September 1, 2010: Tokyo to Victoria Via Air Canada

Today we started the day with Bill feeling sick and April continuing to feel the effects of the food poisoning and/or Cipro antibiotics. It is time to go home. We had breakfast at the hotel in their buffet format. We are not going to miss all the buffets. We feel ready to come home. We packed and reserved our seats on the “Friendly Airport Limousine” which is actually the bus we caught into Tokyo from Narita Airport. You can reserve and purchase the tickets at our hotel’s front desk and the bus will come right there. They have baggage tags and everything , very convenient. On the buses that go longer distances in Japan they are equipped with seat belts. Why don’t we have this in Canada? It would not take much money to install them and it would most certainly cut down on injuries and liability claims…

As a result of a police check on the way to the airport, traffic was backed up and it took us two hours to get to Narita rather than one hour and twenty minutes. Thankfully, we booked in a bunch of leeway time in case we were delayed (we went with the be at the airport three hours before for international travel which we have always thought is an excessive estimate, but read on).

When we arrived at the airport we tried to get in line for Air Canada check-in. However we were told we had to do the kiosk with self-printing our own boarding passes first. Then we waited in a line for one hour. We were told that one of our two checked in bags, was three kilograms over the per bag limit (even though the aggregate weight of them together was within the range). They must have really weak baggage handlers in Japan, because it was all right in Canada and all they did was put a “heavy” tag on the handle.

Our choice was to pay $100 CDN or we could re-jig our bags. We opted to rejig our bags, open our suitcases on the floor, and be asked to move while our underwear is hanging out, rather than any human sympathy or assistance granted. It is odd how airlines apply rules and regulations differently in different situations. There is no consistency. A new friend Bill met at the conference calls this the influence of the “petty sovereign.” There’s a lot of pettiness going on in the world of officious airline officials. One more reason not to fly ANA (all the check in clerks were wearing ANA uniforms). ANA is an awful airline that does not focus on customer service and extorts money out of passengers at every opportunity. I expect that from RyanAir, but not a national-level carrier. We especially thought that they would not be idiots with baggage weight when we were travelling internationally and had been gone from Canada for one month or five and half weeks as we had (and were so close to the weight! Sticklers!). We then waited for the clerk to be free again and gave her back the bags and she accepted them this time. Sheesh.

We were finally able to go to the bathroom. Then, as we were heading towards security before we made it to the entry, we were subjected to a “random” police security check (we know it was “random” because they said “don’t worry this is a random security check”). They took down our passport and phone numbers. It really sucks to be a minority and constantly harassed by the state and other officials. They had some other Gaijin held up on the other end of the corridor. When I was trying to put our passports back into my bag before we moved on they kept harassing us to move like we were too stupid to get the concept that the “random check” was over. We were just trying to make sure we didn’t lose our passports so we’d be able to enjoy future security checks.!

After checking our bags and going through security, we thought we were done with line-ups, but in Japan they have you stand in an immigration line-up before you leave, in addition to surrendering customs forms for our tax-exempt purchases to a separate customs booth before the immigration line up (which took about 30 minutes). The Japanese sure like their line-ups. I think it’s a chicken or the egg thing because they like overstaffing as well. It makes for a very inefficient way of going about life. Red tape seems to be the sinew that binds Japanese society together.

When we passed security, we had our last sushi lunch, filled up our water bottles, and grabbed a couple of soft ice cream cones. To our delight, they did not have cornflakes stuffed into the bottom of the cone—what is with the Japanese obsession with tainting ice-creamy treats into a dry cereal breakfast surprise?

Then the odyssey of the flight from Tokyo to Vancouver began. We were only at the gate just before boarding started but were able to enjoy a leisurely ice cream while the Japanese enjoyed the line-up for boarding instead.  The flight was pretty smooth but also mostly sleepless for April (Bill got quite a few hours of sleep). Then we arrived in Vancouver at 10:30 a.m. PST on September 1, 2010 (after travelling back in time 17 hours and repeating September the 1^st). We had to go to a kiosk to hand over our customs declaration. The machine spat out a sheet. Then we had to go to a cashier to pay some duty. Then we had to get into a customs line up with our bags. Then we had to pass off our bags to the next leg of the journey to Victoria. Then we had to go through security again. Airport security regulations make travelling an unpleasant experience. Then we had to wait three hours for our flight to Victoria.

We were picked up by Julia when we arrived in Victoria. It was so nice to see a familiar face. After we deposited our bags at home we did a quick grocery shop and picked up the cat. We then did our best to stay awake until bedtime by unpacking and watching television. We both had periods of time where we were wide away in the middle of the night, but we both managed to eventually get back to sleep. It is harder travelling West to East than East to West. 

At Narita International Airport: Tired, but happy to be on our way home. 

August 4th to 5th, 2010: April’s Trip from Victoria to Sapporo

I left on August 4^th with a 10:00 am flight from Victoria to Vancouver. As usual I had problems going through security, this time in Victoria. I was frisked and my bag was searched and it turned out I accidentally packed my small scissors in my carry on; these were confiscated and I was rebuked for my error. I then had 3.5 hours to wait in the Vancouver airport where I had lunch and admired the large fish tank and stream they have in the middle of the international departures area. There are also some boutiques to look in. All in all I’m glad I left myself extra time because my flight from Victoria to Vancouver was late leaving and arriving. It turned out though that my flight from Vancouver to Tokyo was late leaving too. It is about nine hours from Vancouver to Tokyo and I have never flown that far alone. I took sleeping pills and tried to sleep but only managed ten minutes of sleep, which is better than usual for me. I watched some TV shows and a Canadian Film Board film on vagrants with carts in North Vancouver called “Carts of Darkness.” It was quite interesting and well done. The selection of movies, TV shows, and music has really improved on international travel. The emergency row seats cost more to book on Air Canada now but they are so worth it. I will never fly without them again. Leg room.

On arriving in Tokyo I had to fill out a landing/immigration card and had to stand in line to go through immigration. There are separate lines for foreigners. There were really long line-ups but they were pretty efficiently at moving people through. I thought that they wanted to scan my eyes after my fingers on their fancy machine (something was lost in translation) so I put my eyes up really close to the screen much to the amazement of the immigration fellow. He looked at me with disbelief and motioned for me to move back (turns out it was a picture of my whole face that they were taking). As I moved me face back I noticed the webcam picture of me go from being must eyes to my whole face and felt like an idiot. This was just the beginning of my feelings of being a yokel in Japan.

I then went to collect my suitcase that made it. I stood in line for ANA only to be ushered to another place by a helpful staff person where I could actually check in. They have plenty of staff for everything in Japan and you are never left for long wondering if you are in the right/wrong place. I checked into my ANA flight and had a while to wait after I found my gate which was in the same Terminal that I landed in. Bill flew JAL so he had to change terminals for his flight from Tokyo to Sapporo. I marvelled at the fancy Japanese toilets with all of their buttons and the diagram that they had translated into English of how to use it. They had something called a “flushing noise” that I assumed was to flush the toilet (and just a bad translation). When I pressed it instead of the toilet flushing a strange canned flushing sound emitted from the toilet and nothing happened. This would be only the first of several manufactured flushing noises I would hear on my travels in Japan. Turns out that Japanese women are very shy about anyone hearing any noise they might make in the bathroom so they have this “flushing sound” to cover it. I guess maybe they used to actually flush the toilet so now they have this noise instead because it saves water (this was the sort of explanation in one of the translations in one bathroom I was in- I say sort of because often when Japanese is translated into English something is lost and it sounds like beat poetry).

While waiting for my ANA flight I had something to eat at the airport which was called a “Naan Pizza”. It was like a thin crust pizza with cheese, tomato sauce, and some mystery meat that I removed. I also had a Coca Cola. Their formula in Japan is better than ours at home, less sugar, but still not as good as the stuff in French Polynesia. The flight from Tokyo to Sapporo was delayed as well but after an hour and a half flight I made it there. I was very tired on the flight and doing the nod a bit. They gave us a tea to drink. At the Chitose airport I collected my suitcase and had to figure out how to buy a train ticket from there to Sapporo, which I eventually did. A nice fellow who worked there told me which platform and the train came in about twenty minutes or so and I crawled on exhausted for the half hour trip. I accidentally got on a green/reserved car so I was eventually asked to move by a train person even though the car was virtually empty. When I made it to the Sapporo train station Bill had told me to go out the west exit so I looked for this and when I emerged Bill was standing there waiting to usher me to the Chisun Inn (even though I was about an hour late from all the flight delays- lucky I built in a lot of extra time between my flights), which was only a five minute walk from the station. It was hot and humid even though it was 10:00 pm when I arrived. I felt ill when I arrived likely from exhaustion and the excitement but it was so nice to see Bill again.

The room was shockingly small, closet sized, but I had the best sleep that night that I had had in weeks. The other rooms we had were not quite as small but the rooms we had at the Chisun was very cheap and was a business room so they are apparently smaller than other hotel rooms (and therefore cheaper). In general though things are just a lot smaller in Japan. They provide pajamas to you to wear at almost every hotel in Japan as well as toothbrushes, razors, shampoo, conditioner, soap, and other items. The bathroom was so small that I could touch the walls with my arms spanned. A combination of melatonin to cure jet lag and help me adjust and sleeping pills to help me get a good sleep produced a strange hallucinogenic effect on me (or maybe it was exhaustion) and Bill had a time settling me down to sleep but when I did I slept like a log (and had no memory really of my hallucinations the next day). I also figured out how to call internationally from my hotel room to let my parents know that I made it. I don’t; really remember any of my conversation. What a trip! I think Bill had it better staying over in Tokyo and tackling the Tokyo to Sapporo trip fresh the next day. The way I did it though got me onto Japan time really fast I was up the next day fresh and ready to go and suffered very little jet lag though I went 17 hours into the future.