Years after women Japanese train spotters were given the
nickname “Tetsuko,” which loosely translates as rail girl, officials of
Narita airport and nearby Narita city recently coined the word “Sorami” —
air girl — to describe members of Japan’s growing band of women plane
spotters.
Just as a Tetsuko would crisscross the nation
to photograph different trains, so a Sorami such as Ayumi Fukuda, a
34-year-old public servant from Takaishi, Osaka Prefecture, travels from
Hokkaido in the north to Okinawa in the south to capture images of
airplanes.
In May she was one of 27 participants in an event organized for Sorami in Narita, Chiba Prefecture.
“I don’t understand why airplanes can fly, and that’s why I’m attracted
to them,” said Fukuda, a plane spotter of five years. The event was
organized by “Narita Kuentai,” a group consisting of employees of the
Narita municipal government and of Narita airport that works for the
development of the local community.
After gathering at a hotel in
the city, the participants, mostly in their 20s and 30s, were given a
tour of a park close to the airport and taken to a Japan Airlines hangar
to photograph planes.
“It’s huge!” “Beautiful!” the assembled
Sorami exclaimed as they entered the hangar and set eyes on JAL’s Boeing
787, the state-of-the-art passenger jet nicknamed Dreamliner. Some lay
on the ground to photograph the plane from a certain angle, while others
posed in front of the jet for photos with mechanics, who were acting as
tour guides.