It is a truely MAD world I have been dropped into. 07/29/06 - 08/01/06
Let's rewind briefly first though, and I will debrief the rest of you as to the cause of my intense frustration.
Firstly, getting on the plane in Chicago was a Hitchcock nitemare of ineptitude thanks to Northwest's inability to use more than two counters at a time to check in 300 people. Hours in line waiting to be checked in, a good chunk of time going through security, and a rather rude Northwest flight coordinator at the gate who made me jump through bloody hoops to get my goddamn boarding pass.
Airport nitemare, 300 JETS descend upon it.
Mom was a saint and accompanied me to the security checkpoint, what a trooper!
I get on flight 131, and head to Minneapolis. It's cramped, there are no snacks unless you are willing to pay $3 for a small baggie of trail mix, and they are stingy with their water.
However, the flight I took on the 29th from Minneapolis to Narita was moved up by an hour, making our arrival within half an hour of the departure time, which is barely enough time to get to the gate halfway across the airport, much less pause for a bite to eat. But I was dehydrated and starving by that time, and stoically hassled an A&W employee until they forked over a lot of water and a hamburger, which I took with me on the great dash to Gate number toofaraway. It's hot, crowded, there are endless lines to wait in for every step, but I get on.
On the Northwest 19 flight to Narita, Japan, I get to my seat and find a Chinese man sitting in it, who has the exact same boarding pass as me. I sigh, flag down a stewardess and explain that I have no seat as two people were assigned the same seat. She stares at me for a moment and then goes to talk to the Chinese man. He confirms my story (wait, she thought I was lying?), shows her the boarding pass and promptly gets moved to First Class. Unfair, but whatever. I get the seat, but I am seated next to a 16 month old baby girl. And by that time, they force me to stow my carryon at the front of the plane because the stewardesses are too lazy to help people stow it properly, and god knows common people aren't able to do a damn thing right unless instructed step by step and played along by a four-piece orchestral accompanyment.
Right.
So I get to my seat, now thankfully free of cumbersome carry-ons, and find the aforementioned 16 month old waddling around across both her seat and mine. The mother tries to collect her daughter, which automatically sets her up for a squall and a sizzling hissy. The tinwhistle screams send me hurtling back to the front of the plane for my carryon, in which I have stowed several puppets for just such an occasion. I come back, now joined by StellaLuna the Bat and Mort the Man Lamb. I sit down and have a frank talk with the 16 month old about her civic responsibility to be good and respect the rest of the passengers and shut her little cake hole unless she is in fact on fire or falling out of the plane. Or maybe I read her a story and animated the voices with puppets, I don't really remember anymore. Her name was Abby.
Abby, the WunderKinder! (Abby and Mom. )
The long and short of it was that I became Abby's impromptu bed cushion and babysitter for the next 16 hours of flight, as she wasn't keen on staying in her seat with such a wealth of body heat and natural plush pillowy-ness so near by. Her mother found it incredibly amusing and let the little dribbler do as she pleased to me, until I started using her sleeping daughter's head as a book prop while studying. Apparently parents don't mind taking advantage of the personal space of a total stranger who's trapped a seat over until the stranger takes advantage of a fortuitously-leveled sleeping head as a book rest. Abby was made to sit in her own seat after that, but frequently leaned over and napped on my hip or thigh, or else sprawled on her mother and just merrily kicked me in her sleep continuously. During which, her mother asked that I turn off my reading light that only shown onto my seat because it might wake up her darling angel. This flight was a really joyous environment for studying Japanese.
Right.
So the plane ran out of fuel just over Sapporo, Japan. Did I mention the miles and miles of turbulence we hit? No? Good, I'll get to that now. The Pacific Ocean can go to hell for its inability to foster a better wind pattern. I have never been more nauseous than on this flight. And little Abby was downright sick. Sapporo is the northernmost point of Japan that has an airport, so we has to land, refuel and take off again for Narita. By this point Abby and I had both fallen asleep, so the last leg of the journey was relatively quiet and uneventful. The plane ran out of water though, and they were rationing water out in little sips to people. It was pitiful and I arrived in Narita very dehydrated, dejected, and damn tired.
They lost my luggage.
Do you remember when I said the Minneapolis flight was bumped up an hour? Apparently, the airline forgot to factor in the movement of luggage from one plane to another in their hurry to take off and run out of gas on a 12-hour-turned-16-hour flight. So only one bag showed up for me. The casual clothing bag, just in time for my formal orientation. But you see, Emily is a little bit psychic, and thought it would be a grand idea to mix in a few business bits to the casual clothing suitcase, and was saved from the embarassment of wearing her Scrooge McDuck shirt and shorts to her orientation.
No one's fed me still at this point and it's 10pm in Narita Japan. Just thought I'd mention that.
And because JET is run by Nazi death camp guards disguised as beaming Japanese girls in blue JET shirts, I was not able to stop and change money where the rates were great, and was also not able to buy a goddamn bottle of water after being deprived of water for many hours. I nearly had a breakdown right then and there, until a really kind fellow JET bought me a bottle of something called Pokari Sweat, a drink I can only describe as the love child of Pedealyte and Gatorade that has earned the family name of Sweat honestly. But it was refreshing and saved me from death, so I carry no grudges against that sweaty Pokari drink.
We ride a bus to the hotel. I sleep on it.
We get in, I go upstairs, throw myself into the shower and scrub until I've scrubbed my desire to tantrum away.
Tokyo room
So tiiiiny!
Then I went downstairs, changed some money, and experienced my first Japanese convenience store, full of memorable things like Spam-filled Ramen, 32 varieties of cold coffee in a can, and my personal favorite, pickled plums.
It is now 07/30/06, as I gained 15 hours in the flight.
I sleep for a few hours, get up and go to my damn conferences. They are vague, not very helpful, and tedious. But I was expecting that, so I brought sketch paper and made small talk, with those around me, at one point passing out enough paper and pencils to have two entire rows of people around me doodling instead of learning about financial systems in Japan. Thus is my triumph of the day. At various times during the day I invited myself to get-togethers, picked random tables to sit at when they fed us, and generally introduced myself everywhere for some prime networking. It was fun, people were polite.
After the day's conference classes, I went out with a group of twenty people from my prefecture to what I found out was an all-you-can-drink-for-two-hours place, all for the low price of $25. And drink, we did. Sake is a great evil, never trust a smiling person who offers you Sake with anything but the gravest warning of its strength and potency. And it's a bad idea to mix Sake with a lot of Japanese beer.
Ja ne!
