Newly Founded Hometown

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…

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The Return to Anaheim by Hidemi Woods

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Fearful Landing

The flight to Vancouver where I stopped over on the way to Los Angeles was unexpectedly comfortable. The plane wasn’t crowded and the flight attendants were all nice and attentive.

In my old days that I had traveled between Japan and U.S. back and forth every three months, I used to fly an awful airline that I chose for its cheap fare. That airline’s flight attendants were generally terrible. They were chewing gums and walking with stepping on the back of their pumps. They threw a bag of peanuts at a passenger and a requested drink was often off. I once witnessed they crammed a large number of cans and bottles of drinks that they hadn’t given out the passengers into their own bags right before landing. They must have had a spree with them in a hotel room that night. When I asked for a small bottle of brandy once, I was told it had been all out. A man sitting behind me asked for it right after that, and the same attendant pleasantly handed it to him. I asked my partner if it was racism. He told me that it wasn’t a grave thing like that but the attendant simply couldn’t lie twice in a row and had to give it unwillingly. That airline no longer exists after it went bankrupt several years later and was taken over by a rival airline.

The flight I took this time was completely different. Adding to the good service, it wasn’t a bumpy flight and I didn’t feel sick as I had worried before. The only glitch I had was when dinner was served. Although I had requested beef beforehand, an attendant said to me, “We have extra chicken, too. Would you like it?” I reckoned that I could have chicken added to my beef and said yes. And I ended up having just chicken, not beef.

Beside that small thing, I had enjoyed the flight all the way, which was quite rare to me. It almost blotted out all the unpleasant happenings before departure and I even got to like this low-cost carrier. But as always, nothing goes so well without an incident when it comes to me.

It happened when the plane landed on Vancouver. The seat belt signs were turned off and the attendants were preparing for the doors. The passengers were standing on the aisles with relieved expression on their faces and their bags in their hands, waiting for the door to open. As the door opened, instead of the ground staff, half a dozen men and women dressed in black rushed inside the plane. They were wearing bulletproof vests on which the letters POLICE were written and carrying weapons that seemed firearms and others. The air inside the plane instantly froze. The flight attendants looked surprised too. One of the police shouted “Everyone, go back to your seat and stay there!” We all sat in our seats again, with a straight back for some reason. No one was talking and they were just looking ahead with shifty eyes. The plane was filled with extreme tension in a complete silence.

I remembered a news sequence I watched on ABC World News a couple of weeks ago. It eerily looked just like this situation. The police rushed inside the plane aiming guns and it also occurred in Canada. I began to feel panicky, imagining that a shootout would start in any moment or a plane would explode. I thought I knew something bad would eventually happen. I would have never set my feet on North America with this trip after all as troublesome preparation had hinted. As I was being swallowed by fears, a young woman appeared from the back of the plane. She was walking with both her arms held by two policemen, accompanied by another policeman who was carrying her bag. After they left the plane, the rest of the police asked some questions to the flight attendants and got out.

Then all the passengers were allowed to get off the plane. My partner and I finally reached North America and took in air of Vancouver. I wasn’t sure what happened to the woman, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t easy for me to get here…

Episode from

The Return to Anaheim by Hidemi Woods

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Stormy Departure

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…

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The Return to Anaheim by Hidemi Woods

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Air Shambles

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…

Episode from

The Return to Anaheim by Hidemi Woods

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Things Changed and Unchanged

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…

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The Return to Anaheim by Hidemi Woods

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My Hotel Choice

Since I booked a low-cost carrier flight to LAX from Japan, now I’ve looking for a hotel to stay in California. The best scenario is to find a high-class hotel at a bargain price, but it’s not easy to come across such a good deal. I have to decide between a cheap hotel and a moderate one.

My partner and I happened to stay at a low-class hotel in Japan the other day to shop at the outlet mall that is far from home. The stay cost $45 per room including breakfast for two. The room was very small and there was hardly any space to put our bags and stuff.

It had two beds and the smaller one was set above the bigger one like a bunk bed. I was going to sleep in the upper bed, but couldn’t climb the ladder which too-slim, round pole rungs hurt the back of my feet unbearably. Although my partner managed to reach the narrow bunk bed, he was afraid of falling all night long and woke up exhausted with a shallow sleep.

That hotel boasted a huge bathtub. In their website and on their signboard out front, they clamorously touted the size of a bathtub and the comfort of the bath time. Because I saw the description of their bathtubs that they said are so huge and we could stretch our legs in relaxingly so many times, the tub had grown gigantic in my imagination. Then I found just a normal-sized tub in the room.

The restaurant to have a free breakfast was a small space, looking like an old cheap food court. TV was on instead of the background music like a cheap bar. But there I showed my real ability as a cheap person to enjoy a free food. It was an all-you-can-eat breakfast with a wide variety that was delicious. I literally ate all I could eat and felt full and almost sick. But we were the only ones who appreciated it so much. It was a weekday and almost all the guests were businessmen on a business trip. There was no female guest except for me. It seemed they didn’t have enough time for breakfast in any case. Some of them just gulped orange juice and dashed out. Some sat on the tip of their chairs and swallowed down food on their small plates hurriedly.

Aside from the breakfast, the cheap hotel deprived us of sleep and exhausted us for this stay. When I stayed at a hotel like that in Florida a long time ago, I had the biggest fleabite in my life. These experiences may tell me not to choose a cheap hotel for a trip to US. On the other hand, the cost of staying at a moderate hotel gives me a headache…

Episode from

The Return to Anaheim by Hidemi Woods

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Prologue - Desire to Go to California

Photo by Mos Sukjaroenkraisri on Unsplash

I came across the special offer on the ticket of a low-cost carrier on the Internet. I was going to take a trip to California in the holiday season of next year and have saved money for it. But to take this time-sale offer, I decided to bring forward the trip to next May and booked it. Even though the fare is drastically discounted, the one between Japan and US is still incredible for a cheap person like me who spares money by the cent every day.

Add to that the hotel stay and the total is so astronomical that it almost makes me faint. Not only the cost, but also the plan itself seems to be fantasy. The flight is six months away and there are too many uncertainties for the plan to take shape.

What if an Ebola epidemic spread all over the world? Humans might become extinct by the time of my flight. I wouldn’t exist let alone the flight would be cancelled. What if Japan fell into default because of a chain of its poor economic policies? Or, what if a strong earthquake hit Tokyo as a rumor has been going about? I would be scouting around food and supplies instead of packing for the trip. What if I got sick? What if terrorism occurred and the airport security got tighter than ever? It would be unbearable since I was once stopped at the security check as their scanner spotted a coil on my notebook in my bag. What if passengers on my flight started a fight over reclining the seat and the plane made an emergency landing? What if I said a careless joke to a flight attendant and got arrested as a terrorist?

By booking the flight, I paid a large sum of money and started the next six months until the flight with various kinds of worries and all of what-ifs. Nevertheless, both the considerable expense and all those anxieties can’t beat my surprisingly strong desire to go to California. What I dread most is to become dumb by staying put in a stifling, easy, unchanging country like Japan…

Episode from

The Return to Anaheim by Hidemi Woods

Kindle and Audiobook available at Amazon.com