Lift Up Your Hearts!

The Longest Day. Our last day in Japan, the first day of our return home, the 37-hour day in which we landed at Newark before we took off from Narita. (It would have been a 38-hour day had not the switch from Standard to Daylight time occurred in our absence.)

Fuji-san came out to say sayonara, gracing us with one of the most beautiful views of our stay. Naito sensei and Yuko picked us up at 8 a.m., drove us to the bus station, and insisted on staying till the bus left at 8:40 so we would not have to say goodbye to Janet any sooner than absolutely necessary.

On the long ride to Narita Airport, which is on the far side of Tokyo, we enjoyed the scenery very much: the mountains, the towns, the houses with their large garden plots even close to the center of Tokyo, attempting to read the katakana signs, and the sight of many, beautiful, blooming sakura trees of varying shades from white to deep pink. A critical factor in our enjoyment was having decided to take the early bus instead of one that was scheduled to get us to the airport closer to our late afternoon departure time. Thus the fact that we became entangled in a major traffic problem caused no worry, even in my panic-prone heart. We did make an unexplained detour to drop off one couple in the middle of the city. (Correction: it was not unexplained, but of the driver's rapidly-spoken commentary I understood not a word.) Perhaps the delay had made them in danger of missing their flight, and they were let off in a place where they could catch a train to the airport. We'll never know.

Once at Narita, only about an hour late, we had no trouble disembarking at the correct terminal because all the recorded announcements on the bus are given in both Japanese and English. We had not been able to print our boarding passes in advance, because Janet has no printer, but because she does have Internet access I was able to determine last night where to go for check-in. I think it rather impressed Porter that I looked at the bewildering chaos and said, "go there," instead of just looking lost. :)

There was a long line at the Continental check-in, but we still had plenty of time. (Don Aslett is right: "Early" is your best friend.) At Narita checked bags are screened in your presence, sealed, and returned to you for check-in. As mine was x-rayed, it generated a small amount of excitement, which I can't report in detail without revealing someone's Christmas present, but that did not take long to resolve.

Check-in went smoothly as well, and we decided we had enough time to eat some lunch. Porter found a sushi restaurant in which the food was not only good, but also not that much more expensive that we were accustomed to, both of which were surprising for airport food. Moving through passport control and airport security went quickly, and we were soon at the gate. Porter wandered off in search for a snack, returning with the spicy Japanese rice crackers he likes so much, and I amused myself by translating katakana.

Once on the plane we were delighted to discover that we each had three seats to ourselves. In contrast to the very crowded flight over, the return flight was sparsely populated. We had chosen two aisle seats this time, and had resisted the check-in lady's attempts to seat us together, turned out to be a great strategy. The seats are contoured enough that sleeping, even lying down, was not comfortable, but it was much, much better than last time.

Again they fed us two full meals and a "snack" (cheeseburger and ice cream, not just a tiny bag of pretzels). Besides eating, I spent my time sleeping, translating the katakana on the video display of our flight path, reading Lee C. Camp's Mere Discipleship, and listening to our choir music for Holy Week. (This trip caused us to miss several key rehearsals, so we brought a CD and our sheet music with us.)

My comments about the benefits of being early found another, inverse, application. Next time we will endeavor to allow more than an hour and five minutes between flights when the first leg is international. We were late taking off from Narita, and although we made up the deficit in flight, there was a long delay between our landing at Newark and our actual arrival at the gate. We managed to exit the plane quickly, and even though the walk to passport control was long, and the lines moved slowly, that didn’t matter because we still reached baggage claim before our luggage did. But all four bags came through, close together and in good shape. Once we had them, going through Customs was a breeze. Life is easier when you have no interest in bringing in alcohol, tobacco, or expensive jewelry or electronics. :) Rechecking the bags was easy, also, and we began to think we might make our flight to Orlando after all.

Then we realized that going through Customs takes you out of the secure area of the airport, and we had to go through the regular Airport Security line! That was a long wait, and I was less patient than I usually am in such situations.... There should have been no reason for people with connecting flights to have to do that. Or perhaps they don't trust the security measures in other airports…perhaps with good reason, I don't know.

Not wanting to give up, even though the time for boarding our flight had theoretically passed, we raced to our gate, or rather to what we thought was our gate. There simply was no time to find and check a monitor, so we had to trust the gate number that was on our boarding passes. It was far, far away. Liberty International is a big airport, and though we were only going from one Continental gate to another Continental gate, the two were about as far apart as possible. As we neared the end of the run, I sprinted ahead of Porter, who was having trouble with his Achilles' tendon injury. As I arrived at the gate, I noticed that the flight displayed was the wrong one. I spoke with the attendant who said, tersely, "over there" and pointed. That was when I realized that people, at least in Japan, are more patient, and clearer in their explanations, when you don't speak the language. Porter had caught up with us by the time I understood that the gate we wanted was just down the hall. We flew there together, and lo and behold boarding was just starting! We gratefully took our places at the end of the line.

The flight to Orlando was more crowded, but that didn't matter in the least because it was only two hours long. They fed us dinner and once again had free headphones available. It was rather amusing that on every flight we were offered free headphones, and advised to take them with us because on every other flight they would cost $5.

Our luggage made it safely on flight but the very last: somewhere between Newark and Orlando one of the bags had its outside pocket ripped half off. Continental, which had treated us quite well up to this point, failed here. They refused to let us fill out a claim form, because they won't take responsibility for outside pockets. They did offer us a replacement suitcase, but the only one they had was smaller, and they wouldn't give it to us unless we gave them the damaged bag in return. Since this was the bag with most of our breakable items in it, which I had spent over an hour packing and repacking for greatest protection, I didn't find the offer acceptable. Had it just been clothes I might have been tempted, but I wanted to get everything home as it had been packed and have time to assess what other damage might have been done in the process of tearing the bag.

For the final leg of our journey Porter had arranged to rent a car; it was cheaper than a taxi and better than asking a friend to pick us up, especially since we weren't sure we'd make the flight from Newark. When we arrived home, all was well there, and we determined that the contents of our bags had escaped unscathed, though the episode does point out the importance of careful packing of anything that can be damaged. I don't remember exactly when we walked in the door, but I believe it was before 10 p.m.

What a wonderful trip! Japan is a delightful country; not perfect, and full of contradictions (another blog post, perhaps), but absolutely delightful and I'd love to return some time. I'm under no illusions that this trip makes me a world traveler, however. What made it so enjoyable was all the effort Janet put into sharing her world, her Japan, her life, church, school, friends, and pleasures. It's impossible to quantify the benefits, or to choose the best part of the trip, but high on my own list is having faces, views, sights, sounds, tastes, and scents to connect with the stories Janet tells of her experiences in Japan.