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.550

I tried some novelty that people call ‘Uber’ for the first time during my stay in California. I heard Japan also has it in the Tokyo metropolitan area, but it’s unavailable in the remote mountainous town where I live. Although I had some trouble signing up and using its app at first, I was thrilled when I saw a car actually pulled up right in front of me. I felt as if I was in a future world since I got a ride by just tapping a smartphone for a couple of times. There’s no need to call a cab company any more. No need to calculate a tip or pay to a driver either. The car was clean and the driver was courteous. And the fare for this safe, worry-free ride was incredibly low! I wondered what kind of person had devised such a remarkable service like this and admired Americans afresh. In Japan, there are too many government regulations or restrictions or vested interests that prevent new ideas and services from materializing quickly. That makes people in Japan give up easily and reluctant to try something new. They are resigned to living in patience. Compared to them, Americans are far more challenge-oriented, which always impresses me. I have had some unpleasant experiences when I used a conventional cab, but each ride of Uber was pleasant one during this trip. I used it for several times and all the drivers happened to have a positive attitude. One of the drivers immigrated with his family from Nigeria and now lives in Anaheim. He told me he had thrown away everything he achieved back in Nigeria for opportunities and possibilities in U.S. With a twinkle in his eye, he said that people could do anything here as long as they’ve got money and that he is working hard for his children’s college tuition. I gradually understood why I had to travel to U.S. by spending what little money I had and by getting over numerous troubles. Hope still exists here. When I was born in an old city Kyoto, hope had long gone. I left home for the Japanese capital city Tokyo, but it no longer remains there either. But here, I saw hope that makes people go forward. I got back to my hotel feeling it was a right decision to take this trip. I watched a twilight view out of the window. While Japan is densely populated with houses and condominiums closely line back to back, houses here had enough space between them and plenty of greenery with broad roads around. I was imagining how comfortable it would be to live here when a siren of a police car became louder and stopped right beneath the window. The police officers began to stretch yellow tape that was familiar in movies and TV shows. Many more police cars arrived and the road was blocked. Finally, a SWAT team showed up with a big black van. I turned on TV for a local evening news show, but it didn’t mention anything about this, which meant it was too small and usual to be covered. Thinking I might witness something and be murdered for it, or a ricochet might hit me, I drew the curtains and pulled away from the window…

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.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…