Narita Once More
The following was written 7-19, waiting for my flight Tokyo.
3:51PM UTC/GMT +9 hours We arrived in Tokyo 15 minutes early, a good thing since security finally decided to take interest in me. My carry-on, at least.
The woman at the x-ray told her friends to search it. (I myself didn’t beep.) So another lady went through, found nothing of interest, and put through the x-ray again, but once more it was fingered. She searched it again, asking if I had any pens other than those she had already taken out. I told her no.
After a bit I decided I should point out the little slit compartment in the back of the bag that she seemed to be consistently missing. She reached in there and pulled out my Clif bar, a few receipts, and my mini camera tripod. Aha! The culprit.
Without the tripod, the bag was again x-rayed, and no alarms went off.
Funny thing is, I’ve never removed that tripod since packing it. No, I did use it once. But it’s been in that same place going through Tokyo airport before, not to mention Bangkok and Seattle, and no-one ever complained. Strange.
After that I went down to the cafe I had sat at a month ago, waiting for my plane to Bangkok, and had a lunch of greasy noodles. And now I’m at the gate, waiting for flight 876 to board and take me home to Seattle.
We’re to be served dinner and breakfast on this flight. The last plane served me breakfast, too: a rubber omelet. I had a bite, didn’t brave the sausage, and went back to sleep.
Let us hope I sleep on this flight. I arrive in Seattle in the morning and it would be best if I could stay awake all day and crash hard that night. Not that I’m in a huge rush to get over jet lag – I have no appointments when I get back for a week or two.
I wonder what movies will be shown on this flight. Hopefully not Firewall again. I assume they rotate every month.
Most of the people at the gate are Japanese. It was that way flying out of Seattle, too.
Two of those Green Shirts sat behind me on the flight from Bangkok. All they could talk about was the finale for some TV show and how much they missed Starbucks. In Thailand, there were actually times where I could be proud to be American, but that all goes right back out the window when I find myself back around other Americans. Most of them, anyway.
Can we really be such whores?