Well...if you’re gonna have a 14 hour layover, it may as well be Honolulu, right? Landed 5am, departed 9pm. I suppose it would have been even better if we’d bathed recently...phew! Came screeching in sideways from a late return from Mt. Fuji area, threw our clothes into the suitcases (no, really...that’s exactly what we did. Flinging laundry everywhere) raced for the train station to the airport...realized that Narita Airport sucks every possible unpleasant thing you can think of and is a minimum of 1.5 hours from anywhere via any available mode of transportation, and that the Narita Express train line doesn’t take the same pass you’ve been using for every other train on the entire damn island, looked at the line at the ticket kiosk and the approaching train, then sprinted for a taxi, hoping our frantic foreign faces could communicate what Google translate could not.
They did.
Our lovely driver understood the word “Narita” and our panicked expressions and God bless him, passed everything on the road like it was sitting still.
Haneda Airport for the win all...day...long. Plain old trains running every five minutes...BOOM. Max half hour to any damn place you want to go...except Narita, which sucks.
Anyway, due to the frantic pace, our last chance to bathe or change clothes was at Mt Fuji, day 1. We brought one change each, planning to spend one night, but Princess turned her ankle on the descent and we ended up spending a second night. Did I mention the 98F and 100000% humidity? Also Japan doesn’t seem terribly fond of air conditioning public spaces. Let’s just say we were a teensy bit ripe.
After 8 hours offending our quietly-suffering United seat mates, we collected our luggage to transfer to a domestic flight...eventually...dug wrinkled, but clean clothes out of the clothing duffel, dug out the package of wet wipes and TSA approved 3oz liquids bag, and locked ourselves in the Honolulu airport bathrooms. Pro tip: go for the aerosol deodorant. It doubles as body spray and febreeze. Also, dry shampoo FTW. So, we were wrinkled, and it was going to take three blade changes and a blowtorch to shift our armpits from European to American grooming standards (yeah...skip the cute tank top and go for the frumpy t-shirt,) but we were a whole lot cleaner coming out than we were going in. Somewhere around gate 9, en route to the airport Starbucks, it occurs to me that Imma ridin’ Up in every possible direction and I’m losing feeling in my left foot.
Mom: So...It is entirely possible that I may have mistakenly grabbed the wrong underwear.
Princess: ((utterly appalled stare)) burn them. I don’t want them back.
Mom: cool...no guilt about ripping the elastic to obtain a little circulation.
Princess: we will never speak of this again.
Turns out, by the way, that you can’t check your bags more than 4 hours ahead of your flight. Nice...only 10 to kill, then. Find a baggage storage area, pay them way too much to hang onto your dirty laundry and exotic kit kats, and Uber it out to something cool...because I’ll be damned if I’m spending 14 hours just sitting in ANY airport, much less Oahu. So, as an added bonus, we got to see all the cool sights at the Arizona Memorial and Pearl Harbor visitor center/Museums, and enjoy killer poké at a nearby mall before we had to return to claim our bags and then hand them off again.
After our flight overbooking itself then shuffling passengers until we were 30 minutes late leaving, breakfast in San Francisco (the food in Japan left me weak in the knees, but I gotta tell ya...a BK bacon and egg sandwich and a giant Peet’s quad shot was the comfort food I needed right about then,) and a hotel reschedule, we were finally breathing beautiful, cool, dry mountain air again and sleeping on a proper bed. I should mention, after 3 quite nice Japanese hotels, I have decided that, in addition to the public-space-AC aversion, the Japanese are also not fond of soft beds. They are fond of a hard plywood boxes with quilted mattress protectors for padding. I feel like I there’s a market for memory foam to be explored, there.
Takeaway:
1) I’d kill for a Tokyo 7-11 and a couple of Japanese vending machines on every corner.
2) the food...OMG the food...
3) Tokyo in August is not *quite* as hot as the surface of Mercury, but it is considerably more humid.
4) Fuji is beyond breathtaking...but not in the altitude sickness sort of way unless you’re a soft flat lander. You just have...no...idea. OMG...
5) life at sea level makes you soft. I felt much better when the group of very fit, athletic Latina girls were sucking just as hard and stopping just as often as I was; them to suck on oxygen bottles and me to let my plump, non-athletic heart rate settle just a bit before forging on.
6) elderly men in suits playing Pokémon on the train is a beautiful thing. Truly terrifying Japanese commercials on the train are...well...truly terrifying.
7) the Japanese are the kindest, most polite, service-oriented, considerate people I have ever met...but they will take your azz OUT if you get between them and the train.
8) I was the only person in the country who was concerned about the 6.2 earthquake that hit while we were on the 4th floor of the Diver City Mall (overlooking the giant, life size, transforming Gundam robot.) The closest thing I saw to “alarmed,” aside from my own reaction, was mild irritation (“goddam Godzilla...spilled my noodles,” and “huh, earthquake...must be Tuesday.”)
9) ibuprofen is practically treated as a controlled substance. You cannot purchase medicine of any kind - neosporin, Advil, tums...nada...from a grocery store or quickie mart. You have to go to a drugstore or store with a legit pharmacy, The boxes are empty - you have to exchange the empty box for the actual product at the pharmacy counter. If you grab your ibuprofen and a bag of banana kit kats and a souvenir “Akihabara City” t shirt and try to check out at the main check out, the cashier will be utterly appalled. “You can’t buy this here - this is medicine! You know that this is medicine? You have to buy this at the pharmacy counter!”
10) However, you can step outside the shop door and buy a pack of cigarettes and a suntory whisky highball from the unmonitored vending machine seven steps to your left.
11) I’d have skipped every cool thing we did just to have 8 days hanging with the Boyo. Having 8 days hanging with the Boyo while he hauled us around to SO MANY COOL THINGS was worth everything.
SO...all but the lingering brain fog of jet lag is conquered, my classroom is half transformed for the start of school Monday, and my back to school orientation is in the rear view. Someone hook mama up with a chuhai, would you? Arigato...
