Nipponica

Japan’s only passenger hovercraft service carrying riders between Oita Airport in Kunisaki, Oita Prefecture, and Oita City was launched on Saturday.

The service takes just 35 minutes to travel between the two sites, compared to about an hour by road, making the airport more accessible than it was before.

I know they are fairly commonplace now, but the word hovercraft still excites the 10 year old in me.

It is said that home is the place you long for when you are lost in the world. The place where you can be the person you are rather than the person you have to be.

For your narrator, this place is the land that lies beyond the sliding doors that separate the void from the Arrivals Floor in Haneda Airport in Tokyo Bay. Past the immigration sentries, the luggage daycare, and the passage of non-declaration, those doors are a portal to the country that took me in when I was lost in the world many years ago.