Well, it's been a long three weeks past; it's included working almost nonstop for two weeks, packing, and then finally
flying back to the U.S. That's right, I'm back in the States right now, sitting at my parents' kitchen table surrounded by various condiments to be used for my sister's graduation party the day after tomorrow. I'll be here in New York for about another week before heading off to Minnesota to visit family and friends. The reason I didn't mentioned it before was so it would be a surprise for my sister; she graduates on Friday, and I hadn't seen her in two years, so I had the perfect excuse to take a couple of weeks off work and come see the family!
I've spent most of my first day back home in bed; I'd been running almost two and a half days (my June 20th was 35 hours long, my 19th was about 18) on just four hours of sleep and I was fit to drop. Woke up several times, first at about 7am local time, then 9am, then around noon, then a few minutes later at 5pm. My sister's baccalaureate service was tonight; fun with poetry, music and humor, and lots of people I've never met or met only once. Thus is life in a small town. One grandmother is here already from Arizona, the other is currently trapped in Detroit by inclement weather and should arrive tomorrow. She still doesn't know I'm here; the surprise is going well.
Ate at Fresno's, a Tex-Mex restaurant about four blocks from my first house in Syracuse. It was good: had Buffalo chicken wings first time in a year - other than the ones Timmy made from scratch at Misfits about 10 months ago. It was still a shock to eat American food again; drinks (
real iced tea!) came in 4-gallon glasses - with free refills - and the food came on plates the size of a tatami mat. God bless the home of the original Denny's - no more noodles in my Grand Slam!
Wrote this "yesterday morning" (Japan time), talking about the first leg of my trip - Nagoya to Tokyo:
"A long couple of days; work yesterday was largely uneventful with spells of blase
: met up Joanna, bless, who held out like a trooper for over an hour before crying. Poor girl, Nova's been pretty shite for her; and the heat, job searching, and my leaving sure haven't helped. Bless. Left her in time to catch the last train, but ended up staying up till after 4, writing emails, packing, re-packing, checking blogs "one more time" before shutting the laptop down, and re-re-un-re-packing, etc. Then set the alarm for 7:30.
I should get my head checked.
It was starting to get light when I finally went to bed, and it was
definitely light when the alarm went off. Half-seven is a God-awful hour; the sun is up and it's hot, but no sane person is yet awake. Got up eventually, chased a ghost down the hallway, drank some coffee to get rid of said ghost, showered, re-re-etc-packed, and left at nine. Caught the 9:36 Meitetsu to Centrair Airport without too much trouble, short of walking through Nagoya Station twice. Head check, seriously. Got to the airport around 10:10, then proceeded through ticket pick-up, check-in, and customs with nary a problem. I love this country; if it weren't for the fact I speak zero Japanese and the whole place could fall into the ocean at any moment, I'd move here in a second. Oh wait...
Still hadn't had breakfast at that point, so after changing 50,000yen I went for eats. I'm so damn American; I ate a cheeseburger and fries because it was one of two things on the menu I could recognize - the other being foie gras on rice. So. The burger ended up being rather soft and mushy, the fries were the same. I wish I'd known beforehand that they had miso katsu and soybeans, like the guys behind me got."
So that was Centrair airport in Nagoya. The flight to Tokyo wasn't too bad: only an hour long, and a window seat, but directly in front of two screaming ADD-afflicted children with the most inept parents/babysitters (I couldn't tell which) I've ever seen. Said the mother/female babysitter of the daughter: "Wow, she's so subtle. Sometimes I forgot she's another person." *sigh* I've sworn off having children. The positive side of it was I had a CD player, Hemingway to read, and bottle of sake; if worse came to worse I was prepared to get very drunk and sick The Mars Volta on the hell-spawn.
But that flight didn't even compare to my flight between Tokyo and Detroit; I'd forgotten I'd flown Business Class when I came to Japan, so visions of comfortable seats and friendly staff were floating in my head. How wrong I was! This flight on
Northwest Airlines (I shall refer to this poor excuse for a shipping company in bold, in hopes that it'll come up on a google search) saw me crammed into an economy box near the rear of the plane, and "attended" by a middle-aged woman who apparently had lost the will to live. Maybe it's because I've been living in Japan for the past year, where the desire to please the customer borders on overkill, but is it too much to ask for
Northwest Airlines cabin staff to at least make the
pretense of caring about their customers? I felt like I was troubling her when she asked if I wanted anything to drink.
Northwest Airlines "representative": Would you like something to drink?
Me: Yes, can I have some water please?
Northwest Airlines wench: [sigh] Sure.
Me: Sorry.
Now, I can understand having a bad day, and even not wanting to deal with customers, but please woman! you're a freaking stewardess!
On top of that, when "dinner"-time rolled around they were out of the main entree, a Japanese-style "dish". Instead, they had a vegetarian "green curry" which bore a strong resemblance to a street after St. Patricks day in Japan - green viscuous on rice. Green viscuous that contained some form of nut. For those readers unfamiliar with my dietary requirements, I am
severely allergic to tree nuts - so severe, in fact, that I've been sent to the emergency room after eating them. And emergency rooms are pretty rare at 37,000 feet. So I asked another staff for a glass of ice (ice-water keeps the swelling in my throat from closing off my ability to breathe); which they did...after 15 minutes.
Northwest Airlines, you are a disgrace to the people you represent, the people you serve, the country in which you are based, and you entire industry. Do us all a favor and go out of business. Soon.
But they did get me home. And on time too. And they're fairly cheap, though a near-monopoly in Japan-American flights from Nagoya probably helps.
Anyway, it's nearly midnight here, 1pm Nagoya time, and my body is screaming for sleep and any semblance of a "normal" time. No more whining, I'm off to bed.
Thom-in-Japan-in-America
PS - pictures when I take them.
