My Travel hr662

 

A trip can require an enormous effort. In my case, it starts by making time to plan in a hectic daily life which consumes me with work. Once I manage to find time for planning a trip, a long way to finish it awaits. I search all over the Internet for the best possible deal for a hotel and transportation that suits what I want to do during the trip. I narrow selections, choose the most saving plans, combine them into an itinerary, book everything, adjust my work schedule, and pack. The latest trip I took after that lengthy process was by plane. I could have taken the bullet train since the time that would be  taken to the destination was almost the same because the airport was much further than the train station from my home. But that particular airline carried a limited-time sale so that the fare was lower. My choice was decided on a plane for that reason.

No matter how many times I have flown, I feel nervous each time. Although I know that the chances of a car accident are much higher than a plane crash, that kind of logic doesn’t help me. I see many people drink alcohol before the flight and that shows I am not the only person who is nervous of flying. A long time ago, I took a flight to Dallas. Before landing, the plane was sucked into nasty turbulence. It repeated steep dives several times that gave some passengers screams and vomits. I was in a window seat and seeing the wing in the midst of a thick cloud that told me the plane tilted sharply. I heard something fall and break everywhere. Above all, I was most terrified when I saw the flight attendants panic, who were supposed to get used to and be trained for this situation. The plane finally got out of the thick cloud and I thought I would see out of the window broad highways or the edge of the runway that were common views after the plane descended that much. Instead, what came into my sight were tips of green trees. Because I had never seen trees so closely from the airplane, I was convinced that we were going to crash. I vaguely thought it was least expected that my end was Dallas. Then, the plane stopped descending and flew ahead horizontally. It made turns above trees with a move that was more like a bus’s rather than a plane’s. It seemed to spot the runway by doing so, and we landed safely.

For the latest trip I took, I checked in at the airport and was informed that my flight was delayed for two hours due to machine maintenance. I wasn’t sure if the airplane I was going on board would need further maintenance or a backup plane would fly in from somewhere, but either way, it made me uneasy since it came on top of the existing nervous factor that it was a low cost carrier. After I went through the security check and waited at the gate, the further delay was announced. I finally got on board a few hours behind schedule and the door of the plane was closed. Yet, it remained stationary, and wouldn’t move. The captain announced it was waiting for takeoff permission from the control tower. It sounded absurd because it was a small local airport where the runway was empty and only few flights a day came in and out. Forty minutes passed while many things crossed my mind. Why can’t a takeoff be permitted? Is there any problem? Is that the true reason? Does this plane still have some sort of machine troubles? The cabin was dead silent and tense as other passengers sat quiet and strained for the whole forty minutes. I thought this was the very time when we needed alcohol most. By the time the plane took off and safely finished its 90-minute flight, it was already night and I was exhausted. My elaborate travel itinerary got messed up on the first day though I had made it with full of leeway. The massive delay ate up the time for a meal at the restaurant. The express train I had booked from the airport to the city had long gone.

Flights are always accompanied with troubles. Other than delays, I have had my fair share of troubles regarding baggage, other passengers or attendants. Even so, I don’t hate flying. I don’t know why exactly, but I feel like I become a different person each time I take off and land on the destination. It is as if I jumped into a different dimension where a better version of my life exists. I like that feeling so much that I feel stuck circling at the same spot over and over without any changes when I haven’t flown for a long time. That’s why I need to take a plane to a different place once in a while in order to become a better self even if it’s nervous, risky and troublesome. I might as well stay home just to relax as to travel. It would be peaceful, calm and tranquil for me. But I know I couldn’t enjoy that because staying at the same place without traveling feels like being dead. Travel lets me keep changing so that I stay alive.

The Survivor hr661

 

A small plane was landing on a runway. Beyond it was a blue ocean with white wave crests beneath a cloudy sky that was beginning to be cracked and show a glimpse of the blue sky with a ray of sunlight. That was what I was gazing blankly at through a glass wall of the lounge over coffee and vegetable juice at the small local airport in Japan. Then a thick rainbow appeared from the sea surface toward the sky. It didn’t arc but stretched upright like a big pillar. I hoped it was a good omen.

When I faced financial difficulty and my income decreased sharply last year, I was resigned not to be able to afford a trip ever again. But as it turned out, I have taken a trip much more than I had ever done before in a year because the Japanese government subsidized to save the struggling travel industry so that I could enjoy a hotel stay with a minimal amount of money by using the benefit. I am such an unprincipled person who willingly make use of a bill when it comes to benefits while I usually criticize the government. And here, I was having a good time at the exclusive lounge for holders of a credit card with a premium status that I obtained by the credit card company’s promotion for first-year-free membership. Of course I am going to cancel the card within the first year during which I make the most of it by taking advantage of free stuff as much as possible. My decreased income hasn’t improved at all, yet I manage to hang onto my life persistently although it seemed all over one year ago.

I used to be sulky all the time when I was a child. I would constantly grumble and complain to my parents and they frequently asked me why I couldn’t be thankful for anything even a little bit. I still don’t know why I behaved like that, but I certainly had been discontent with pretty much everything as far as I can remember. It could have been nasty meals, could have been a tense atmosphere living with my grandparents, or could have been pressure from an unspoken rule to become a successor of the family as a firstborn. In any case, I was simply surrounded by what I didn’t like. Although my family was wealthy in those days, I didn’t find anything to be thankful for as a child.

I remained the same in my twenties. I was filled with anger everyday though I managed to leave home and live on my own as a musician instead of succeeding the family. I had craved for fame that I couldn’t get no matter how hard I tried. I bore a strong grudge against major record labels and the Japanese society as a whole that wouldn’t appreciate me. I couldn’t see one single thing that I should be thankful for. Everything in the world looked hostile to me.

Now I got old and thankful for being able to continue to do what I want to do for my life while I still have neither money nor fame. I have learned that one can find a way to live somehow unless one loses oneself. I finished my last glass of free drinks after so many glasses of it at the lounge while seeing a small plane blasting down the runway and taking off. I left the lounge with my partner and headed down to the airport lobby with the escalator. There, I found a gigantic Christmas tree against the backdrop of a beautiful twilight sky out of the window. Watching the glittering Christmas tree, I felt blessed, and thankful as well.

I Have Everything I Need hr606

The next morning, I hurried to the restaurant in the hotel to be in time for its breakfast serving time. I like to have breakfast especially at this restaurant. I can get a slight taste of an overseas travel here and a feeling that I were outside of Japan as most guests are from foreign countries. I glutted myself with the breakfast buffet, got back to the room, packed, and checked out. I transferred the hotel’s free bus at the airport to the express bus to Tokyo Disney Resort this time. I often visit there but don’t enter the parks that are too crowded all the time. Instead, I usually hang around the surrounding hotels and the shopping district. This visit was no exception and I went directly into the movie theater. The object was to see ‘Star Wars The Last Jedi’. It was the third time to see it in the theater and the film won glory as one of my best three movies in my lifetime so far. I had never been sold on any Star Wars movies until I saw this particular one. They were mere melodramas in the galaxy to me. But the one before ‘The Last Jedi’ turned the tide and this one blew me away completely. It has deepened my emotions every time I see it. It was too touching for me to stop crying at the very last scene, again. The story is very much like a film ‘Tomorrowland’ that is the best movie of my life. Both films tell about hope and if ‘Tomorrowland’ was made in a Star Wars setting, it would be ‘The Last Jedi’. I’m constantly afraid of not being recognized as a musician forever because my likings rarely agree with others. For the person like me, it’s a big relief when a favorite movie becomes a blockbuster. It literally gives me hope. Later on, I bought gadgets of R2-D2 and BB-8 that respond to my voice and talk back. I’ve enjoyed talking with them everyday. After the movie, I had a snack at a Mexican fast-food restaurant because it had happy hour that made margarita half price. A clerk there made a mistake for my order in a good way and gave me one more guacamole for free. Then I had a cafe latte at a bakery cafe in one of Disney hotels. Although the place was near empty, a cue of customers began to form outside. It was getting longer in a matter of minutes. It turned out that the sale time for freshly-baked croquette sandwiches was approaching and people were waiting to get them. Japanese people really love to stand in line for fresh food even though it’s expensive. Their strong zest for something hot from the oven is amazing, which I never understand. I saw the fireworks of the park from the same shopping district for free and headed for Tokyo Station by train to catch the bullet train home I’d booked at 35 percent off. At the station, I got croissants and a pork bowl both at half price by a closeout sale that were left unsold and old, and had dinner with them on the bullet train instead of at a restaurant. All in all, my trip cost so little for a luxury savor I could felt. Only, I was kind of blue as the exciting trip was coming to an end now while the train was sending me back to a sober, indifferent small town where my plain daily life exists...

Around Narita Airport hr605

The bullet train arrived in Ueno and I walked toward the express railroad station steering through a crowd on the nasty, squalid streets between unsightly tall buildings. The express train I transferred to took me to Narita Airport in about 40 minutes. At the airport, I took the bus not the plane, to go to the outlet mall that was the first destination of my trip. It seemed all the passengers except for my partner and me were foreign tourists mainly from China who had just gotten off the plane. I almost didn’t shop anything at the mall, but enjoyed browsing cool stores and having coffee at a cafe and dinner at the food court. My partner sat in a bench watching the mall’s chic streets in the twilight as it was an outside mall. Since most shoppers had already left and only few were strolling, he murmured that he wished he could live in a town like this if it had existed in the real world. The buildings and pavements are tasteful and well-maintained, which decoration is colorful and sophisticated. I’ve never seen such a beautiful town with stylish buildings and neat people outside Disney Channel. All the while I was in this ideal town though, I had been carrying one problem. I had had a stupidly outrageous turmoil when I started off this trip this morning that had emptied out all my energy and caused a headache. It had accompanied me all the way here and gotten worse gradually. By the dinnertime, it became severe. I ended up taking aspirin at the mall’s food court. The hotel I was staying at was also near Narita Airport from which its free bus was available. When I checked in, the front clerk told me that breakfast wasn’t included. I thought the plan I had selected at the hotel’s website included breakfast although I wasn’t sure because I had made the reservation quite a while back and the rate was incredibly low by the limited time sale. They said that my stay would be without breakfast when I asked to double check. Afterward, it will have turned out that breakfast was indeed included and drawn a trouble, but there was no way of knowing at this point in time. Next morning, I had a lunch buffet at the hotel’s restaurant instead as I didn’t have breakfast and had a discount coupon for it. The restaurant was full but everything was so delicious that I ate as much as I could until I got too full to move. Then I took the free bus again to the airport, and transferred to another free bus to the different hotel for the second night. I’ve stayed at this hotel for a couple of times as it’s one of my favorites. The room they chose for me was the one that I had stayed in before. I like this room so much because the rate is low although its large window looks out on the runways of the airport and lets me see planes taking off and landing on closely. The jacket photo of my album that was recently released was taken from this room, too. The hotel’s lounge has happy hour during which drinks are served half price. I had one drink along with free popcorn and edamame. After that, I dropped by a convenience store inside the hotel for my usual main event of a trip. It’s eating and drinking inside the room without ordering room service. While the whole setting was gorgeous, what I was having were cheap snacks and drinks in the freebie-studded day. Reality intrudes on my trip always...

The First Cold in 10 Years hr566

I started coughing the next day when I got back from a four-day trip of my winter getaway. The day after that, I had a high fever. Now it was official that I had a cold. I had been very careful not to catch a cold for years by wiping my hands with wet tissue every time I touch public materials, gurgling right after I come home and drinking vegetable juice every morning. As I had boasted about building up my immune system, I believed I had strong resistance to a cold. That confidence was shattered. My diligent anti-bacteria daily life was to no avail and I caught a cold for the first time in more than ten years. Because my fever was as high as 101 degrees, I suspected it was influenza. I also feared that I might have contracted MARS or something since I was strolling around the airport during the trip. I usually consult the Internet instead of a doctor, and websites said that I should see how my fever would go over a week. If it got higher and lasted more than a week, it would be influenza. If less than that, it would be a simple cold. Until the verdict, I just took cold medicine and stayed in bed. To make things worse, my partner caught a cold at the same time and had the exactly the same symptoms as mine. Two of us under the same roof had a cold simultaneously meant there was no one who took care of us. With nobody to cook or clean, we ate instant foods in our gradually dirtying apartment, which surely didn’t seem to work for recovery. I lost appetite and every simple movement lead to exhaustion easily. Because I hadn’t had a cold for such a long time, I forgot about how painful it could be. I lay in bed all day long coughing and wheezing, with my head dim by a fever and medicine, thinking about how much I wanted to be in good health. I realized that health was the most important thing to have and I could do anything if only I got rid of a cold. Then I began to feel helpless and all sorts of negative thoughts invaded me. I was afraid of being in this excruciating condition over a week. What if I didn’t get better after several weeks? Could it be much more serious disease beyond my deductions? Would I eventually be brought into an emergency room and hospitalized for a long time? When I get very old, would I be feeble like this every day? If so, I strongly defy aging. I slept on and off with those cloudy thoughts. One morning, I woke up after I slept for twelve hours straight probably because of medicine. I found no sign of my partner who sleeps in a different room and usually gets up earlier than I do. There was no sound of him walking down the hallway or fixing breakfast as I hear in my room every morning. I wondered if he had died as his condition got worse during the night. Should I call an ambulance? Can I live all alone from now on? Do I have enough money for his funeral? I felt terrified at the thought of what I should do, and then, I heard him getting out of his room. He was alive, thankfully. After three days in physical and mental agony, my fever began to drop. It returned to normal temperature within a week. It was a cold, not anything serious after all. I got back to work ten days later. To sum up, I wasted two weeks in total on the trip and the cold. Only one good thing was that I lost six pounds in a week although I hadn’t been able to lose an ounce whatever I tried. Now I must keep my weight this way. Otherwise, I suffered for nothing and just threw two weeks down the drain…

The Flight to Japan hr562

After I checked out the hotel in Laval, I was waiting for the Uber in front of it. Snow of the day before brought a bitter chill that made me shiver while I enjoyed a breathtaking view of a clear sky in the early morning. I was going to the airport where I would take a flight to Japan via Toronto. No matter how often I travel overseas, I feel extremely nervous on the morning of a flight every time, fearing that I might miss the flight. I was lucky, as it happened to be Sunday this time. If it had been a weekday, I would be crushed by an additional worry of a traffic jam. While I usually plan anything carefully, luck is an invincible helper in the end. The Uber driver was a man from the Middle East, who knew a few Japanese words since his son learned judo. It was his third day to work as an Uber driver. Because both my partner and I had wished for something like Uber for a long time and we have been impressed with its convenient service since we began to use it, my partner said to the driver that he had a bright future in his new job. He thanked my partner with deep gratitude and pure joy in his words. At the airport in Montreal, my partner suddenly claimed that he was very hungry. I told him to wait until we got to Toronto as we had gotten the ticket to use the lounge there. He wouldn’t listen and we ended up paying $25 for the overcharged airport sandwiches. And the airline company I frequently use, and have troubles with, did it again. Although I made a reservation and chose the seats well over four months ago, they had handed the seats to other passengers. If they boast about the advance seat selection, they need to learn how to hold it. During the seventy-five-minutes’ crammed flight to Toronto, my partner and I had to sit separately, and I got water when I asked for apple juice for some reason. Other than those small incidents, the flight to Japan took off without any troubles, fortunately. Thirteen hours later the plane would land and my trip to Canada would come to an end. I was surprised that there was no Japanese family with noisy children this time that I usually encounter on the plane. Instead, quite a few Canadian tourists were on board. Their trip to Japan had just begun and they looked so happy and excited. I couldn’t understand why they had chosen Japan for the destination of their trip and how they could be happy about it like that. I was sitting behind them feeling so depressed to go back to Japan which houses and buildings are tasteless, which historical spots are gloomy and dark, which cities are jammed with too many people, and which families with kids behave obnoxious. I wanted them to tell me even one charm they found about Japan where I would be stuck again from now. I suppose every one wants to get out of their daily lives, but of all the beautiful places in the world, why Japan? In there, I will spend every day waiting for the day to get out and escape to Montreal and Laval again, figuring out how to do it…

Back to Montreal hr558

A trip to California I took in May changed my mindset. When I found bargain fares online, I quickly decided to go to Montreal for the first time in seven years by using my emergency savings. I felt it was ridiculous to keep money in a bank although we are mortal and we don’t know when our time is up. I once lived in Montreal for about a year in total. I wanted to stay there, but I had to leave and come back to Japan as my money ran out. Since then, I have always hoped to live there again or at least to visit there as a tourist. What I like about Montreal are its beauty, a relaxing atmosphere and people there who seem to live to enjoy life rather than achieve success. I’m not sure if it’s because of their ways of life or the French-spoken region of Canada, but they are fashionable with excellent taste. For that combination of the city and the people, just walking down the street is fascinating enough. I took on a 12-hour flight to Toronto during which I happened to find ‘Tomorrowland’ among the in-flight movies, saw it twice and cried yet again. I went through immigration where an immigration officer gave me lengthy, irrelevant, even harassing questions including about my pin I was wearing on my jacket. It was a pin from ‘Tomorrowland’ and she almost made me begin to explain the whole movie story. The airport system in Toronto was somewhat odd. I was just in transit en route to Montreal, but I needed to pick up my luggage, carry to the distant counter and check it in all over again. Although I had already been through the security checkpoint before I got on board in Japan and had never left the airport, I had to do it again. I ended up gobbling a whole bottle of water in front of the security gate, which was exactly what I did on the last trip to California. After the security checkpoint, I saw an information screen for departure to make sure the gate number for my flight to Montreal. The flight was missing. There was no information about my flight, no cancelled, no delayed, no nothing. Among the long list of departing flights, my flight itself didn’t exist. I was close to panic. And I realized we don’t have anybody around for something like this nowadays. There is no information counter, airport workers don’t know about flights, and airline personnel at the gates don’t know other flights’ status. I had no one to ask. The only place I came up with as where the airline personnel with flight information were working was an executive lounge. I went up there and asked about my flight. She glanced at her computer display and said, ‘It’s on time.’ My flight did exist, but for some weird reason, the airport screen showed information only for selected flights. I had scurried around the terminal for this absurd system. I finally arrived at Montreal after a one-and-a-half-hour flight. A cab ran on the freeway at 75 miles per hour through the night and downtown Montreal appeared in 20 minutes. It was the same freeway on which a cab carried me in the dark before dawn seven years ago when I was leaving for Japan. I remember I wished upon the moon that I could return here someday, as I had no way to find the money to come back. The moon satisfied my wish, I supposed. I checked in a hotel and looked out of the window. Beneath the window was Sherbrooke Street where many people were still passing by. Above the town lights of the city, I saw the cross on the Mont-Royal that was lighted up and floated in the dark sky. It was a view that I felt like I was strayed into a dreamland. I thought my bold decision to spend money for this trip was right. It would be a big loss not to come to such a beautiful place like this when it exists. I literally fell down to bed to sleep since I was completely exhausted from the 24-hour trip from home to here and the turmoil at Toronto Airport. Next morning, I woke up early because of jet lag. The first thing I decided to do in Montreal wasn’t to get a rest in the hotel room or to take a walk in the city. It was going to casino to win back all the money I had spent there in the past…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.552

After I got my boarding ticket at the check-in counter in LAX, I was headed for the security gate. As a typical, old-fashioned Japanese, I strictly separate the floor on which I step with my shoes off from the one with my shoes on. Without my shoes, I wouldn’t let my feet touch the outside or public floor where people walk with their shoes on. The security gate where I need to take off my shoes on the dirty public floor is a torture for me. My custom there is putting additional socks as covers over the ones I’m wearing, and take them off when my feet return into my shoes. By that way, my socks stay clean without touching the dirty surface directly, which means my home floor also stays clean when I come home and take off my shoes at the entrance. Because of my peculiar custom, my preparation in the line for the security check is quite hectic. I’m pulling a new pair of socks out of my bag, taking off my shoes and my jacket, putting on the socks over my socks, taking off a pin and a wristwatch, putting them in the basket along with a smartphone. The security machine at LAX was state-of-the-art that I had never been through before and had seen only in a news show on TV. When I go through the usual security gate, a beep often goes off for some reason. I wondered how many beeps would go off when I was completely scanned with this high-tech machine. I went in the machine with spread arms and legs tensely. Except that a security worker told me to turn my pendants around to my back, I got through without beeping. I was relieved and taking my stuff from the basket when I noticed my partner had forgotten his pen and his money clip in the basket next to mine. I scrambled his stuff and put back on my jacket and shoes at the bench. Then, the scare hit me. My wristwatch was gone! My favorite, dear watch that I had put onto my jacket was missing. I remembered a man was looking around restlessly beside the pick-up lane. Did he take it? I also remembered a young woman was looking into several baskets behind me. Was it her? Or, one of the workers who scanned the belongings took it while scanning? All at once, everyone around me looked like a thief and I was surrounded by evil people. I had forgotten that this was Los Angeles. Someone must have stolen it. The watch was not expensive, but it was a rare Mickey Mouse one I found at an online auction site and I was attached to it. This trip had been going so well without mishap, and it was so close to be ended successfully. I was almost there. I was shocked that something bad happened in the end and ruined the whole trip. To me, what was gone was not just my watch but my good impression for people here and this trip altogether. I was utterly disappointed at this sad ending for the trip. I told my partner that the inevitable finally happened and my watch was stolen. He suggested I should report it somewhere. I had already given up but went back to the gate reluctantly to make a useless attempt. In a jam of people around the gate, I managed to talk to a security worker. Although I had expected an indifferent response, he listened to me intently and showed sympathy for me. He kindly figured out what to do and told me to go to the nearby counter. A person at the counter showed me the lost-and-found items. There was even a bunch of keys among them, but not my watch. She went away to the distant shelves while I was standing dazed and faint with a shock and despair. A different worker walked past beside me carrying a basket. I casually glanced at it and couldn’t believe my own eyes. Sitting on the bottom of the basket was none other than my watch! I shouted, “That’s mine! That’s mine!” I was jumping, with my arms waving high above me like a banzai-style. The workers gave a wry smile and brought the basket to me. I uttered thank-you for a million times. It wasn’t stolen but merely my fault. It turned out that I had paid attention to my partner’s left stuff too much to double-check mine. The watch had slipped from onto my jacket to the corner of the basket and been left there. The basket then quickly had been returned to the entrance of the gate with my watch in it, but no one took it. I was ashamed of myself. I regarded everybody as a thief, even the security workers who were very compassionate. I was surrounded by good people and the most evil person at the security gate was me at that time…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.551

When I left Anaheim on my latest trip, I got up 6 a.m., took ‘Uber’ again and then caught a bus to LAX. I know so well that the bus to the airport seldom comes on schedule here, which made me too nervous to have room in my mind that should feel sad to leave California. I took the bus because I had purchased the ticket by a round-trip discount, but I thought I would most likely use ‘Uber’ for my next trip. That thought told me I was determined to come back here. Actually, I was searching for a way to move in and live here somehow throughout the whole bus ride. After I arrived at the airport, I joined a long line for check-in. I heard a conversation between a customer in line and an airline employee. “Excuse me, I need to show this passport of mine for the flight, right?” “Let me see, well, no, yours has expired.” “Whaaaat?” I was envious of those easygoing people who hadn’t cared to see an expiration date on their passport up until they got to the check-in counter for an overseas travel. I started to prepare for this trip well over eight months ago. A couple with a baby was checking in before me. The counter person said to a woman, “You can’t check in as your name on the reservation is different from the one on your passport.” She replied, “That’s OK. I made a reservation by my maiden name, that’s all.” “That’s not OK, you can’t take the flight.” “Whaaaat?” The couple and the airline employee began to make numerous phone calls. At one point, they were required a marriage certificate. At another, the woman resorted to pity for an exception, saying, “We have a baby.” Every try didn’t seem to work though. I was envious of those people who casually made a flight reservation. When I made it online, I checked the spelling of my own name on the screen at least ten times. As too many careless passengers occupied the counter, it took so long to have my turn to check in. I intended to show people how smoothly things could go by careful preparation I had carried out. Then I was told, “Both your flight and the next one on the schedule have been cancelled.” “Whaaaat?” It was a clear fine day without a speck of cloud. I wondered when this airline’s planes flew if they didn’t in such nice weather like this. The good thing was, the flight was to Vancouver and I had purposely moved an international flight to Japan to the next day so that I took it with any delays since I didn’t trust this airline. Two flights were cancelled altogether and the next one to Vancouver was five hours later. The counter person told me that the larger airplane would be used because of the two cancellations and my seat would be in the business class. I was also allowed to use the executive lounge. To me, five-hour waiting would be nothing considering the business class and the lounge. I was even grateful for the cancellations. I was headed for the security gate cheerfully with my head full of the coming goodies, and never prepared for the biggest ordeal of my trip that had awaited me next…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.547

When I lived in California and flew from Japan to LAX regularly a long time ago, its immigration was like procedure for getting in a prison. Going through it had been tense confrontations with an arrogant authority at a dark place. The immigration at Vancouver Airport is distinctively different from that, which is the main reason I purposely stop over there on the way to LAX. It’s a bright, cheerful space with a waterfall, streams and greenery. It looks like a shopping mall rather than the immigration. Another reason for me to stop over and stay the night in Vancouver is the flight time. It takes ten hours from Japan to Vancouver, which is one hour shorter than to Los Angeles. In my experience, this one hour is decisive for the amount of fatigue. After I got off the plane in Vancouver on my latest trip, I bought food at Tim Hortons in the airport. There was a line at the counter and I joined it watching the menu board above. Because I’m short and my eyesight was blurred from a long flight, I had a difficulty to see the menu. A woman ahead of me in the line noticed and kindly suggested stepping off the line for a moment and getting closer to the menu. As I hesitated, she insisted saying, “That’s okay! Go ahead!” I thought she implied that she would save the position in the line for me. By the time I was getting back to where I had been, more people had joined the line. I was standing in front of the kind woman expecting she would let me cut into the line. She said nothing and ignored me. I looked into her face and she avoided an eye contact by looking around and staring at the ceiling in an awkward way. People in the line behind her looked at me dubiously to see if I would cut in. I felt deceived and went back to the tail of the line. When I was finally handed what I had ordered, two muffins were missing. I told the salesperson and he stared at the register that I had no idea told him what. He grabbed a muffin and gave it to me. Still, one more was missing. The same process was repeated and I got the right order. Kind, but unreliable. That’s Canada I know, all right. As a result of my choice for a cheap hotel, my sleep was disturbed by a loud noise of the air conditioner. I turned it off, and then there were noises of cars running on the street right down the window. I woke up every time a big truck passed by. I got up 3 a.m. next morning, packed and checked out. The hotel boasted its free hot breakfast but my departure was too early for the serving time. Thankfully, there were bags of to-go-breakfast at the front desk and my partner and I grabbed one for each of us. Back at the airport, we checked in and I checked my suitcase. Then I realized we were having the security check right after that. In front of a ‘No liquid, No produce’ sign, I opened the bag of breakfast. It had an apple and a bottled water. I just couldn’t stand to throw them away, but wasn’t allowed to go back to the concourse to have them either. My partner offered our bottled drinks to the airport staff who walked by. They thought about it for a while but declined politely due to the rule. My greed for free breakfast made us gobble them in a hurry in front of the security check. I had never had one apple and 500 ml of water that fast. I got on the plane to Los Angeles and was taking breath in my seat when a flight attendant spilled orange juice all over my partner’s brand-new pants. They were his favorite pants that he would wear all the way to the end of this trip. His face looked both crying and laughing. The plane approached Los Angeles and the familiar sight of brownish, scorched-looking land came into my view. Good and bad memories flooded into my mind. Right before the touchdown, I saw the signature structure of two arches and the control tower of LAX. Totally unexpectedly and suddenly, a surprising feeling seized me. I felt I was home. I felt as if I had returned from a long trip of ten years to my hometown that I had given up coming back again. It was a warm feeling that I had never had before. My eyes were filled with tears. I had never understood those who talked about how wonderful homecoming was. I didn’t know what they were talking about though I was born in Kyoto and have lived away from it. I have never felt anything special every time I go back to Kyoto. I just feel indifferent or rather disgusting. Coming back to Los Angeles, I understood what homecoming is all about for the first time in my life. If I had been traveling alone, I would have cried out loud. I was stunned at the discovery of my hometown. The plane landed and a tear of joy was on my face as I finally came home…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.545

I woke up at 5:30 a.m. on the day that I set out for my first travel to U.S. in about ten years. Some last-minute preparations before going to bed and tension granted me only a three-hour sleep. Considering the coming ten-hour flight and the time difference, my next sleep in bed would be 30 hours later. I remembered my old days when I had been to U.S. several times a year. I always departed with lack of sleep and arrived with a strong headache or vomit. I was afraid of being sick again this time and added a new item to my bursting worry bank. I set off on foot to the train station near my apartment. When my partner who accompanied me on this trip bought train tickets, he found a 100-yen coin left in the ticket machine. He told me excitingly, “Look at this! 100 yen! You hardly ever pick this big amount!” He was all smiles as if the 100-yen coin would promise a successful trip. After the local train, I took the bullet train to Tokyo and arrived at Haneda Airport two more transfers later. My connecting domestic flight would depart from this airport that amazed me with the new convenient technology. There was no need to check in at the counter. We just went straight into the security gate without boarding tickets, had our mileage cards scanned with a device that gave us a piece of paper like a receipt on which our flight and seat numbers were printed, and went on to the boarding gate. It was as easy as getting on a train. I flew to Kansai Airport that I had never been before. After I received my suitcase I had sent beforehand and dollar bills I had exchanged online, I was headed toward the check-in counter of the airline I had booked. The airline has two brands, the regular one and the low-cost carrier. My flight was the low-cost one called ‘Rouge’. Although their website said we could check in with a machine, those machines were deserted and lines of people were formed at the counter instead. I had prepped for a use for the machine online, which was a waste. Since the airline has two brands, I wasn’t sure which line I should join. The airline worker approached and asked me which flight I would take. When I said “Rouge,” she repeated dubiously, “Ro..u..ge…?” She sounded like she heard the word for the first time. I was alarmed. Those who were checking in here now were most likely on the Rouge flight. But the airline worker apparently didn’t know her company’s flight. As she directed me the wrong line any way, I looked for the correct one by myself and my turn to check in came. I handed over my passport and my reservation was on the computer screen. Looking at it, the woman said, “You’re going to Las Vegas, right?” My blood ran cold. My destination was Los Angeles. What had happened to my reservation? Was there neither ‘Rouge’ nor Los Angeles? I said in a trembling voice, “No, to LAX.” She made sure of my reservation in her computer screen and said again, “Your destination is Las Vegas.” When I froze at her words, she threw me another blow by saying, “Oh, I see. You’re going to Las Vegas the next day!” My worry bank ruptured and I felt I was going black. The whole itinerary was disrupted and I couldn’t avoid going to Las Vegas. I regretted from the bottom of my heart that I had chosen this airline. I braced myself to end my trip even before leaving Japan. Then, beside me who was knocked out and almost unconscious, my partner said to her calmly, “We’re going to Los Angeles.” She looked in her screen again, nodded, gave us boarding tickets according to my reservation as though nothing had happened. The fact was that she thought LAX stood for Las Vegas International Airport. She was a professional sitting at the check-in counter and seeing customers’ reservations every day, and yet didn’t know LAX. I was about to leave Japan and cross the Pacific by a plane of an airline like this. Now I realized that I was standing on the edge. It was time to jump…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.543

I purchased air tickets to California six months before departure when they were on a limited-time discount sale. Two months before the flight, I received an e-mail from the airline company. It said that the schedules of my flight had been changed. The changes were whopping six hours for both departure and arrival. I was very shocked. I had already booked and bought tickets of connecting domestic flights because the earlier I booked, the more discounted the tickets were. Six hours was too big to adjust my existing reservations and I had to cancel them and get new tickets for the altered flights. Six hours late for arrival meant that I couldn’t catch the last bullet train to ride home after flying domestically, and had to stay at a hotel near the airport to take the domestic flight next day. Those new domestic flight tickets were priced higher as the dates were closer. Added cancellation fees to them, I paid $200 more to what I had originally paid. The hotel stay added $150 to that. One e-mail cost me $350 in total. A month before the flight, I received another e-mail from the airline. It said that the flight schedules had returned to the original ones. I almost fainted. All the fuss I had made was completely unnecessary and I had just thrown money away. It nullified $350 and time I had spent a month before, and I had to go back to my original plan of the connecting domestic flights. I cancelled and booked all over again, with the higher cancellation fees and the higher-priced tickets as the dates were even closer. The total extra cost soared astronomically. I had flown overseas many times in my life, but an outrageous thing like this had never happened before. My partner who will accompany me on my trip to U.S. called the airline. Their phone line was an information number that a caller needed to pay. They made us pay even for complaint. After a long argument, the airline reluctantly agreed to pay for half of what we had paid extra. But there were neither apologies nor recompense for the trouble we had been through and the time we had spent. They didn’t let my partner talk to the manager for the reason that he or she could be reached by a fax. The flight is only a few days away and I’ve been praying not to receive any more e-mail from the airline about another schedule change. Since I will fly across the Pacific by this ‘Air Shambles’ soon, so many worries have mounted. Do they maintain their airplanes properly? Do they examine their pilots’ mental states? Do they let their cargo handlers nap inside the plane too? My overseas travel has officially begun before the actual departure with exhaustion from arrangements and troubles. And I know I will pile up mountainous absurdities and problems during the trip, and will have a simper smile on my face as a result of excess anger by the time of a return. It crossed my mind that I’d better cancel the flights and the hotels and call off the whole trip. That would save a lot of money and energy. But something in me constantly shouts I need to go. Something tells me that if I got cozy in an easy Japanese life, my brain would die and my life would be over here. The sense of taking action and moving forward feels so good. That’s why I like to go abroad despite all those difficulties…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.542

These days, I’m busy preparing for a trip to the U.S. that I will visit for the first time in ten years. Although the destination is the same area as I used to live in, ten years is long enough to change everything dramatically and make my knowledge obsolete. Numerous new hotels have opened and their rooms are WiFi-ready. The transportation from the airport has changed. Since it’s now a smartphone era, check-in for the flight and the hotel is done by it. We don’t need to carry a digital camera anymore and it turned out that an app for a smartphone dispatches a hired car instead of calling for a cab, which I’ll definitely use there. I got a gizmo called an overseas SIM card that converted my cheap smartphone into an essential companion with which I could make a phone call and get data communication in the U.S. The biggest change I noticed above all was price hikes. Inflation in the U.S. and depreciation of yen has soared all the prices and I won’t feel like buying or eating out there when I think of the price converted to yen. But there are some things that haven’t changed. A copy of an itinerary of a return flight is necessary for the immigration at the airport to prove that the return flight has been booked and paid. They check an itinerary copy instead of a physical ticket, which can be forged easily if someone wants to, and is therefore meaningless. Even so that system stays unchanged, and I’m pretty sure so does an arrogant attitude of a US immigration officer. I turned to my journal of ten years ago and I had written there that I wish I could come back to the States before I die. It’s good the wish did come true. It’s even better that my motivation to go to the States no matter how costly it is didn’t disappear. People can become their different selves in ten years either by dulling themselves or by growing themselves in it. In my case, I live a life with so many changes that I wouldn’t have imagined ten years ago. But on the other hand, it remains the same that I’m cheap and desperately make ends meet every day…