On the Plane

I am writing from above the clouds. We're still over North America somewhere, but soon there will be nothing but ocean in every direction. It's been a marathon of a trip already... Last night I decided that I wouldn't sleep before I left for the airport. I figured that it would be a good idea because Japan is 13 hours ahead of Canada, so I would be staying up through the Japanese afternoon. At about 2:30 in the morning I went for a 10 kilometer jog. At the beginning I thought that I wouldn't make it because I was exhausted, but I warmed up after a while and felt great. We left for the airport at 7 am because I wanted to be the first person to check in for the flight. They had warned us that they might begin to refuse passengers' additional luggage if the flight was really full, and I wanted to bring my bike with me...I figured that they couldn't tell the first passenger that the flight was getting overloaded. Shortly after arriving I checked in and said my goodbyes to my Dad, brother and sister. They helped me with my luggage as far as customs would allow, but I still had a marathon of procedures to get through with a 70 lb bike box, two 50 lb suitcases, a 40 lb carry-on and my computer bag. So my family helped me pack a trolly with all of my luggage and sent me on my way. I enter the cutoms office and see three lines which were set up as follows. There were two striaght lines, one for US passport holders and one for non-US passport holders. The third line was for Canadian passport holders. It was very narrow and winding...no way I was going to fit through with the bike box. It was one of those moments where you laugh and think, “You've got to be freakin kidding me.” I attempted to negotiate the labrinthe leading to the customs agent, laughing the whole time because the line barriers only had about an inch of leeway on either side of my bike box. Needless to say, most of the barriers were on the ground by the time that I got to the customs agent. Lucky for me, I roll up to discover that I'm about to meet the least personable customs agent in Pearson Airport. Before he even says hello he look at me and then looks at my luggage cart and says, “move that right against the booth so that people can get by.” I pause, look at the luggage cart (which is already as close to the customs booth as it can be) and figure that I'll humour him by moving it forward and backward a little bit to make it look like I've pulled it in closer. After I finish, he looks at me and says, “move it in closer...people need to get through.” At this point his voice is pretty edgy and I'm wondering what the attitude is for. So I do the same thing again. Now he's looking pissed. “RIGHT against the booth!” I'm pretty confused at this point, I didn't see the need to get upset or give me attitude, but I figured that I'd try something different. So I turn the cart sideways, which ends up taking up even more of the walkway than before. Now he's really ticked off, he looks at me like I'm an idiot and gets up to do it for me, but before he can come around the desk he sees the bike box and realizes that I had been doing exactly what he was asking me to do the whole time, the problem was that the bike box prevented the cart from being pushed any closer to the booth. At this point he sits back down and says, “ahhh...I see, there's a box...sorry about that.” He then proceeds to ask me the typical customs questions.

“How long will you be in the United States?”
“I'm just passing through, I'm on my way to Japan.”
“What are you doing there?”
“I'm going to teach English.”
“How long are you staying there for?”
“One year.”
“You're going to Japan for ONE DAY?!?” (Once again the inner jerk surfaces)
“No. Oooonnnneee Yeeeeeaaar.”
“Oh.”

Needless to say, this guy was only in a trasitional phase of his career and will one day be somebody's boss. Ha! The one good thing about idiots is that they make you realize that you're not one of them. After making my way through the rest of the airport formalities, I was joined by some of the other JET participants and we hopped on our flight to Detriot. From Detroit we got onto a 747 400 series for the remainder of our trip. Currently we're about 3 hours in...9 left to go. I still don't think that it's fully sunken in that when this plane lands I'll be in Japan... I'll be on the opposite side of the world from where I grew up, in a place where I don't speak the language and in a culture that is very different from my own. There's nothing to do now but try to sleep...we'll find out very shortly whether the Janca charm transcends language and culture...

Later on...

I arrived at my hotel in Tokyo at about 9:00 pm Tokyo time. That's about 10:00 am Canadian time, which means that I was in transit for nearly 24 hours. Exhausting. I don't have the energy to write anything right now but I've got a few pics from downtown Tokyo to tide you over for now. Notice the bikes in the second picture...I love this city already!