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I am in Seattle OMG
Okay, so, I'm in Seattle, or more like Samammish, safe and sound, had a 5-hour nap and a shower, and aside from the slight bit of weirdness in terms of realizing "shit, I can't walk 10 minutes to a train station and get anywhere in the country", it's nice to be here. First off, it's not hot and humid, which is a vast improvement :) Mike even bought aloe gel to put on my sunburn, so in a few days I will probably just look like someone with a weird tan rather than a "oh, poor white girl who is now red girl".
Anyway, so the Narita thing. My flight was at 4:50pm. My plan was to get on the 1:23 train out of Akabane, be on the 1:45 Skyliner that arrives at Narita at 2:24pm, now that there's this fancy new "39 minutes to Narita from Nippori" thing -- it basically veers off the Keisei tracks and takes the Hokuso tracks in the middle of freaking nowhere Chiba, which looks a lot like suburban Pittsburgh, but that's beside the point. But, walking to the station took me JUST long enough that I got to the station AT 1:23 and missed that train, so I couldn't get the 1:45 Skyliner, had to be on the 2:05, arriving at 2:44, which should still be enough time...
...the check-in line for United was kinda long but not too terrible. HOWEVER, I got stuck at the unlucky kiosk area, apparently, and NOBODY BOTHERED COMING OVER TO TAKE CHECKED BAGGAGE. I have absolutely no clue why. Every other kiosk had people taking baggage and putting the tags on them, but ours simply didn't, and yet they kept telling people to come over and check in, so eventually we had this crowd of like 5-6 people waiting to have their bags taken. But NOBODY SEEMED TO NOTICE. Eventually a clerk takes care of the woman in front of me... and then leaves again. I was waiting there for over TWENTY MINUTES for someone to TAKE MY GODDAMN CHECKED BAG! I kept trying to get other clerks' attention but they were just ignoring me. Finally it hits around 3:35pm. My flight boarding time is called for 4:05pm and I still have to go through security and immigration AND I wanted to buy some omiyage.
I yell to a passing (Japanese) clerk, "すみません！２０分待っているから、飛行機はギリギリになる!" ("I've been waiting here for 20 minutes and I'm going to miss my flight!")
She looks at me with a look I can best describe as "Why do you think this is MY problem?" and then says to me in typically Japanese-accented English, "where are you going today miss?"
I show her my boarding pass and passport, tell her I'm going to Seattle, and since she doesn't seem to want to listen to me in Japanese I tell her in English that ALL of us at this kiosk have been sitting here waiting forever because nobody is taking care of it. I don't think she understood a word I said, though.
Well, having been taken care of, I shuffle off to the security line, which isn't too terrible, but Immigration is PACKED for some reason. The lines were long enough I couldn't even see to the front to scout out the situation, so I end up in a random line, which, naturally, turns out to only have one person manning it. Sigh. So that takes forever to get through too, and when I finally AM at the front the dude can't find my current stickers. I'm like "...next page... next page... near the end... no really!" and he's like "Dude you have a lot of stickers in here!"
I get through the thing at 4pm.
And as it turns out, my gate is in the furthest possible part of the airport, too.
So I walk at a brisk pace, stopping only to go into the big "Duty Free Akihabara" stand and buy a few boxes of cookies/candies/whatever to bring back to Seattle as omiyage, and I get to the gate around 4:10, just in time for them to call Seating Area 2. Whee.
My seat is in row 42, the very last row. So I can't even fully put my seat back.
But finally I'm there. Woohoo.
The flight itself wasn't too bad. Most of the movie choices sucked, I watched Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and after that I gave up on movies and instead got out the "Harry the K" book that Ken Dick gave me when he visited Japan back in March... I guess it's a bit weird that he brought the book all the way to Japan because it's hard for me to get English books there, especially ones about Phillies sportscasters, and then I end up reading it on a flight back to the US and it's going to remain here when I leave. But, I got through about 3/4 of the book on the plane, it's a really good book, good read, very nostalgic for me, although, as usual, I am a little disappointed with simple inconsistencies that a good editor should have taken care of. Really, I wish I could get a job editing baseball books just for those itty bitty details that I notice but nobody else seems to.
Got to Seattle, no real problems on that end. Mike was waiting for me at the gate and drove me back to his house, and did nice things like putting aloe gel all over my ridiculously sunburnt shoulders/neck. Then I fell asleep and he went to work for the afternoon. I got up at 5:30... and he got back here around 7pm with a Pagliacci's pepperoni pizza :)
So, yeah, 3 weeks here. Not sure exactly what I'm doing most of the weekdays though we have plans for some of our weekend time already.
Anyway, so the Narita thing. My flight was at 4:50pm. My plan was to get on the 1:23 train out of Akabane, be on the 1:45 Skyliner that arrives at Narita at 2:24pm, now that there's this fancy new "39 minutes to Narita from Nippori" thing -- it basically veers off the Keisei tracks and takes the Hokuso tracks in the middle of freaking nowhere Chiba, which looks a lot like suburban Pittsburgh, but that's beside the point. But, walking to the station took me JUST long enough that I got to the station AT 1:23 and missed that train, so I couldn't get the 1:45 Skyliner, had to be on the 2:05, arriving at 2:44, which should still be enough time...
...the check-in line for United was kinda long but not too terrible. HOWEVER, I got stuck at the unlucky kiosk area, apparently, and NOBODY BOTHERED COMING OVER TO TAKE CHECKED BAGGAGE. I have absolutely no clue why. Every other kiosk had people taking baggage and putting the tags on them, but ours simply didn't, and yet they kept telling people to come over and check in, so eventually we had this crowd of like 5-6 people waiting to have their bags taken. But NOBODY SEEMED TO NOTICE. Eventually a clerk takes care of the woman in front of me... and then leaves again. I was waiting there for over TWENTY MINUTES for someone to TAKE MY GODDAMN CHECKED BAG! I kept trying to get other clerks' attention but they were just ignoring me. Finally it hits around 3:35pm. My flight boarding time is called for 4:05pm and I still have to go through security and immigration AND I wanted to buy some omiyage.
I yell to a passing (Japanese) clerk, "すみません！２０分待っているから、飛行機はギリギリになる!" ("I've been waiting here for 20 minutes and I'm going to miss my flight!")
She looks at me with a look I can best describe as "Why do you think this is MY problem?" and then says to me in typically Japanese-accented English, "where are you going today miss?"
I show her my boarding pass and passport, tell her I'm going to Seattle, and since she doesn't seem to want to listen to me in Japanese I tell her in English that ALL of us at this kiosk have been sitting here waiting forever because nobody is taking care of it. I don't think she understood a word I said, though.
Well, having been taken care of, I shuffle off to the security line, which isn't too terrible, but Immigration is PACKED for some reason. The lines were long enough I couldn't even see to the front to scout out the situation, so I end up in a random line, which, naturally, turns out to only have one person manning it. Sigh. So that takes forever to get through too, and when I finally AM at the front the dude can't find my current stickers. I'm like "...next page... next page... near the end... no really!" and he's like "Dude you have a lot of stickers in here!"
I get through the thing at 4pm.
And as it turns out, my gate is in the furthest possible part of the airport, too.
So I walk at a brisk pace, stopping only to go into the big "Duty Free Akihabara" stand and buy a few boxes of cookies/candies/whatever to bring back to Seattle as omiyage, and I get to the gate around 4:10, just in time for them to call Seating Area 2. Whee.
My seat is in row 42, the very last row. So I can't even fully put my seat back.
But finally I'm there. Woohoo.
The flight itself wasn't too bad. Most of the movie choices sucked, I watched Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and after that I gave up on movies and instead got out the "Harry the K" book that Ken Dick gave me when he visited Japan back in March... I guess it's a bit weird that he brought the book all the way to Japan because it's hard for me to get English books there, especially ones about Phillies sportscasters, and then I end up reading it on a flight back to the US and it's going to remain here when I leave. But, I got through about 3/4 of the book on the plane, it's a really good book, good read, very nostalgic for me, although, as usual, I am a little disappointed with simple inconsistencies that a good editor should have taken care of. Really, I wish I could get a job editing baseball books just for those itty bitty details that I notice but nobody else seems to.
Got to Seattle, no real problems on that end. Mike was waiting for me at the gate and drove me back to his house, and did nice things like putting aloe gel all over my ridiculously sunburnt shoulders/neck. Then I fell asleep and he went to work for the afternoon. I got up at 5:30... and he got back here around 7pm with a Pagliacci's pepperoni pizza :)
So, yeah, 3 weeks here. Not sure exactly what I'm doing most of the weekdays though we have plans for some of our weekend time already.