A wedding in Japan (6-27-06)
A report for grandma but written for the public in general.
The players:
- Akira - our Japanese interpreter and (barely) principle photographer (hereafter referred to as 'A')
- Hiroyuki (Kato-san) - Akira's father who paid us a brief visit during the wedding (hereafter referred to as 'H')
- Mieko (Kato-san) - our gracious Japanese host and cook (hereafter referred to as 'M')
- Shamara - the crabby sister (hereafter referred to as 'S')
and na (san) - our humble narrator
27th (Day 1)
Departure
My father, Shamara, and Akira drove to my apartment the night before and we left my apartment at 8:25. We arrived early in San Fransisco without meeting any traffic problems. We were so early in fact that we checked in without really waiting in line.
The reason we were so early was the reaction I got when I called the airline the day before to confirm the reservation. The woman I spoke to over the phone was confused and wasn't sure my ticket was reserved. Apparently they couldn't tell me and my father apart and when he cancelled his reservation (because of my mother's health) they intially cancelled both tickets. After several minutes of trying to explain my situation to the confused Northwest representative she told me to call travelocity and work it out with them. The outsourced indian woman at travelocity was very optimistic that I had a ticket waiting and kept promising 'no worries, no worries'. She told me to print out an emailed reservation form and present it to the ticket agent to argue my case. I was also told specifically to not show a different ticket reservation form because it would confuse them further.
So when I reached the ticketing counter I had a bunch of papers printed up to argue my case but when I tried to hand them over to the guy he leapt back like I was going to hand him a dead animal and requested my passport instead. He wasn't nearly as confused as the woman I spoke to over the phone and I was given a ticket without problems.
By 11:08 we were at the gate, we boarded at 12:45 and the plane left at 1:45. Because we arrived so early the beginning of the trip was unhurried and quick.
The plane was full but not with fat people (the bane of international air travel worldwide) and it was as comfortable as you would expect a non-business class 11 hour flight would be.
They passed out lemon scented wet napkins using tongs while the televisions built into the seats in front of us played commercials of middle aged multinational women going through stretching exercises in their seats. Each time they rotated their ankles their shoes flash the nike symbol. There is no way to block or turn off these ads (which run for the first 40min or so every flight) and having a television screen 10 inches in front of bored airline passengers must be a marketers wet dream.
When travelling to japan the plane has to take a circuitous route up the coast past Alaska and the Aleutian islands and then down past Russia and into Japan. I opened the window at one point and could actually see the snow covered Aleutian islands from the window; the mountains stretching down to the surface of the sea. A little later I looked out the window and saw a snow capped volcano. They served a dinner, a eskimo pie, and a breakfast during the flight. I watched three movies (King Kong, Pink Panther, Monsters Inc.) and read a book during the flight. The trip was very, very long.
