A day of travel

Yesterday (it is 6am sunday here in Japan right now, more on that later) was my big travel day. And what a day it was.

Plane departed from Vancouver to Narita (Tokyo's Airport) at 1245 pm Friday afternoon. Told to be there three hours early, so got up and was at the airport by 10 am. Check in went smoothly, except they told me I had to pay more money for my three bags. D'oh, should have checked that before leaving. That third bag has been costly for me. but I just don't know how anyone packed all of their stuff into two bags. Oh, also the lady told me I was on an aisle seat and I asked if there was any way I could have a window seat. Which she found for me. They are so nice the Japanese. I love a window seat, get to look out over the landscape when you are taking off and landing, and once you are in flight you have somewhere to lean while you sleep instead of on your neighbor.

Vancouver airport had free wifi so I got to waste some of the wait time surfing around. Got a seat looking out the window and was watchign the ramp apes do their thing. I don't miss that job at all. But, I am a dork and liked to compare what they were doing with how we did things back at BWI.

So, flight from Vancouver to Narita. Flight lasted approximately forever (or 10 hrs) and it was a cattle car of people on that plane. Actually, the flight wasn't too bad. The first 3 or 4 hours flew by (literally! ha ha) because they kept feeding us. Everytime I would try to go to sleep they would come by with drinks or snacks or food and then come to collect your trash after every single service. Lunch was a chicken and rice thing. Eh. And some cold noodles and soy sauce, pretty good. And the dessert was this lemon merange thing that was fantastic. I hope that is the kind of desserts they have over here. Yum!

There were tvs in the back of each headrest, so for the entire flight I just watched movies and napped. The movies would loop over and over for the whole ten hours, so over the course of the flight I saw/napped through "Iron Man," "The Chronicles of Narnia 2," "What happens in Vegas (that Ashton Kutcher Cameron Diaz movie whatever it was called, it wasn't that bad actually)," and "Kung Fu Panda." For the first half of the flight I was all good, eating watching tv and napping.

Then it started to get to me. My legs and hips began to cramp up. The smell of people all around me. The monotony of it all. The second half of that trip was playing thru the pain. For awhile I just wanted to get up and stretch but the people sitting beside me were asleep and i didn't want to wake them, especially because they were Japanese and didn't speak a word of English as far as I could tell, and they just would have been apologetic and I would have felt like an ass.

Alright, so that part of the flight sucked. but I made it thru it and got to Narita. At Narita, and this is the fun part of my schedule, Geos booked a connecting flight to Nagoya that left 1 hour and 25 minutes after the flight landed. In that time I had to go through immigration, collect my bags, go through customs, go to the new flight's counter and check in, go through security, and make it to the plane.

Well, that didn't happen. Now, when they booked the flight our trainers told us (there were three of us trying to make the same connecting flight) that we would be at the front of the plane so that we would be first off. I think when I requested a window seat I got moved to the back of the plane, because I was about five rows from the back of the plane. Suffice it to say, I was not the first person off of the plane. And then i didn't catch the first shuttle to the main terminal (oh, did I mention that the international terminal at Narita is a satellite terminal?) so I was about 40 people behind the other two people going through immigration. And then at immigration it seems like I was placed in the slowest line of all time. My guy was really inspecting my passport and other required papers, fingerprinted me, took my picture, asked me some questions, and so on. by the time I got through immigration I had lost sight of the other two connectors.

My bags were already there, so that was good. Then at customs the guy stopped me and asked if he could search the bags. Or course I couldn't say no. That took another five minutes. And by the time I got out of customs it was 10 minutes until the plane was scheduled to depart. And of course, as I am going down to the check in counter (which was like a half a mile away on the other side of the terminal of course) I heard my name being paged over the intercom to come to the boarding area. But I still needed to check my bags. And by the time I got to the counter and explained my situation, it was too late. I had missed my flight.

Not really a problem, except that my area leader, Bruce, was meeting the three of us on the other end of the flight at Nagoya and now I would be holding him up. Oh well, nothing I could do about that now.

I got booked onto the new flight, aisle seat (but I wasn't going to say anything this time) and waited for about an hour and a half. Personally, I think that would have been the better flight to have booked all three of us on in the beginning just so stuff like what happened to me wouldn't happen.

Got a snack. Have to remember to take pictures of snacks. the bag showed a pizza and I thought it might be either a) pizza flavored crackers or b) something like a lunchables where i could build my own pizza thingy. It was neither. It was pizza flavored cheez like strips. Not the best snack ever, but I was hungry so down it went.

Oh, and Japanese ramp workers. They have to wear hard hats! And their uniforms are completely white, white shirt and white cargo pants. As filthy as I got working the ramp at BWI I have no idea how they can be wearing all white. I would have been gray the first week. And they have stuff that is way different than American ramp equipment. I won't bore you with the details of their equipment, but I found it quite interesting to watch.

Just as we were about to begin boarding the connecting flight, it started to pour down rain. buckets and buckets of rain and lightning. It was impressive actually. but i felt bad for the guys havign to work out in it. Believe me, that ramp job is never worse than when it is pouring down rain.

I got on board the plane, which was the exact same 747 as the international flight and started to make my way back to my seat. And I kept passing business class seats. I was like, wow, there sure are a lot more business class seats on this plane than the first one. Then I got to my seat, business class seat! Turns out the entire plane is business class seating. Two seats per side, three in the middle, instead of 3 per side 5 in the middle like on the first flight. And the legroom! And the seat the reclined all the way down without disturbing the people behind you since there was a hard plastic back between seats! And the legroom! It was amazing. I wish they would do that with all planes. I know they won't make as much money because they are losing whole rows of seats not to mention the seats per row they lose, but my god is it nice. If I had flown on that plane first I would have had the best flight ever. I talked to the people who made their connecting flight, yeah, they didn't have those seats. Missing that plane was a godsend.

Because....we sat at the gate after boarding for over an hour due to the thunderstorm. So not only was I on a later flight, now it was delayed. At this point it was close to 8 pm local time Saturday evening. And I had been up for nearly 22 hours. I crashed hard. I don't remember taking off on that plane. I remember pulling back from the gate, and I must have fallen asleep right after that. I woke up about 20 minutes before we landed (only a 50 minute flight) and felt okay actually. Got my second wind.

Landed. Went through customs. Again! I have had my bags manhandled and inspected by more people over the last three days. And was met by Bruce. Who didn't seem really upset by the whole thing at all. In fact, he seems like a pretty upbeat guy in general. which is a good thing to see after a full day of flying.

He took me to a hotel in Nagoya (about a 20 min. train ride from the airport) and invited me out for a drink. Of course, I could use a drink after that long day. Went to a "British Pub," did I mention Bruce is British, and had a few pints with him and some of his friends from the area.

My hotel room. Tiny first off. Of course, I figured it would be. and they have interesting cost saving measures, like to get lights in your room you have to insert the room key into a special socket above the light switch. and apparently they don't have air conditioning because it was about ninety degrees in that room. And that is why I woke up at 5 am after going to sleep at 1. That and the fact that I still think it is the middle of the afternoon because I am on East coast time.

Turns out it does have ac. But the control is a remote written in Japanese and I thought it was the tv remote. Which does not have a remote as far as I can tell. So basically I could have had a good night's sleep had I been more willing to mess around with stuff.

Oh well, at least I got a chance to use my own computer for a while. I am probably going to be using public computers for a bit, until I get the internet hooked up at my apartment, so I don't know how long the next couple of posts will be.

Today I go to Tsuruga and my apartment. I think I am going to sleep all day long. Damn the Jet Lag!