As America prepared for its most important day of the year, Bricole (everyone’s favorite celebrity couple) were preparing a breakfast of assorted 7-11 snacks. After breakfast, we headed out on foot toward the Inohara castle ruins. It used to be the site of a Japanese castle, and is now a city museum, which is located inside a 1960s recreation of a castle.
Admission was free, and the museum itself was fairly small. A few explanations were in English, but most were not. Outside the castle, a few eager cherry blossoms were beginning to bud. Japan will soon be witnessing its first cherry blossom season since the relaxation of its entry restrictions.
From the castle, we went to the Chiba City Museum of Art. We were doing our best to not let a travel day be defined by just travel. See how cultured we are being? The museum featured many traditional Japanese—style paintings. This time around, there were zero explanations in English. In fact, simply purchasing a ticket was somewhat complicated. I asked an information desk in fractured Japanese — “Chiketto kiosuku…doko desu ka?” The lady behind the counter held up five fingers on one hand and three on the other, then pointed to the elevator. We had to go to the eighth floor to purchase tickets, and then go down to floors 7 and 5 for the remainder of the museum — not the most logical setup in any language.
Nicole and I liked the vibrant blue colors used for the sea and sky in the Japanese art from the 19th century. As nothing was in English, my limited skills weren’t going to get us more information than what our eyes could see. After the museum, we headed back toward our hotel, but not until I made Nicole wait for me to watch a monorail pass by overhead. I enjoy observing modes of transportation, especially things like Chiba’s unique monorail system. Nicole was able to get us a late check-out for 2pm. Our listing for United out of Narita was for a 550pm flight, so the timing was good. The flight, however, was not.
What had indicated 20+ business class seats had eroded to about 12 with an increasing number of standby passengers using vacation passes to jump in front of us. The controversial vacation pass, is a reward that United employees get throughout the year. It would make sense if only the employee could earn and use them, but they can “gift” them to anyone on their benefits. Basically this means that someone who doesn’t even work for the airline can plausibly jump to the top of the standby list — bumping down active employees who may have worked years in the industry. Now that we’ve met someone like Brad last week, who boasts loudly about flying free and wasted no time telling us that he is using someone else’s vacation passes, the whole thing just doesn’t sit well with me. Something else that wasn’t going to sit well was likely us . . .on an airplane. The constantly changing numbers were now likely to put us in seats far apart from each other, IF we even got on the plane.
So despite positioning ourselves to go to Narita, we now found ourselves working backward toward Haneda to try for a Delta flight, where we figured we could at least have seats together. We spent the next two hours on crowded trains. We first took the Sobu line to Shinagawa for about 9 stops, which took 45 minutes. There we had to transfer to the Keikyu line. Things then began to come apart. Even though both trains are run by JR (Japan Rail), we had to buy the tickets separately at the transfer point and not at our origin as I had hoped. We approached a transfer desk to get our onward ticket to Haneda, but we had to pay 600 yen. Cash only. I had just 580 yen. Now, perhaps elsewhere in the world, the relatively insignificant amount of 20 yen (about 15 cents) could just be brushed aside and we would be given our tickets. Instead, we searched for an ATM. Just to make things more interesting, the ATMs in the station rejected my foreign debit card.
Nicole and I searched our camera bags, as old foreign currency tends to make its way into various pockets over the years. I also looked around on the ground for a couple of coins that someone may have dropped. The situation had become desperate . . .and quite a spectacle. Nicole found a 10 yen coin in her camera bag, which has been kicking around in there since 2016. We were now just 10 yen short. We tried the transfer desk again, but he was rather insistent about the other 10 yen. We then had to resort to asking someone else in line like we were beggars. My quiet uttering to the line behind us of “juu en, arimasu ka?” resulted in multiple women frantically searching their purses for the elusive coin as if it was a race. They were very eager to help us and we were very thankful to them for helping us get out of Shinagawa station.
While Terminal 3 at Haneda was only two stops away, it was a very stressful ride. We queued up in a line for the train that was 30 people deep for every door. When the train arrived, we all entered the train in an organized albeit chaotic line that included a fair amount of pushing. It was one of the most crowded subways I have ever been on in my life. We effectively fell out of the train as it pulled up to Terminal 3 to find Haneda much calmer than the train stations.
Check-in, security, and passport control combined took maybe five minutes. Our flight was delayed, so we had some time to kill. Delta provided some meals at the gate area as compensation for the delay. I kept nervously refreshing my phone to see if they had cleared anyone into seats. There were about 30 people who had paid for tickets who were also awaiting seats, so we had no idea what was going to happen with us. Online, the numbers had said that the main cabin was oversold by about 30, so it was rather unclear what any of this meant. Then, unexpectedly, we were cleared into seats 2C and 2G in a Delta One Suite of a relatively new Airbus A330-900 NEO.
The fact that it was unexpected made it a bit sweeter, but I do wish the numbers made more sense. This is the game we all play I suppose. I went with a Japanese meal of wagyu beef and rice for dinner. After that, I attempted sleep by closing my little privacy door (a new feature for me). I don’t think I was able to muster anything truly restorative because we kept hitting moderate turbulence, and when it did finally subside it sounded like the flight attendants were juggling silverware back-and-forth for about three hours straight. Then the gross coughing began mixed with a heavy amount of flatulence permeating the cabin. Nevertheless, the flight went by relatively fast and we landed at LAX around 1pm, six hours before we left.
As this makes for a rather long day, it may be a day or two before I can close out with a reflections post on this very memorable trip. As of right now, however, I can’t even accurately remember my name. They tell me this trip started in Hawai’i. That seems so long ago and such a throwaway part of the trip compared to everything that happened afterward. It was certainly a unique trip to some vastly different places. Stay tuned for more.
passports & pepto bismol 