Trip diary: March 16th and 17th, 2007

The Departure

Woke up at 6:00, checked email and fed the cats. It hadn't quite soaked in that this was the day.

I knew that I couldn't sit around until it was time to leave so I went back to bed to cuddle the cats a bit more. Normally, I am not excessively emotional but my cats are one soft spot for me. I was tearing up as I said good-bye to them. I always miss Esme the most when I am separated from the cats for a long time. She is special to me.

I left the apartment at around 8:00 and stopped in at Subway for breakfast.

Arrived at the airport at around 9:00 and stood in line at the NWA counter for 40 minutes. The people who run the NWA counter are also the people who do the boarding for the NWA flights so they are constantly running back and forth between check-in and departures.

Got into the security area and was randomly selected for a search. It wasn't a problem but the guy doing it should think of buying me flowers next time he intends to get that personal.

The wait in the departures lounge was long, boring and uncomfortable. Whoever designs airport chairs must have a strange idea of what comfortable is.

The flight to Detroit was boring (seeing a pattern develop?). The only interesting part of the flight was when the flight attendant, Jess, accidentally rubbed her butt across my arm. Polyester pants never felt so good.

We landed in Detroit on time.

In the terminal waiting for the flight to Osaka there was a 'Welcome to Detroit' announcement on a TV. The accent on the guy doing the announcement made it sound vaguely threatening. 'Enjoy your stay or your kneecaps will be broken'.

I only had a 20 minutes wait (just enough time to go pee and write in my journal for half a page) before they announced they were starting boarding.

I was in a seat on the right-hand side of the plane. At first I was seated next to a hyperactive woman who kept getting up to go see friends in other parts of the plane. It wouldn't have bothered me except I had the aisle seat. Early on she decided to switch to a vacant seat near her friends so I was left with three seats to myself. That was freaking sweet.

I have trouble falling asleep on planes. I can never get comfortable. Even with three seats to stretch out across. There is always a lump in the wrong spot and the seat handles are too pointy. I only managed to doze off for about an hour of the whole 15 hour flight. That served only to re-enforce just how tired I was at that point.

The movies they showed were 'The Prestige', 'Flushed Away' and 'Man of the Year'. The first was blah, Flushed was cool (yeah Aardman!) and MotY had a few good jokes but was too over done for my tastes.

When the pilot announced we were beginning our decent into Kansai Airport felt like singing.

It is pretty scary to look out the window when landing in Kansai. the airport is an artificial island and the runways go right to the edge of the water. Watching through the window all you see is water getting closer and closer all the time, then just as it looks like you are about to do a water landing the land appears and about half a second later the plane hits the runway.

Going through security I was again selected for a random search. Two random searches in the trip already didn't fill me with hope that going home would be easy. The guy who frisked me this time was much more gentle than the guy in Canada. He asked permission before he grabbed my privates.

Got through security with no more incidents and met Charles in the arrivals area. We caught the train to the city. It was delayed because of an 'accident'. For those who don't know that is often code speak for someone committing suicide by jumping in front of a train.

We had to take a local train so it was a long ride, about 90 minutes. On the way, a drunk old guy told me I was handsome. But that was more than made up for by a cute girl who kept smiling at me whenever our eyes met. Unfortunately she got off the train before I could talk to her.

We got to the hotel and checked in. The room was small and a bit Spartan but passable. The door to the room was ludicrously short, we both had to duck to get in the room. The bathroom was yellow. Going to the wash room usually involved a few verses of 'We all live in a yellow submarine'.

We went out to wander around Namba (the night-life area of Osaka) for a couple of hours. There were people everywhere. It was starting to sink in that I was in Japan again. Dinner was had at Yoshinoya - a Japanese fast food chain with food that is actually good. I had curry and rice and Charles had gyuudon (beef and rice in a bowl). For fast food, it was awesome.

At around 10 the shops started closing up and the crowds started dispersing so we went back to the hotel and crashed.