2 posts tagged “travel”

After a rather un-restful sleep I woke to the sound of the weird alarm on my now-defunct cellphone. I packed a few things, unpacked a few others and got ready for the long trip ahead. I arrived at the airport quite early, but I like being early for things like this. I was so numb from sleep deprivation that the excitement didn't hit me at all, even when waiting in the long line to go through US Customs.

Grabbed a cup of coffee at 'bucks. I was kind of wanting one last Timmie's, but the new store wasn't open yet in the brand new Pier F in Terminal 1, so a rather bland tasting grande mild had to do. I took a seat at the gate with an hour to go before boarding.

And waited for 2 hours. The flight departed late from Chicago to Toronto due to some technical problem and caused the return trip to leave almost an hour behind schedule. I got a little panicked, but since there was very little I could even do about it, I took the reassurance from the counter staff that we'd make it to O'Hare by 11:30 for what it was worth and calmed down some.

I was relieved that there was another flight not an even an hour after my 12:05 plane, and when I deplaned in Chicago, I ran to the next gate just in time. The staff informed me my bags might come on the following flight anyway, so I may be waiting a while for my massive bags to show up at Narita.

I say that in the present tense since I am actually writing this as we breach the dateline. So, technically, it's tomorrow, but today. I'm confused, but what can I do ... To me, it's still Wednesday, but it's Thursday and will be so when I land in 4.5hrs.

Flying over the Yukon was beautiful. I never realized just how mountainous it was. It did look extremely cold, though, with the weakened sunlight coming in at a strange angle from the south.

And now the jackass in front of me has reclined his chair and writing on a laptop has become rather fucking annoying. Such is the way of Economy.

When I booked the tickets, I asked for vegetarian meals. At the time, I wasn't eating meat at all due to a food poisoning incident a few weeks prior. After seeing what the non-special meal was, I'm glad I did anyway. I'm sure it was fine, but the anemic-looking chicken wasn't terribly appealing. Not that my, well, I don't know what to call it, other than a meal, was much to write about, but here's a photo. The only thing I wished my meal had was the carrot cake.

Instead, my vegetarian, no, actually fully vegan meals, had an appropriate vegan chocolate chip cookie. I didn't know prepackaged vegan food like that existed, apparently it does. But that was before the Yukon, somewhere over the mid-west states, I think Wisconsin.

Over Alaska we were served another small meal. Again, I was glad that I pre-booked an alternative. Mine turned out to be a cold rice/bean/corn combo with some tomatoes and cilantro and a small, dry pita. Everyone else was given, at least back here in cheap-class, instant noodles. Now, I have nothing against them, but, well, they looked rather, shall we say, shit.

Now, just past the dateline and the Aleutian Islands, I'm staring out at the Bering Sea and clouds at the -50ºC air around the plane at 10,000m and the ceaseless sunlight. To my body, it's 10:15pm, but my senses tell me otherwise. I have no idea what time it is now, where I am, but I know it's just after noon in Tokyo.

One of the flight attendants is originally from Kobe. His english is very good, and he joked that he'd be taking classes from me, soon, as he learned through the school I am planning to teach at. His stoic demeanor and stature reminds me of my Aikido Sensei back in Toronto. Takeda-sama always seemed so classically Japanese to me, but perhaps it's just a thing with men of that generation.

I've now arrived at my hotel in Tokyo after an hour and half of trains and lugging my stuff up and down a lot of stairs. I started writing after I went to grab a bite to eat at a place where I didn't really know what I was ordering. Good thing it had pictures. The whole point and shoot thing works when getting food, at least at whatever kind of place it was. The jet-lag is so weird, I couldn't even figure out how to get inside until a kind guy going in showed me that the doors are touch-operated. Slidey little things with a touch pad on the front.

After that, I passed out at 10pm local time in my small room and now it's 4am here. Or something. I'm wide awake now and there's basically nothing I can do about it. Time to go for a walk.

 ...

So now that I've gotten a little more ... conscious ... it's about 8am and I finally have a chance to post this from the hotel cafe. I walked past the Imperial Palace, but it was very dark. I'll have pictures and words later.

Picked up my visa today. Now all there is left is getting my crap packed up and to getting on a plane ... 81 days!

Update: oh, and while I was out picking up my visa, my copy of this arrived. How apropos.