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snarpI’m back in Japan. My flights left on time and arrived early. Both of them.
This is totally insane.
Stuff did go wrong, but only at the very beginning and very end of the process. You’re supposed to show up three hours early for international flights - in my case, FIVE AM - but Northwest’s desk in Cincinnati didn’t open until 6:00 AM. So I got Mom and 
thegeekgene and Uncle Tall out of bed at 4:30 AM for no reason.
After I got checked in and got through security at Cincinnati, I looked at the monitors and only saw Delta flights on there. I asked a security guard nearby where the Northwest flights would be. She stared at me incredulously for ten seconds and then said, “Ter… minal… two.” (I was at terminal three.) I asked another employee the same thing, and she, again, stared disgustedly at me and said, “Terminal two.”
I ran to terminal two, slighly panicking, and began to Really Panic when I got there and saw that the security line there was already ridiculously long. I got in line and waited for about ten minutes. When I got to the desk where the guy checks your ticket and passport, I said, “This is where I’m supposed to be for Northwest flights, isn’t it?”
Long, incredulous pause. “No… That’s… terminal… threeeee.” He pointed to a plastic sign nearby, which had an arrow pointing back towards terminal three, and listed the airlines that used it, one of them being Northwest. The sign for terminal two did not list Northwest.
Since clearly the human beings in the airport are too busy pausing and knitting their eyebrows in consternation to answer questions, I put my trust in the large piece of blue plastic and went back to terminal three. I asked yet another employee where I went for Northwest flights. The conversation:
TSA Person 1: “…no, we only got Delta here -”
TSA Person 2, interrupting: “What? No! Northwest and [other airline] take off from this terminal! What are you saying to her?!”
Me, very suspicious: “…but they haven’t given me a gate number, and it’s not on the monitors… the monitors here are all Delta -”
TSA Person 3: *takes my boarding pass, studies it with great passion and intensity, then looks off into space bravely* “All right. You’re going to be o-kay. What you’re going to do is, you’re going to go on that train there, get off at the first stop, look that way -” *points* “- and go up the escalators. That’s where your flight’ll be.”
So I went through security again. (”Back again! So you had so much fun the first time you decided to give it another go?” “Indeed, sir!”)
Person #3 was exactly right, and I found my gate with half an hour to spare. I suspect that he and Person #2 were freak survivors of the TSA’s dizzying employment turnover rate, and the other people I talked to hadn’t worked there long enough to figure out that, despite the “Delta” signs everywhere, not everyone going through there was on a Delta flight. (Though why they had never been briefed on that, when people are obviously going to be asking them for directions…)
After that, things went ominously smoothly until I got to Nagoya and had to go through Immigration. I knew that I wasn’t technically supposed to be signed up for six month’s worth of classes stretched across two 90-day tourist visas, and so was prepared to say that I, you know, was just planning to hang out and stuff, and wasn’t sure where I was going to stay yet, maybe I’ll crash at Don’s place, you know?
This sort of answer, it turns out, is not acceptable.
The woman who was glancing over people’s forms before they got into the line told me, “Well, you’d better decide on a place fast! Think of a cheap hotel.” Except that they needed an actual mailing address. And I had no addresses for cheap hotels. The only Japanese mailing addresses I had on me to write down were the school’s, and that of an Indian restaurant, at which I have never dined, for which I nonetheless inexplicably possessed a business card.
Finally, I just put down the school’s address and got in line. The guy looked at the address, looked at my previous tourist-visa stamp and scoldingly told me, “This is only a temporary visa. For the second time you’re taking classes, you must have a student visa!” “…yes… I know, I’ve already applied for -” “All right. Remember, you promise you’ll have it next time! Remember your promise!”
So, he let me into the country because I promised I’d have the right visa next time. I love Japan. (Though this is possibly not something I’d get away with if I weren’t a tiny white American girl.)
(Also, after giving it much thought, I decided the only thing I actually needed to declare for customs was “<1.0 oz. perfume.” I am the most harmless gaijin you ever did see.)
And then I got my bag and got on the bus. I made it back to the room at exactly 8:20 PM Japan time, 6:20 AM US time. So, if we’d gone to the airport an hour later, the whole process would have taken almost exactly twenty-four hours. This is unprecedented.
And now I have eaten Mystery Fried Meat from the konbini, (seen a photo from More-English-san’s holiday trip to a maid cafe, decorated with colorful stickers,) unpacked, bathed, and put on the ridiculous pajamas, and I am going to bed.
(Originally published at SarahPin.com. You can comment here or there.)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-06 05:46 pm (UTC)So I also had the experience of flying back to Japan today. Through Nagoya, even, which is unusual for me -- usually I fly through Kansai, because I like the Thunderbird, and I have a friend in Osaka. Not this time, however, for extremely amusing reasons which I shall relate.
So, as you may or may not have known, San Francisco was apparently experiencing some insane weather this weekend. Wind gusts of up to 65 miles an hour; as one weathercaster put it, "You can expect 6-8 inches of snow... PER HOUR." My connection had me going from Seattle to San Francisco on Thursday and from there to Osaka by Friday night, to give me a few days of recovering before work Monday morning.
I arrive at Seattle the requisite 2 hours beforehand advised for domestic flights, to find that that's not nearly enough. An hour and fifteen minutes has gone by before I even get up to the front of the line; by this time, the machine announces that I'm too late to check bags for my flight. Huh? Okay... I call on a serviceperson, who shows up ten minutes later, harassed, and announces I'm not going to make my flight. She puts me on for the next flight, which will get me to SFO at 11:52... 13 minutes before my 12:05 flight is supposed to take off.
"The connection will be a bit of a struggle," she tells me. No kidding? But she assures me that SFO is having weather problems, and that my Osaka flight will probably be delayed.
This doesn't take into account, of course, that my flight from Seattle was also delayed. I get there at 12:30. The Osaka flight was indeed delayed... by 15 minutes. It's already gone when I get there. The nice agent at the counter (whom I finally get to talk to at 2 PM after standing in the line for 90 minutes) sorrowfully says that he would book me on the Narita flight, but it left at 1:30, while I was waiting in line. And there's only one flight to each airport per day.
So he rebooks me for the next day's, Friday's flight to Osaka, and gives me a coupon (though not a voucher, since it was weather related delays and thus an act of god) for a nearby hotel. I go to the hotel and wait.
(cont)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-06 05:46 pm (UTC)Eventually the announcement comes up, after much hemming and hawing -- the flight is confirmed, and it will be leaving at 2 PM, only 2 hours delayed. I am delighted! I wait some more.
At 3 PM, we start boarding. By 3:30 we're finished boarding, but still sitting at the gate. At 4 PM, they announce that there's some kind of fuckup with the bags, so we sit at the gate some more. At 5 PM, we taxi out to the runway... oh joy! Only to discover that some non-vital system has failed, so they'll need to get back to the gate to have it disabled... except that there are no gates open.
We taxi around some more, and finally pull into a gate, to sit and wait for the maintenance crew. It's now 6 PM, and the pilot pages us to let us know that, regretfully, he is no longer legal to fly. Starting a 12 hour flight now will put him over his legal hours for the day. He asks around to see if there's some other pilot that can take the plane. There is none. So the flight is cancelled, and we all get off.
After standing in line for another 80 minutes, at an average of 20 minutes per customer server -- I was fourth in line -- I get up to the desk to be rebooked. There are now 200 people waiting on standby for Saturday's flight, and Sunday's, and Monday's, all of which were already overbooked. The best they can hope for is a flight to Osaka on Tuesday.
At this point I mention that I don't really insist on Osaka, I can go to Narita or Nagoya; no matter where I land it'll be about a 5 hour commute by train to where I have to go, anyway. And on the map, at least, Nagoya is actually closer to Toyama. This turns out to be the magic words, because they are able to book me for Saturday's flight to Nagoya.
Saturday morning I arrive at SFO bright and early, at 7:30 for a 11 AM flight, determined not to let this one get away from me. Much to my surprise, there's already a line at the counter... which doesn't even open until 8:30 AM.
More waiting. At 8:30 AM there are a couple hundred people waiting... and out comes a single guy, to open a single desk, where he proceeds to take -- I kid you not -- half an hour to deal with the first customer in line.
At 10 AM a guy comes out and asks everyone from the Nagoya flight to come forward. I start to move, and he tells me to stay where I am because I'm only 5th in line. I say, WTF, I've been 5th in line for twenty minutes now. At this average of 20 minutes per customer, the flight will have taken off before I'm checked in. He relents and I FINALLY get checked in for the Nagoya flight.
The flight is boarded and baggaged exactly on schedule... and we proceed to sit on the runway for two hours due to weather conditions, by which time I am hysterically convinced that the pilot is going to keel over dead in his seat, that the flight will be cancelled, that I am going to be stuck in SFO airport forever and get fired from my job. And then we took off.
All would be well, except that landing at 5 PM in Nagoya, I'm cutting perilously close to the time where all the trains to Toyama will have left and I'll have to stay overnight in Nagoya. This complicated by the fact that defying all logic and expectation, Nagoya airport is not connected to the JR system.
Fortunately I was able to make it to the JR station in time to catch the last train of the night. I got to Toyama station too late to take the local train to my house, but by that time I said fuck it, and spent the last of my money on a taxi. Arrived at my house precisely 75 hours after leaving Seattle. And here I sit.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-06 11:17 pm (UTC)My recent experiences with American airports make me appreciate Japan a lot more. I kind of stood there and just smiled at the JR station for a few seconds when I got into the Nagoya airport, just because it was there, and the trains were presumably running correctly and on time, and if I had needed to I could have gotten on one and it wouldn't have cost hundreds of dollars and required an argument. When I was trying to get out of Chicago I couldn't even get a taxi.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-07 06:10 am (UTC)Honestly, normally I am imbued by Tiny and Harmless powers too -- the guy who rebooked me on Thursday bumped me up to business class, because he thought I was a teenager and he felt sorry for me. :) But by the third day, I was definitely ready to be pushy and rude! It had to be done.
The lesson from this: Never fly United! JAL and ANA are just so much more sensible.