiously down and shrug as if to say: “Can you see the size of this vehicle, mate? There’s no way I’m reversing - even if there is a passing place just behind. So back you go!”

I must have reversed 20 times on my journey - sometimes going back 200 or 300 metres - and had neckache by the time I got home.

I said to Mrs Hesp: “Right, if that’s what the big bad world is like - the big bad world I’d forgotten about after 110 days in lockdown - they can shove it up their exhaust pipes. I’m not going anywhere else for the time being.”

There was another reason I said it. It wasn’t only the van drivers, who at least knew what they were doing. It was that so many car drivers were acting in an erratic way.

I’ve never seen such bad driving en-masse, as if the entire motoring public was made up of village idiots who had never passed a test.

After three months off the road, loads of motorists had forgotten how to drive - simple as that.

There was the woman who appeared to have a panic attack as we approached a blind bend.

She shot up behind as I slowed and instead of applying the brakes, she seemed to panic and overtook me right on the apex of the bend. I could tell by the way she handled her car that she was semi-out-of-control. It was suicidal.

There was a bloke reversing up a feeder lane, presumably because he’d changed his mind about driving on the A38 South Devon highway.

To be honest, I didn’t blame him. That road was crazy. But reverse up a one-way approach road?

After that, I’m planning a gentle re-entry into the world.

I agree that attending virtual parties is taking it too far, but for now I’m in no hurry to jump in the car unless I have a good reason to do so. Buy local to support local businesses, certainly.

But joyride just for the hell of it? Not yet.

If that’s what the world is like after lockdown, they can shove it up

their exhaust pipes