Japan. An Introduction.
So the flight was a pretty trying experience. People kept telling me two things anytime I mentioned it: (1)If you can, upgrade to a better class because it has like 3 extra inches of space, and that makes all the difference, and (2) You’re going to japan for just a week? That’s an awfully long flight. 24 hours worth of travel later, I can say that both of those were completely right, except upgrading was about $500, and I definitely wasn’t about to do that.
I tried to sleep, but about an hour into it they gave us our first meal. After that, there wasn’t any chance of me falling asleep. I started up a conversation with the woman next to me, and as the trip went on, I could best describe her as a dragon. She had short hair that was put up a bit, red eyes from flying, and the way the skin wrinkled on her nose gave it a very scale-like quality.
Dragon-lady was a teacher in Okinawa, and had been there for some time. When they brought around drinks, she enlightened me that on international flights you can usually get mixed drinks for free. Hello, Bourbon and Ginger! Ok, whiskey and sprite, but the effect was the same. Unfortunately, they only bring the drink cart around like twice on the entire flight.
I asked her about some of the things my dad had been trying to cram into me before I left. According to him, it’s customary in Japan to give little gifts to anyone you meet. You meet someone, they get a gift. As such, he had made me take at least 6 boxes of various chocolates. Dragon responded with, “Oh, your father must be in businesss. In Japan, business has lots of etiquette rules like that, but even then, no one expects it from us foreigners. We’re savages, we don’t know any better. And that lets us get away with anything.” I was already liking the sound of Japan. Free drinks and no expectations – it sounded like my kind of trip.
I tried to watch a few movies to kill time. I started with Rise of the Planet of the Apes because I thought it would be nice and action-y, and then tried to watch Harry Potter 7.1. About 20 minutes into that, I decided I’d be better off with The Time Traveler’s Wife, and damn is that movie sad. I spent the next two hours trying not to cry, and I’m sure the little Korean girl next to me was judging me the whole time. Luckily Dragon was prowling about and didn’t notice; she kept standing up to stretch her legs, and she probably stood about half the flight.
At some point I noticed my pinky toes were going numb in my shoes. Apparently that happens on flights, your feet begin to swell. It’s two days later now, and I’m just now starting to see the bones in my feet again. Here I was freaking out that I had actually just developed cankles.
I stood up with dragon to try and make my feet stop overreacting, the drama queens, and we struck up another conversation.
“Japan is big on the latest anything,” she said. “Just look at the technology – they love their technology. Everyone there has the latest new thing, no matter what it is. Cell phones were popular in Japan at least 4-5 years before anyone had them in America. And they always have to look just like the latest fashion. All the girls will look like they’re straight out of a magazine, and they’ll have the weirdest hair-dos. And the men all have their hair pointing straight up, as if that looks good at all.” She paused for a moment, and we shared an awkward moment in which we both became very aware that my hair was indeed sticking straight up, just like these supposed ‘weird Japanese men.’
I tried to diffuse the situation by saying, “Well, my dad was trying to lecture me on how I should try to look when I came over. He was like, ‘You have to take out your ear plugs, everyone in Japan is very conservative. They’ll see that and they just won’t even talk to you. And you really need to cut your hair.’”
Dragon just said, “Oh yes, your father is definitely in business.”
I spent the last half of the flight alternating between pacing with dragon and attempting to read the books I had brought with me. However, I had spent the majority of the last 12 hours staring at very tiny screens for movies or trying to read, and my eyes were mutinous. They were beginning to strike back with a very persistent headache, so I abandoned any attempts at reading and just tried to sit there.
You cannot just sit on an airplane. I had already noticed my throbbing headache, and sitting there with no distractions just made me focus on it more. I tried to think of something else, but that just made me notice how much my feet were throbbing again. And my legs. Something about sitting in a chair where your knees are up against the chair in front of you makes your legs get very pissed off. And finally, I was beginning to develop some form of air-sickness or something by the end of the flight. Overall, I was ready to get the fuck off that plane.
After about 2 hours of suffering through my body bitching at me for various things, They finally announced we were landing. After circling the airport three times, the pilot took a nose-dive at the airport, and we somehow landed surprisingly smoothly. I had about an hour before my next flight, and I still had to go through customs.
Luckily, it went pretty smoothly. They needed to know the address I was staying at in Japan, so I frantically had to balance my laptop on one arm, my bag and coat on the other, and try to write down (and find) John’s address from my computer. Apparently in Japan, you can’t just check your bag and hope it’ll come to your final destination with you. I had to go to the conveyor belt, find my bag, and then find where my next flight was after checking the bag again. That plane ride was only about an hour long, and I somehow managed to find John right when I landed. That was especially worrisome, as I didn’t have his number, nor could I really use my phone in Japan. After two more hours of trains and a thirty minute walk, I had finally made it to his apartment.
