Why I'm in Japan

To travel "right-seat" with my friend Peter Claeys, who is Cirrus Design's China representative, as we ferry a Cirrus SR22 from Honda Airport outside Tokyo in Saitama Prefecture, past Mt. Fuji and down along the southern coast of Japan's main island, Honshu; past Kyoto and Hiroshima; to Kagoshima, on the southern island of Kyushu; and, after a stop, from there down the island chain to Okinawa.The next day, to Taiwan. Peter eventually needs to get the airplane to Macau; I will probably get off in Taiwan for some Chinese-manufacturing interviews. This is the planned route. A year ago Peter and I had our challenges ferrying an SR22 from Changsha, in Hunan province, down to Zhuhai on the southern coast, for the Zhuhai Air Show. This time: we're not going to fly at all at night; we don't "need" to get anywhere by a particular deadline; we're going to big airports that we know have "AvGas" for planes like this one; and we're not flying in mainland China. This should be interesting. Update: Actually, it was interesting. This update is from Okinawa, after two long flying legs on the first day. The rest of the journey, to Taiwan, might or might not happen, depending on how things develop with a typhoon now knocking around in Taiwan's area, and whose northern fringe we crossed on coming into Okinawa. (For aviation buffs: 30+ knot straight crosswind at 500 feet of elevation inbound on the ILS at Naha airport, which diminished to 11 knots at runway level. Quite a crab angle on the ILS, and quite a wind shear.) The picture below shows how it looked this morning, soon after sunrise, as Peter walked to the plane at Honda airport and we prepared to scrape the rime-frost off the wings and head to the south.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2007/11/why-i-apos-m-in-japan/7833/