Day 0: Palm Springs to Tokyo
Having spent the previous weekend at Western Xposure, I was exhausted when I went to bed the night before; I woke up too early, made tea, ate some toast (homemade whole wheat bread, Irish butter, English thick cut orange marmalade), and my husband Dan drove me to the airport, dropping me off just a few minutes later.
There wasn’t much of a wait at the TSA checkpoint - this is thankfully apparently always the case at PSP. The only hiccup was having my hiking poles in my bag - but hey, they’re medically necessary (I might have to stand a long time in line at SFO, right?), so that was a non-issue.
There were a few obvious bears heading home from Western Xposure, but no one I knew; there was plenty of room for my Ula pack on the plane and we were in San Francisco in no time, surprisingly ahead of schedule.
At SFO, it was a long walk to the British Airways lounge, which was closed, so I hung out in a Priority Pass lounge until 9 am; that lounge was entirely forgettable save for the huge number of obvious tech bros on obvious work calls early on a Monday morning.
At 9 am, back over to the BA lounge, which now had a JAL standee outside. I checked in with an agent - I think she might also have re-checked me in for the flight to Tokyo Haneda, actually! - and as one of the first customers in that morning, I had my pick of seats and settled in for the next few hours.
Food was minimal; I had a breakfast of chicken ‘curry’ over rice (not sure what was in that, but it didn’t taste like any curry I’ve had before). Lots of alcohol consumption going on, but not me (sparkling water only) as I’d had a bit of Nikka whiskey the previous night and wanted to go easy on the whole dehydration front. Eventually, boarding time snuck up on me and I headed upstairs, across the hall, and back downstairs to the gate for JAL 001, SFO-HND.
This was an award ticket, 60k AAdvantage miles for business class; I made the mistake of selecting a middle seat, which was great for sleeping (dark and quiet) but not for anything else (too narrow for a tall, bearish man such as myself). There were no passengers on either side of me, which was great, so I just manspread all over the damn place as I pleased.
After takeoff, I enjoyed a glass of Champagne (seriously good, old and biscuity and complex) with a small snack while waiting for the Japanese meal service to arrive. It was absolutely fine; I had a glass of German Riesling with all of that. Some of the dishes were paper, which seemed odd, but who knows, it could just be a US catering thing! Not a big deal at all, obviously; I was mostly there for the bed, which I deployed after lunch and happily slept for a few hours.
After waking up, I ordered dinner, but somehow they forgot about me entirely; I did ask after 75 minutes what had happened to my food, which they then delivered within 5 minutes. That was also very good; I enjoyed a glass of sake with that and then decided I didn’t need any more alcohol.
Watched a couple of movies: WICKED (Bowen Yang: why? Also, why are men wearing dresses in school and are somehow also scandalized by a woman wearing a hat? I don’t get it) and MUFASA: THE LION KING (Barry Jenkins: huh? Could you please just not swoop the camera around willy-nilly in nearly every scene? Thanks for the queasiness!).
I also eventually figured out how to get free Wi-Fi (tricky, involved scanning a QR code and endless patience) and also figured out that there was a Japanese website that could generate a QR code to replace paper immigration and Customs forms, so I did that. I was also able to find the Japanese travel insurance agency that wasn’t available from overseas… only to discover that they won’t write policies for longer than 30 days. Bummer.
Arrival at Haneda airport was a bit of a surprise as the line to get through immigration spilled way, WAY out of the immigration area and down the hallway. A visibly annoyed American tourist wearing lots of Patagonia gear turned to me and said oh my God, this is complete chaos; I said no, it’s fine, people are orderly and standing in line; I’m sure we’ll be okay. Unhappy with my assessment, she huffed at me, so I said hey, you want chaos, try maybe Madagascar? Oh, I’ve been there, she said. Well OK then, lady.
It took about 45 hours for the Japanese authorities to get that huge number of passengers through; people were very friendly, passengers almost all well behaved although mostly terribly dressed; I was kind of surprised that so many people look liked they were just headed down to the corner store for cigs and lottery tickets, not traveling to Japan (think jersey-cloth basketball shorts, T-shirts, sneakers, etc).
From there, just a few minutes’ walk to the Villa Fontaine Grand. Check-in was fast enough and the agent was impressed by my email address (‘Oh, that’s a great university!’). He also agreed to send some JAL swag to my house - I had paid for a JAL theme room but apparently some of the included merch wasn’t available, so they’ll be sending it along later on.
I stayed up a bit, read a bit, and then decided that I didn’t need to do anything at all other than to go to bed, so I did exactly that.
Welcome to Japan.