An Al Story™

It had a been very loooooong day working at our home office in Tokyo, so my coworker Ken & I decided that we would decline dinner invites from our Japanese colleagues and go off by ourselves for a quiet, no-business-talk-allowed dinner.

We took a cab from our hotel, the Le Meridien Pacific, to the Akasaka district of Tokyo. First on our agenda was a much-needed drink.So we popped into the Akasaka Prince Hotel and plopped ourselves into 2 chairs in the Marble Square lobby bar. It was nice to finally be able to sit down and rest.

On our table was a tent card with an enticing picture of a cold glass of beer. Being thirsty, and always interested in a new beer experience, I picked up the card and started to read it. Luckily it was in English. Asahi was promoting a special selection of "super-vintage" beers. There was a September beer, an October beer and a November beer. As far as we could tell there was no difference in the beers except for the month that they were brewed in.

I suddenly had a yen for an October beer (why? I have no idea?). The barmaid came over, we ordered our beers and were immediately informed that they were out of stock of October but had September and November available. I changed my order to a September beer, but to this day I still feel cheated out of the October experience.

But that's not what this story is about.

Our seats in the bar looked out onto the grand lobby of the Akasaka Prince. We noticed a lot of people in suits and hotel uniforms running back and forth, but seeming to go nowhere and seeming to do nothing. We immediately sensed that something was going to happern.

A few minutes later 4 bellmen rolled out a big red carpet from the doorway to the elevators at the rear of the lobby.Our suspicions were confirmed, somebody important was coming to the hotel. Joining the crowd were uniformed police officers and many suited men wearing earpieces.

With the red carpet in place, more bellmen appeared with vacuum cleaners. Another bellmen had a big plastic bag into which he placed lint he had picked from the carpet. It was quite a show watching the cleaning preparations for the unknown visitor.

We ordered another beer, this time switching to the November vintage, and continued to watch the show that was playing out in front of us. Bellmen and hotel execs kept running up and down alongside the the red carpet shooing people away. No one could walk on the immaculate carpet except for the arriving dignitary. If you wanted to get to the other side of the lobby, touch luck.

All of a sudden a call went from one of the people with an earpiece. Everyone came to attention and a delegation of officials and bellmen lined up at the door (but not on the red carpet)

A limo pulled up under the porte-cochere, a couple got out and they were directed to....the entrance that didn't lead to the red carpet. It was a false alarm. The earpiece guys started animatedly talking into their cuffs while others kept looking at their watches.

About 10 minutes later 4 bellmen started to roll up the red carpet, but the rest of the cast of characters stayed. Our visitor must be delayed.

Another 15 minutes passed, and even though our stomachs were starting to growl we decided to hang out for a little while longer to see if we could watch the arrival of the red-carpet deserving person.

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