Back in Colorado
Back in Colorado
Well we made it.
changeover from seattle was relatively uneventful. We had to uncheck our luggage for customs inspection. We actually brought very littke home.. a bottle of sake.. some souvenirs, nothing serious (although I really wish I could have brought those wooden bokun swords on the plane with us.. Supposedly Dalton’s gonna send them.)
One rather unusual souvenir was a liter bottle of sand that we picked up at the beach at Kamakura (coulda had two.. but we were kinda heavy anyways). would they have a problem with that? Otherwise, I am sure that there is some threshold dollar number before they wanna even mess with you, and they are particularly looking for electronics. and we were well below. Of course, there has been the scare about lighters.
Yes.. lighters. Everyone seemed to have lighters in the Narita airport. We talked to a guy from Vancouver who’s been up in northern Japan where it’s been about 40 degrees. We were always in at least the 70’s daily (cept maybe that rainy day) but I never really felt like i needed a jacket, but long pants and a tshirt that covers the shoulder (what we were supposed to be wearing anyways while being “ambassadors of the US” as the Navy dudes are) I was just fine, even at night at the beach. (best wind all week)
So I’ve discussed my thing previously, but each time we have had to run the TSA gauntlet, there’s been at least 1 (or 2) lighters stashed somewhere. At any juncture I risk having the “sir, can you step over here” convo. Fortunately, my subterfuge was sufficient, or my jedi mojo was just working, or some damn thing (when I go through the metal detector, I feel compelled to do so with my hands raised in the air as in surrender, I guess to acknowledge physically the amount I am being invaded. Anyone else?)
The plane trip from Japan to Seattle was uneventful. I watched Pan’s labyrinth once throuhj. catching the first few minutes I’d missed on the first go-round. They had about 8 differnt 2 hr programs that just repeated during the duraotin of the 9-10 hour trip. It was a shorter running time going home, presumably we were getting a boost from a tailwind. The International legs were nice.. they included complimentary alcoholic drinks every time they came by (although they didn’t keep the drinks coming as late, presumably because they were trying to acclimatze us so that we would eat breakfast just after dawn before we landed in seattle at 9:30 AM Sunday morning. This time warp shit has bent my head back and forth all week.
michelle slept, I was mostly unable to sleep (except the first couple hours, and taking into account the two Really Large Sapporos I drank in the airport, I mostly passed out. But now my neck hurt, etc etc. so I didn’t really sleep any more on the plane. I got some reading done, the ipod fritzed out so it was useless.
While we were en route, they gave each of us this form where we had to fill out a form declaring what we were bringing back with us. was some question about what to declare, because they were asking if we were importing plants, seeds, animals, birds, etc. While we weren’t really bringing anything unusual, (other than the sand…) but still. they got those guns and they seem to love to demand things from people and having them jump.
This part really reminded me of the agricultural inspection they have in Hawaii, basically trying to be sure you aren’t bringing in or out any weird infection that could wipe out agriculture of half a state (can anyone say “med fly”?) There were signs about bird flu with a pic of a really pretty parrot and it says “don’t smuggle me, i might be sick”.
So we cleared customs fine, the main thing that the dude wanted to know was did we have any curry mixes or noodle cups. Wonder what’s in those that they fear?
“back in the day” i might have pushed the limits a bit. Don’t dare that nowadays. nuff said.
(one thing that happened as we came in.. “diarrhea or a fever” booth. Don’t know what they would do if you did. Did I mention the custom in Japan that if you are sick you run around with a face mask on that basically covers your nose and mouth and hooks on your ears.)
Once we cleared customs, we knew the drill, had to go all the way out of the airport to smoke a cig (at this point we were smokin cowboy killers we’d bought at the japanese airport duty free.. Oh yeah, the duty free. If you need to buy liquor and bring it home, you can buy quite a bit at the duty free store. Not sure exactly how it works, but if you intend to buy a bunch of local booze, wine, cosmetics, electronics, all kind of crazy shit: laptops, ipods, speakers and headphones for ipods, noise cancelling headphones, cameras, yada yada, magazines, cool shit that kids would like. It’s a great place to really load up on cheap touristy stuff from the place you just went to bring back for friends. We were pretty packed already (took way too much clothes) so didnt have room for a lot.
the trip from seattle to denver was miserable. It was back to cattle-car economy domestic flights. After not sleeping for 8 hrs, i leaned back.. and the flight attendent told me that the ppl behind me wanted us to put our seat forward a bit.. ended up straight up.. and the headphone jack only let one ear play. and “the office” looks pretty stupid.
Isha brought us our car to the airport, and we came home. lots of things to do. laundry.. sleep.. yes. sleep. in my own bed, without the oppression of humidity.. ahh..