Tokyo Day 12

My flight leaves at 6:00 PM. Checkout is 10:00 AM. For better or worse, I may head directly to Narita and begin the process of begging to be allowed to bring my guitar on the plane and pit it in a closet. I am not sure if the overhead bins are large enough. I hope so. If I have to check it, I may as well stomp it to pieces right there in the airport.

Wish me luck.

I wrote that the night before I left. Considering what happened the last time I used the phrase "for better or for worse," this time I got off easily.

I woke up at 8:30 and started packing. Which was not as hard as I feared. I checked out at 10:00 and had breakfast across the street.

I took a taxi to the Okura hotel, where I got the shuttle bus back to Narita.

Northwest Airlines allows you 20kg of luggage. That ain't much.

I realized that having Rick (and now Kohhei) kill me in the gym has been working. I can lift more weight more easily.

My bag was 28.9kg. And I had luckily shipped home a box of books and CDs. Lucky for the weight saved, and lucky because there was no room left in my bag.

Still, it seemed worth it because the person at the counter had said I could carry on my guitar in it's gig bag. I was very grateful.

As I was standing in line to pay the extra Y20,000 for my 'luggage obesity,' I remembered that I had to return the rented phone in my pocket. I also had to return the charger.

Which was in the outside pocket of my luggage, which I just checked.

I hurried back to the counter where I checked it, but to no avail. I asked someone for help, and they actually pulled my bag off the line and brought it to the baggage claim for me and I took out the little pouch with the charger.

I was hoping they thought it was something more important than a phone charger...

I re-checked my bag and returned the phone. I felt stupid dropping Y7,500 for a phone I used maybe half a dozen times, but I wanted to be reachable.

It did make me realize that my next phone will be 3G. I don't travel much, but when I do it will be nice to have the ability to use my own phone.

It's less work for NWA's baggage handlers, too.

So now it's noon. I walked around.

And around. And around.

By 3PM I  could at least tell myself that I would be there now anyway.

I bought a Joseph Wambaugh novel. I read a lot of it. Then we boarded the plane. I got to see some Ugly Americanism with some guy who had been randomly selected. He had the face of a serious alcoholic.

Trust me, I know it when I see it.

I lust laughed, and hoped he heard me.

The tool.

I put my guitar in the closet at the entrance and thanked the flight attendant profusely.

The flight was unremarkable. I read the rest of the novel. 400-something pages in about 6 hours. It's an easy read, and I like his writing. They ran out of chicken and so I had to eat fish for dinner.

Hey, I'm Catholic and it was Friday so it was kind of nostalgic.

For those of you who have read my rants about being interrogated upon re-rentry of the nation of which I am a citizen, a nation that is supposed to assume one innocent until proven guilty, you will be glad to know that I actually smiled at Immigration in Hong Kong.

I put my cared in the reader, took a step forward, put my thumb on the other reader, and walked back into Hong Kong.

No fat rent-a-cop with an attitude, but I made do.

I took my bag and my guitar and got in a taxi and told him to take me home.

I wondered if there was a hill fire for a minute. But then I realized it's just regular Hong Kong air. It was not a pleasant return in that sense. My eyes started burning and gunking up. My throat got raw, I started feeling like I was breathing in water vapor, and my nose closed up.

It occurred to me that in Tokyo, I don't have asthma, allergies, or sleep apnea.

I miss Tokyo.

I want to say THANK YOU to Toshiya, Mio and Golden Rock for helping me get to see much more of Tokyo than I would have without them. I liked my hotel room, but it was better (for me) to be around other human beings and have someone to talk to other than myself.