Japan Places|新潟空港 おなごりコール — The Call After the Gate

Niigata names the reluctance out loud.

おなごりコール sits on the glass between the public hall and the boarding side. Lift one handset. Someone who cannot follow you through security lifts the other.

The city's East Ward newsletter was still pointing visitors to it in March 2024. Toki Air posted the same pane in December 2023, with the mascots Mai-ru and Mai-chan posed as if they too were saying goodbye.

The first field on the Japan Sea opened in 1929 on an island in the Shinano. The present site dates to 1930. The terminal is the third generation. The phones belong to this building, not to the river island.

There is no published install year on the airport's own pages. What is public is that the device is still there, still free, and still used by people who have already sent the same sentence by text.

You can see the face. You can hear the voice. You cannot cross the pane.

Photo: Niigata Airport observation deck, 31 August 2019. Abasaa, Wikimedia Commons, public domain.