requested #15
Today's topic: Las Vegas lounge acts
We interrupt the regularly scheduled post to bring you this special edition post of, Daniel is traveling again.
all you need in Japan is a toothbrush.
It's a four hour drive from my home to Portland and I left 14 hours before my scheduled flight to make sure I got there in time to get some sleep and eat a good meal before I left for my trip. I got 5 hours of sleep in a hotel near the airport and was ready to go by 4 AM for the shuttle. Wanting to be prepared, I arrive two hours early at the airport as suggested by the Feds and that sure pays off - I was sitting at my gate with an hour and fifteen minutes to spare. At the time, that didn't seem like a big deal, but the story is only beginning.
Flight one - Portland to San Francisco, United Airlines, 6 AM, flight time 1 hour 45 minutes.
I slept the entire way, couldn't tell you a damn thing about it.
Gate arrival in San Francisco and I am dreadfully lost as to where to go. The usually helpful diagram of the airports in the in-flight magazines didn't help and I am wandering all over looking for the international terminal in one of the largest and most confusing Airports in the world. I somehow end up outside the airport and gazing at an Escher drawing of concrete roads, trains, and doorways that are supposed to be an airport. I have 4 hours before my next flight so I am not terribly put out by the experience. I know I will get where I need to be before time runs out. I check in with Japan Airlines and they say there is not an early check in so I will have to wait until for the two hour check in timetable to begin before I can let them know I'm here. No big deal, I kill some time, write a bit, make a call or two, and sit it out.
Two hours before departure, I check in, go through security again and the bastards take my lighter from me. (This little gesture will ALSO come back into play later) Two more hours to kill, and it's..
Flight two - San Francisco to Tokyo Narita, Japan Airlines, 12 PM-ish, flight time 11 hours 30 minutes.
I want to sleep the entire way but I find myself watching five movies in their entirety: "Charlie and Chocolate Factory""The longest yard", Adam Sandler should be eaten by wild boars. "The Island", basically "Logan's Run" with a better set of supporting breasts in a tight suit that has to run along side. Then two Japanese movies that have no subtitles and I enjoy them thoroughly. Sadly the last two minutes of the last one, I miss out on so the pilot can say something in monotone Japanese which makes the entire plane, save for me and one other woman, laugh. (Again, I bring up these last two points because they will be important later)
No sleep and it shows on my face, my balls are stuck to my thigh and my legs ache, I have eaten two Japanese meals on the plane, which shocks the Japanese people around me. It was like the airline had made a burger especially for me and when I turned it down they were all terribly offended by the gesture. I read somewhere that gestures are very, very important to the Japanese people. I am trying to be a good boy, so I thought eating their cuisine would be a nice token gesture. I was wrong. Their faces, which are the best at showing surprise of all the nationalities in the world, look very intimidating when grouped together. I'm pretty sure that my meal was poisonous and this foiled their plans. I know it sounds odd to think like that but remember, it's been 10 plus hours since my last taste of nicotine and I am feeling it.
The meals I ate were fish something with rice something and juice of something. Having passed on the burger the first time around, they reheated it and thought that I would break under the pressure and eat it the second time they offered it. I showed them. I ate the two ounce meal that they offered everyone else and sat there and starved. I am true glutton and I could have eaten ten of their offered meals. The entire flight, I have been drinking fluids, listening to others snore and it's close to five hours before I finally have to get up to use the bathroom. My row is packed and I don't want to wake anyone so I crawl over everyone on the tops of the seats, I get to the isle and I am standing face to face with two stewardesses that are pisses off pretty badly. I'm not sure why, but I am walked to the bathroom, and then escorted back to my seat like a child or a condemned prisoner. I don't have any idea what I did wrong, but I am beginning to feel like I should have eaten the hamburger. I don't use the bathroom for the rest of the 6 hours of flight. Again, this will be important.
Arrival in Japan Norita at 3:30 PM of the next day. Elapsed time of travel so far, 35 hours. I am still of good cheer, but now I have to use the bathroom really bad. Not too mention I need nicotine and I need to streach my legs and eat something that I can identify or spell. The airline is no longer trying to accommodate the two American interlopers on board and don't even announce messages in English so I am unsure of what I am doing. It's the same feeling I had in San Fran, but worse becuase nothing is written in English and no one seems to want me here, not that I can say that the same isn't true for San Fran, but at least there they try to speak English.
Off the plane and this is the tricky part of the trip - I have to go through customs, pick up my luggage, get on a bus, cross Tokyo to HANEDA airport, check in to another airline and fly to Okinawa. I am following the herd like a lemming hoping that they will show me the way to customs, and indeed after twenty minutes of twists and turns, I see the customs office. Native Japanese walk through a comfy line and move on, Foreigners don't have it so easy. I am standing in line with everyone else from around the world that is trying to get into Japan and immediately you notice that Japanese people are much smaller than everyone else as the size of the isles set up for us are barely narrow enough to let water pass through them. At the head of the line is some man directing everyone to specific lines that are not numbered in a language system that anyone of can identify. You would think that this might be the part of the airport where they would abandon Japanese for say, a couple of OTHER languages that FOREIGNERS might be able to read. The man sees me, sizes me up and sends me to a line which is full of hookers, thugs, tattooed skin heads, drug mules and people that wouldn't have a problem with a job title like, "cleaner" or "mechanic". I am not sure how I feel about standing in this line, but I am enjoying the fact that everyone else is staring at us like we are all going to spend the night in jail or go to a party that they all wish they were cool enough to attend. I am standing behind some Thai hookers that are all sweating and fidgety in their five inch heels and two inch skirts. I have friends that would cum in their pants if they were standing in my place right now, and I want to laugh but I can't. I really need to pee and I really, really need a cigarette and my head is spinning from the lack of English and laughter would only make me look worse than the rest of my line mates. The hookers keeping making noises that sound like sheep noises. A kind of long extended "Ah" noise after a brief onslaught of other constant and verb sounds. Like, "asshe EHO no AHAAAAAAAHHH. BEyoooo nos highhh no AHAAAAAHHH" and then they pointedly throw their hands up and look disgusted.
Every line but ours is moving at a clip of one person per minute. Ours is at ten minutes per hooker and five per killer and twenty per drug mule. There are five more people in front of me. During that time, the man designating line assignments puts ten million junior high cheerleaders behind me and with my mind working in mysterious ways, I begin to entertainment myself with the imagery of these girls having been brought to Asia to be sold into sexual slavery by their parents, classmates and teachers. I can see their school raising the money to send these girls to Japan by holding car washes and selling magazines and yet, the true motivation is to get them out of the school to raise the GPA of the students and to make some money by selling off the lesser, more annoying students, to a foreign country to pay for more band equipment for their appreciated children. (now isn't that a great idea for a novel?) As it turns out, the real story is that there are junior high cheerleading world championships being held in Japan and thousands of girls are here from all over the world. I wonder if cheerleaders are annoying in every language or if it's just an American thing? I would like to think that the world championships are really a cover for what is really going on in that auditorium - an auction.
The cheerleaders are all talking so loud and fast that they sound like birds chirping. They are all dressed in flannel PJs, withpigtails in their hair and each one is chewing gum and carrying a huge pillow. I am thinking, "I have friends that would cum in their pants if they were...."
I finally make it through customs and I fill out a form in which I leave a line blank which states where I am staying while in Japan. I would have filled it out, but I have no idea and none of my paperwork indicates where I will be staying. The customs officials don't seem to mind and I am stamped and at the baggage claim in minutes. Most of the 600 people on my flight are gone and so is there luggage. This should make it easier for me to find my bag and then get a move on, or so I thought. Ten minutes pass... twenty... thirty minutes and now I'm nervous. I am the ONLY person standing there when he carousel stops moving and I am instantaneously swamped by Japanese women with scarves tied around their necks. They are all asking me what my bag looked like, which is never a good sign.
Yes. The bag was lost. Lost in Transportation.
I am in Japan, with nothing but a Family Guy DVD, half a pack of cigarettes, sixty bucks in American cash, and a swollen bladder and the numbers of two hookers and the three cheerleaders.
First question the airline asks me, "where are you staying and we will send you the bag?" Of course, they didn't say it quite so clearly and with my mind already in a deranged state I heard, "fuck you whitey". They take what information I have and I am off to the next nightmare of the trip - The bus ticket to the other airport. I pay with a credit card and they try to show me where to go and wait for it, thankfully I get to use the bathroom first and I have not been this happy in twenty years as I stain that Japanese porcelin. I walk outside and reach for a cigarette and realize that I have no lighter and no way to ask for a light. I couldn't do it in English at this point, but here is where body language and a nation that loves to smoke comes in handy. The international symbol for HELP ME is a man with an unlit cigarette in his mouth making a flicking symbol with his thumb. Everyone comes to your rescue and the flames from all the extended lighters is enough to warm my heart. I suck down two cigarettes before I realize I only have four left for-EVER.
Bus trip - Narita International Airport to Haneda Airport, Airport shuttle service, driving time 1 hour 30 minutes with no traffic.
There's traffic. This allows me to see beautiful Tokyo from the windows as we crawl down the highway. As I am looking out the window trying to do the math in my head and looking at the images and listening to the cheerleaders scream "EAT ZUCCHINI!, EAT! EAT ZUCCHINI!" ( I swear that that is what they were saying.) I am at peace. I am in Japan and it's as lovely as all the National Geographic Specials that I have seen about it said it was. The trees are beautiful, the air is filled with great new aromas and I have peed and smoked which makes this my favorite part of the trip.
Check in. I have five hours before my flight. I walk slowly into security and don't mind the challenge of it all. I meet up with the other comic only because he is the only other sad looking person at the terminal. Actually, he's the only person at the terminal. The lights aren't even on in this part of the airport. Perfect! We chat, in English and we are laughing and exchanging stories. He seems like a nice guy.
Flight three - Tokyo Haneda to Okinawa. ANA airlines (I have no idea), flight time 3 hours.
I slept the whole way, don't remember a damn thing and don't care.
I arrive, walk out of the gate and could care less where I am or what I am doing. I find myself pushing people which, it turns out, is okay in Japan and I start to feel better. I walk to the door and we meet our ride who recognizes us with no problem. On the way to the Air Base, I let them in on my little story and their response. "There is no way for them to deliver your luggage on the base, sorry dude." I am only in Okinawa for two nights and I have no idea if they will get me my luggage to me before I leave for Nagasaki. I should be depressed, but the images passing by the windows of the van won't allow me to be. It's hard to be angry when you are on a paid vacation and you are seeing a part of the world that you have never seen before.
I was flown to Hawaii for my brother's wedding last year and my luggage was stolen and I had the best time. Like that trip, I had to improvise for clothes, bathroom goodies and other things, but it was still a free trip and I had a blast. This trip will be no exception.
I fall asleep at 1 AM, here. Close to 40 hours of travel and I am in a foreign land with no luggage and no way to change out of my nasty clothes. I am starving, mentally unstable and as happy as a clam. For some reason, I wake up at 5 AM and cannot fall back asleep. I walk out on the balcony and I get to see the sun rise, which is what, I guess, I am really hear to see and the lack of luggage cannot take away the true importantance of the trip and that's to enjoy it, no matter what I have to eat, where I have to go, who hates me or whether or not I do it in comfort. That's what makes a normal vacation into an adventure.
Cheers everyone.
We interrupt the regularly scheduled post to bring you this special edition post of, Daniel is traveling again.
all you need in Japan is a toothbrush.
It's a four hour drive from my home to Portland and I left 14 hours before my scheduled flight to make sure I got there in time to get some sleep and eat a good meal before I left for my trip. I got 5 hours of sleep in a hotel near the airport and was ready to go by 4 AM for the shuttle. Wanting to be prepared, I arrive two hours early at the airport as suggested by the Feds and that sure pays off - I was sitting at my gate with an hour and fifteen minutes to spare. At the time, that didn't seem like a big deal, but the story is only beginning.
Flight one - Portland to San Francisco, United Airlines, 6 AM, flight time 1 hour 45 minutes.
I slept the entire way, couldn't tell you a damn thing about it.
Gate arrival in San Francisco and I am dreadfully lost as to where to go. The usually helpful diagram of the airports in the in-flight magazines didn't help and I am wandering all over looking for the international terminal in one of the largest and most confusing Airports in the world. I somehow end up outside the airport and gazing at an Escher drawing of concrete roads, trains, and doorways that are supposed to be an airport. I have 4 hours before my next flight so I am not terribly put out by the experience. I know I will get where I need to be before time runs out. I check in with Japan Airlines and they say there is not an early check in so I will have to wait until for the two hour check in timetable to begin before I can let them know I'm here. No big deal, I kill some time, write a bit, make a call or two, and sit it out.
Two hours before departure, I check in, go through security again and the bastards take my lighter from me. (This little gesture will ALSO come back into play later) Two more hours to kill, and it's..
Flight two - San Francisco to Tokyo Narita, Japan Airlines, 12 PM-ish, flight time 11 hours 30 minutes.
I want to sleep the entire way but I find myself watching five movies in their entirety: "Charlie and Chocolate Factory""The longest yard", Adam Sandler should be eaten by wild boars. "The Island", basically "Logan's Run" with a better set of supporting breasts in a tight suit that has to run along side. Then two Japanese movies that have no subtitles and I enjoy them thoroughly. Sadly the last two minutes of the last one, I miss out on so the pilot can say something in monotone Japanese which makes the entire plane, save for me and one other woman, laugh. (Again, I bring up these last two points because they will be important later)
No sleep and it shows on my face, my balls are stuck to my thigh and my legs ache, I have eaten two Japanese meals on the plane, which shocks the Japanese people around me. It was like the airline had made a burger especially for me and when I turned it down they were all terribly offended by the gesture. I read somewhere that gestures are very, very important to the Japanese people. I am trying to be a good boy, so I thought eating their cuisine would be a nice token gesture. I was wrong. Their faces, which are the best at showing surprise of all the nationalities in the world, look very intimidating when grouped together. I'm pretty sure that my meal was poisonous and this foiled their plans. I know it sounds odd to think like that but remember, it's been 10 plus hours since my last taste of nicotine and I am feeling it.
The meals I ate were fish something with rice something and juice of something. Having passed on the burger the first time around, they reheated it and thought that I would break under the pressure and eat it the second time they offered it. I showed them. I ate the two ounce meal that they offered everyone else and sat there and starved. I am true glutton and I could have eaten ten of their offered meals. The entire flight, I have been drinking fluids, listening to others snore and it's close to five hours before I finally have to get up to use the bathroom. My row is packed and I don't want to wake anyone so I crawl over everyone on the tops of the seats, I get to the isle and I am standing face to face with two stewardesses that are pisses off pretty badly. I'm not sure why, but I am walked to the bathroom, and then escorted back to my seat like a child or a condemned prisoner. I don't have any idea what I did wrong, but I am beginning to feel like I should have eaten the hamburger. I don't use the bathroom for the rest of the 6 hours of flight. Again, this will be important.
Arrival in Japan Norita at 3:30 PM of the next day. Elapsed time of travel so far, 35 hours. I am still of good cheer, but now I have to use the bathroom really bad. Not too mention I need nicotine and I need to streach my legs and eat something that I can identify or spell. The airline is no longer trying to accommodate the two American interlopers on board and don't even announce messages in English so I am unsure of what I am doing. It's the same feeling I had in San Fran, but worse becuase nothing is written in English and no one seems to want me here, not that I can say that the same isn't true for San Fran, but at least there they try to speak English.
Off the plane and this is the tricky part of the trip - I have to go through customs, pick up my luggage, get on a bus, cross Tokyo to HANEDA airport, check in to another airline and fly to Okinawa. I am following the herd like a lemming hoping that they will show me the way to customs, and indeed after twenty minutes of twists and turns, I see the customs office. Native Japanese walk through a comfy line and move on, Foreigners don't have it so easy. I am standing in line with everyone else from around the world that is trying to get into Japan and immediately you notice that Japanese people are much smaller than everyone else as the size of the isles set up for us are barely narrow enough to let water pass through them. At the head of the line is some man directing everyone to specific lines that are not numbered in a language system that anyone of can identify. You would think that this might be the part of the airport where they would abandon Japanese for say, a couple of OTHER languages that FOREIGNERS might be able to read. The man sees me, sizes me up and sends me to a line which is full of hookers, thugs, tattooed skin heads, drug mules and people that wouldn't have a problem with a job title like, "cleaner" or "mechanic". I am not sure how I feel about standing in this line, but I am enjoying the fact that everyone else is staring at us like we are all going to spend the night in jail or go to a party that they all wish they were cool enough to attend. I am standing behind some Thai hookers that are all sweating and fidgety in their five inch heels and two inch skirts. I have friends that would cum in their pants if they were standing in my place right now, and I want to laugh but I can't. I really need to pee and I really, really need a cigarette and my head is spinning from the lack of English and laughter would only make me look worse than the rest of my line mates. The hookers keeping making noises that sound like sheep noises. A kind of long extended "Ah" noise after a brief onslaught of other constant and verb sounds. Like, "asshe EHO no AHAAAAAAAHHH. BEyoooo nos highhh no AHAAAAAHHH" and then they pointedly throw their hands up and look disgusted.
Every line but ours is moving at a clip of one person per minute. Ours is at ten minutes per hooker and five per killer and twenty per drug mule. There are five more people in front of me. During that time, the man designating line assignments puts ten million junior high cheerleaders behind me and with my mind working in mysterious ways, I begin to entertainment myself with the imagery of these girls having been brought to Asia to be sold into sexual slavery by their parents, classmates and teachers. I can see their school raising the money to send these girls to Japan by holding car washes and selling magazines and yet, the true motivation is to get them out of the school to raise the GPA of the students and to make some money by selling off the lesser, more annoying students, to a foreign country to pay for more band equipment for their appreciated children. (now isn't that a great idea for a novel?) As it turns out, the real story is that there are junior high cheerleading world championships being held in Japan and thousands of girls are here from all over the world. I wonder if cheerleaders are annoying in every language or if it's just an American thing? I would like to think that the world championships are really a cover for what is really going on in that auditorium - an auction.
The cheerleaders are all talking so loud and fast that they sound like birds chirping. They are all dressed in flannel PJs, withpigtails in their hair and each one is chewing gum and carrying a huge pillow. I am thinking, "I have friends that would cum in their pants if they were...."
I finally make it through customs and I fill out a form in which I leave a line blank which states where I am staying while in Japan. I would have filled it out, but I have no idea and none of my paperwork indicates where I will be staying. The customs officials don't seem to mind and I am stamped and at the baggage claim in minutes. Most of the 600 people on my flight are gone and so is there luggage. This should make it easier for me to find my bag and then get a move on, or so I thought. Ten minutes pass... twenty... thirty minutes and now I'm nervous. I am the ONLY person standing there when he carousel stops moving and I am instantaneously swamped by Japanese women with scarves tied around their necks. They are all asking me what my bag looked like, which is never a good sign.
Yes. The bag was lost. Lost in Transportation.
I am in Japan, with nothing but a Family Guy DVD, half a pack of cigarettes, sixty bucks in American cash, and a swollen bladder and the numbers of two hookers and the three cheerleaders.
First question the airline asks me, "where are you staying and we will send you the bag?" Of course, they didn't say it quite so clearly and with my mind already in a deranged state I heard, "fuck you whitey". They take what information I have and I am off to the next nightmare of the trip - The bus ticket to the other airport. I pay with a credit card and they try to show me where to go and wait for it, thankfully I get to use the bathroom first and I have not been this happy in twenty years as I stain that Japanese porcelin. I walk outside and reach for a cigarette and realize that I have no lighter and no way to ask for a light. I couldn't do it in English at this point, but here is where body language and a nation that loves to smoke comes in handy. The international symbol for HELP ME is a man with an unlit cigarette in his mouth making a flicking symbol with his thumb. Everyone comes to your rescue and the flames from all the extended lighters is enough to warm my heart. I suck down two cigarettes before I realize I only have four left for-EVER.
Bus trip - Narita International Airport to Haneda Airport, Airport shuttle service, driving time 1 hour 30 minutes with no traffic.
There's traffic. This allows me to see beautiful Tokyo from the windows as we crawl down the highway. As I am looking out the window trying to do the math in my head and looking at the images and listening to the cheerleaders scream "EAT ZUCCHINI!, EAT! EAT ZUCCHINI!" ( I swear that that is what they were saying.) I am at peace. I am in Japan and it's as lovely as all the National Geographic Specials that I have seen about it said it was. The trees are beautiful, the air is filled with great new aromas and I have peed and smoked which makes this my favorite part of the trip.
Check in. I have five hours before my flight. I walk slowly into security and don't mind the challenge of it all. I meet up with the other comic only because he is the only other sad looking person at the terminal. Actually, he's the only person at the terminal. The lights aren't even on in this part of the airport. Perfect! We chat, in English and we are laughing and exchanging stories. He seems like a nice guy.
Flight three - Tokyo Haneda to Okinawa. ANA airlines (I have no idea), flight time 3 hours.
I slept the whole way, don't remember a damn thing and don't care.
I arrive, walk out of the gate and could care less where I am or what I am doing. I find myself pushing people which, it turns out, is okay in Japan and I start to feel better. I walk to the door and we meet our ride who recognizes us with no problem. On the way to the Air Base, I let them in on my little story and their response. "There is no way for them to deliver your luggage on the base, sorry dude." I am only in Okinawa for two nights and I have no idea if they will get me my luggage to me before I leave for Nagasaki. I should be depressed, but the images passing by the windows of the van won't allow me to be. It's hard to be angry when you are on a paid vacation and you are seeing a part of the world that you have never seen before.
I was flown to Hawaii for my brother's wedding last year and my luggage was stolen and I had the best time. Like that trip, I had to improvise for clothes, bathroom goodies and other things, but it was still a free trip and I had a blast. This trip will be no exception.
I fall asleep at 1 AM, here. Close to 40 hours of travel and I am in a foreign land with no luggage and no way to change out of my nasty clothes. I am starving, mentally unstable and as happy as a clam. For some reason, I wake up at 5 AM and cannot fall back asleep. I walk out on the balcony and I get to see the sun rise, which is what, I guess, I am really hear to see and the lack of luggage cannot take away the true importantance of the trip and that's to enjoy it, no matter what I have to eat, where I have to go, who hates me or whether or not I do it in comfort. That's what makes a normal vacation into an adventure.
Cheers everyone.
posted by Daniel Loomis | 11:21 AM
<< Home