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Day One
May 31/June 1, 2001 - The Day That Never
Was
Good news, last night I checked out the Internet and
discovered that Ling Ling the Giant Panda had returned to his home at Japan's
Ueno Park Zoo. I had initially been excited that I would be able to "check off"
this last of my "must see" animals, but back in January Ling Ling had been
loaned to a zoo in Mexico City in order to try to breed him. Giant Pandas are
notoriously difficult to get in the mood and he was to be spending several
months with three female Pandas. Alas it was to no avail, Ling Ling was just
too upset by the trip to perform. Now, it seems we'll be able to see him
afterall. I am quite excited.
After we caught our flight from Phoenix to
L.A. we discovered that Chu-Wan's printed ticket is wrong. It shows her return
date as being late July. Unfortunately, due to the bureaucratic nightmare that
is US Immigrations, she cannot stay out of the USA after July 5, lest she be
unable to return without great difficulty. Once on the ground we called our
travel agent and he claims that the computer shows it correct, and that's the
important part. It adds an edge of danger to the whole trip, just for a touch
of excitement.
We had a lot of time to kill in LA, so we decided to eat. I
opted for Mexican food, expecting it to be the last before I returned to the
states, while Chu-Wan decided to eat Japanese food figuring that I'd eat
nothing but pizza in Tokyo.
United Airlines was really on my sh*t-list
that day. Not only did they take our drink orders on the ground in Phoenix,
which is OK, except that they did not serve them till 5 minutes before landing
in LA, but as we were disembarking, I saw Chu-Wan's luggage come off the plane,
be tossed (unceremoniously) on a pile and promptly fall five feet to the
tarmac. Someone else's luggage rolled several feet end over end before coming
to rest. Since all my cameras are in my stowed luggage, this didn't bode well
for their arriving intact to Japan.
Singapore Air, as always, makes up
for the nasty domestic flight. They feed you well, they have a great in-flight
entertainment system, even for Economy Class passengers and they just seem to
always good that extra bit to make the flight as pleasant as possible...
remembering that, you are essentially locked up in your chair for 10-14 hours
which just isn't much fun to begin with.
There was a snail on my plate
during one of the meals, but Chu-Wan gleefully grabbed it from me and ate it
before I could decide if it was there on purpose or crawled there by
accident.
Just last week I read an article in the Straits Times
(Singapore Newspaper) that Singapore Air was planning a major upgrade of their
entertainment systems. They would be adding interactive multi-player games
(among the passengers on the flight) and Internet access for passengers with
laptops. They were experimenting with it on one trans-pacific flight and were
rolling it out to the other planes starting in July.
When the flight got
going, I was very pleased to learn that the Los Angeles => Tokyo flight
was the experimental route and we had it on our flight over.
Unfortunately, I didn't have a modem cable with me so I didn't get to try the
in-flight Internet. I did whip the other passengers at trivia,
though.
Somewhere during the flight we crossed over the International
Dateline and May 31 became June 1. We saw nothing of land until the last few
minutes before arriving at Tokyo, Narita Airport. Immigrations and Customs were
polite and smooth, with the staff speaking very good English. Similarly, we had
no trouble getting our bus to our hotel (both of which had been arranged as
part of our package tour by Singapore Air).
By now it had been a long,
long day. I had forced myself to stay awake in order to "push" my jet lag back.
We expected to arrive at the hotel in Ikebukuro around 9:00PM and the idea was
to go straight to sleep. The bus ride from the airport had many stops and took
over two hours.
The bus ride was mostly just freeway driving and there
wasn't much to see. In the distance I saw hanabi (fireworks) and
realized, "Wow, the Japanese word for fireworks just sprang into my head. Maybe
this won't be so bad afterall." I spent the next few minutes trying to remember
important Japanese nouns and verbs, but discovered I couldn't recall many at
all. Well, at least I'm in luck if the conversation turns to
fireworks.
 It was closer
to 11:00PM (7:00AM Arizona Time) and suddenly I was not only ravenously hungry,
but exhausted and wide awake at the same time, so I dragged Chu-Wan out onto
the streets - she was more than ready to go to sleep - in search of food. The
streets were crowded and after 30 minutes of looking around, we stopped at a
convenience store, picked up some snacks and returned to the hotel to go to
sleep.
Our hotel is the Crowne Plaza Holiday Inn Metropolitan and it is
very nice. Our room even has one of those infamous Japanese electric toilets
that will... um... clean you up without the aid of toilet paper. The jury is
still out on if that's a good idea or not. |
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