Trips to Japan

Day 2 – arrival

One place that makes me nervous on every trip is the border control.

Boeing 747 is huge. It carries approx. 400 passengers. That means the same number of people who goes through the border security at the same time. The wait is long, and I have to put up with the nervousness the whole time.

Except for this time. Because we were taking Northwest’s connecting flight, we could continue to our next flight, bypassing the border control for now. That really made this part of the trip easier. The fact that the international flight arrived earlier didn’t make the waiting easier. The connecting flight wasn’t going to leave any earlier, so out wait at Tokyo is that much longer. And Tokyo Narita airport isn’t anything like Detroit or Minneapolis airpots – not much to do. There is one duty-free shop, two tax free gift shops, and one McDonald’s. We bought one medium Fanta Grape (I think it’s like 13 oz, and costed 180 yen?), and that was the extent of our entertainment.

The flight from Tokyo to Nagoya was smooth. The plane was more than half empty. Evan slept the whole way, only waking up right before the landing. Once we landed, they stopped the plane in a middle of the tarmac. Apparently the gate area is under the construction, and the towing vehicle had to take the plane to the gate. But the operation wasn’t smooth. We ended up waiting there for almost 30 minutes. Evan, not having to gone to bathroom since the last flight, now really has to go. She makes a dash to the back of the airplane while the fasten-seat-belt-light is still on. The flight attendant sends her back to her seat. At least a few more passengers make the same attempt, but they are all sent back. Poor people…

Evan, next time, go to bathroom before you get on the plane, even if you don’t “have to go” right then.

The rest of the trip was smooth. Because we took a pretty empty connecting flight, there were hardly any people at the border control in Nagoya. We were the only ones who had to take the Foreigners gate.

After picking up the luggages and going through the customs, I checked in the biggest luggage we had to a carrier service for the next day delivery. At the same location, I picked up the rental cell phone. Off to the train station we went, picked up a ticket for the train that was leaving in 10 minutes, and we were doing good. We made one connection, which we had hardly any wait. This last part was really, really the best part of the trip, I think. People didn’t have to drive out to the airport to pick us up. Escalators made all the connections and transitions easy for us. The trip itself was faster than driving on highways. It was really cool.

Not so cool for a group of unfortunate American travelers – when they ordered a ticket to Nagoya for eight-fifty (the train leaving at 8:50 PM), the guy at the ticket counter gave them a general boarding ticket for 850 yen. I couldn’t help but chuckle about that incident. All I could tell him was – Welcome to Japan!

Day 1 – flying out

The flight was long.

10 years ago, flying home was a little easier. Most of the flights from U.S. to Japan took off from the West coast. I liked flying from Seattle or Portland. The flights lasted 9 to 10 hours. Now our flights leave from either Detroit or Minneapolis/St. Paul. The direct flight to Nagoya only comes from Detroit – that’s a 14-hour flight. From the experience, we knew that gets extremely long. This time around, I thought I’d make the trip a little easier by breaking it up a bit. We flew first to Tokyo, then took a connecting flight to Japan. The flight was supposed to take 13 hours. In reality, it took 12 1/2 hours. So that part was pretty good. It still does get long. Not being able to sleep in flight didn’t help me either. And having to take another flight after being so exhausted? It really doesn’t help…

I really wanted to get some sleep in this flight, so I wouldn’t be so friggin’ tired when I got to Japan, knowing having to travel some more there. The first movie started rolling – Music and Lyrics. I didn’t know the movie, I thought I could dismiss it, and get my sleep. Ignoring the movie wasn’t a problem, sleep was. Second movie came around – Freedome Writers. Of course, I couldn’t sleep. But seeing the screen, by the end, I regretted I didn’t watch it. By the time they showed the third and final movie, Happily N’Ever After, I sort of gave up on the idea of getting a sleep, and watched the movie with Evan. It was a perfect, stupid, brainless movie for this tired mind.

After this was over, I set things up so at least Evan could take a short nap. Her claim of being not tired yet could not be proven. As soon as she used my shoulder as her pillow, she zonked out. I wish it was that easy for me. I ended up not getting any real sleep at all…