8:25am
Kitchen Table in front of a fan
*I thought it would be interesting to note the time and location of each posting. My own little research project. I might add daily details as they occur to me.
Patrick finds Bob's new toy utterly alluring (in fact, he is on it now, headphones squeezing his gray matter, busy blurting unintelligible gibberish to equally computerized buddies back home in Davis).
Aya is in raptures over watching streaming Hulu episodes of "Glee" on Bob's massive computer screen.
I find it a bit overwhelming.
So I have untaped, unpacked and freed from its styrofoam prison my faithful iBook. My fingers are happily nestled into the smooth depressions on each key of the keypad. In between the keys are the crumbs and dust of our former kitchen, now 5000 miles away. Yahoo.
But I digress.
When I last wrote, Patrick, Aya and I had just handed our 3 very confused cats over to the nice United Airlines people. We spent a few moments watching their sticker-and tag- festooned carriers slither away on a conveyor belt into the bowels of the airport (hopefully to end up in the bowels of our airplane).
Freed from the weight of 4 suitcases and 3 cat carriers, we now had (1) Patrick's skateboard backpack--an ingenious contraption of a backpack with heavily reinforced straps across the front designed to hold a skateboard. (2) Aya's bag, which contained a mystifying collection of hairbrushes, barrettes, sugarless gum, lip gloss and tiny notebooks and (3) my mini-backpack and rolling carry-on bag (containing incredibly important papers, my bluetooth ipad keyboard and my camera, among other things). Please note the rolling carry-on bag. It will be an important character later.
First things first. I had my priorities and, in spite of the grumblings of my narcoleptic children, I was determined to carry them out.
Newsstand.
No trip for me is complete with out a visit--or two--to the airport newsstand. Books, magazines and newspapers are the flame to my bespectacled moth. That's right. I'm a reading junkie.
I controlled myself this time. I found a single paperback book that I had been eyeing in other bookstores for weeks. Patrick and Aya each chose snacks to take with them on the airplane.
With my newsstand yearnings satisfied, we turned to the food court. Waiting passengers were sprinkled here and there, some hunched rather miserably over paper cups of coffee at tables, others passed out across booths, luggage strewn about, half eaten food on trays littering their tables.
It was still well before 9am, so we opted for appropriate morning food. I ate a bowl of beef udon from the Japanese food court counter. As I expected, it contained udon and beef in a bowl of what seemed to be rather depressed dashi broth. However, it also contained other mysterious ingredients, such as cabbage and large hunks of celery and carrot slivers. Weird.
Aya had a cheeseburger with fries, explaining that it would be her last "American" cheeseburger. She was in full reminiscence mode, declaring with each ketchup-dripping french fry that it was her "last french fry eaten on American soil", her last sip of "American Diet Coke". She informed me, once I had returned from the coffee counter with a cup of iced coffee, that I was about to drink my last "American coffee".
Honestly.
Patrick declared himself not hungry, but instead amused himself with stealing Aya's french fries. To which she informed him that "he should order some french fries for himself, as they would be his last "American " french fries.
In this manner we whiled away the hour and a half before we needed to endure the joy of the passport checking line that divided the public part of the international terminal from the elite "travelers part" of the international terminal.
The line was slow and endless. Aya was especially curious about the reason for having to remove our shoes, to which I had no satisfactory answer. Patrick mumbled sarcastic comments such as "Maybe they think we have a bomb hidden in our socks", which helped immensely. Aya fretted about the possibility that she'd be chosen for a random "pat down".
However, no pat down ensued, nor were any explosive socks discovered. We toted ourselves past the blindingly lit duty free stores and down the escalator to our gate.
More waiting.
More lines, this time to get on the plane.
Once on the plane, we discovered that we had been seated next to each other, sure enough, but configured so that 2 of us were sitting near the window, and one of us was sitting across the aisle.
I don't really have to tell you what happened, then, right?
That's correct. Bickering ensued.
The kids had anticipated sitting in a line of 3 seats, so that, ideally, they'd each pass out on one of my shoulders, effectively trapping me in my seat.
But now, one seat was a much-coveted window seat. And only one of them could pass out on my shoulders.
If I sat in the single seat across the aisle, they would be sitting together. Those of you who are parents know why I threw out this possibility right away. I didn't think United Airlines, or our fellow passengers, would appreciate a WWF wrestling match right there in the airplane.
Which left either Patrick or Aya sitting near the window, and thus next to me.
We began with Patrick sitting at the window, with me next to him and Aya in the single aisle seat.
Here is the action for the first 4 hours of the flight**:
Aya: (poke poke at my shoulder) Mom, I want to sit near the window. It isn't fair that Patrick got it. He always gets what he wants.
Me: Aya, let's wait until the halfway point, and then switch, okay? I'm trying to sleep.
Aya: (poke poke) I want to sit there now. I need to lean on the wall to sleep.
Me: Please wait.
Patrick: She just wants everything her way. I claimed this seat first. Totally fair.
**repeat every 5 minutes
Oh, there were distractions. Lunch time meal service came around, featuring something that might have been meat and potatoes, accompanied by something that might have been carrots and string beans. Or, you could have something that might have been stir fried veggies with something that resembled rice.
Patrick ate his roll, my roll and his brownie.
Aya ate her roll, the brownie, and the quasi mashed potatoes.
I ate my whole meal, including the scary little salad, because I knew I'd need the energy to endure further bickering.
And there were movies and TV shows, but the images in the little seat-back screens were blurry and dim, and prone to being undecipherable every time the person in front of us leaned their seats. They also tended to flicker and pulse every time the plane hit turbulence. I watched some blobs from a movie that supposedly was "Jane Eyre". Aya and Patrick watched some blobs from what was reportedly "House".
The half way point in the flight came. I leveled the appropriate threats and managed to get Patrick and Aya to switch places. "Accidental" elbow jabs and pinches did occur as they each slithered into the impossibly narrow aisle and wedged themselves back into their new seats.
Here is the action for the next 4 hours of the flight**:
Patrick: (Poke poke) Mom, I want my seat back.
Me: (yawn, open eyes) Patrick, you and Aya just switched. I am trying to be fair here.
Patrick: (poke poke) I got that seat first. It's not right.
Me: (glare) Fair is not always right. Could you please just relax and be okay with this?
Patrick: She sucks.
Me: (eye roll) Fine. I am noting in my mind that she sucks. Now chill out.
**repeat every 10 minutes
And, after 10 hours of this familial bliss, our airplane did land, the lady in front of me did remove her seat back from my nasal passages, and we did crowbar ourselves out of the plane.
In Japan. Again.
And la la la, into a tram, down escalators and into a cavernous white rectangular room. 15 or 20 individual immigration kiosks lined one long wall. The bulk of the room consisted of winding mazes of red and green aisle tape, corralling all of us foreign visitors into a long twisting snake of jet lagged misery. 40 minutes of shuffle-stop-shuffle-stop. Patrick and Aya's complaints escalated every 5 minutes until I ordered each of them to stop talking entirely or I would "go insane and do unspeakable things". For once they heeded the warning. Perhaps it was my stop-light red eyeballs that unnerved them.
Once our visas and passports were checked, we were expelled into baggage claim where our suitcases were already enjoying a luggage carousel ride. Patrick fetched a luggage cart while I heaved each monstrous bag off the conveyor belt.
Time for the kitties.
I went to the "Animal Quarantine" counter. A uniformed woman smiled up at me and clearly began summoning her English skills to the front. However, I was one step ahead of her, and excused myself in Japanese before I simply (and I am sure ineptly) explained my purpose.
A uniformed man popped out from behind the counter and led me to a corner of the baggage claim under the main staircase where the 3 cat carriers awaited. Alarmed little glowing eyes peered out at me from the back of each carrier. Aya squealed, collapsed on the floor and began cooing into the carriers. The uniformed man smiled kindly and gestured back towards the Animal Quarantine counter.
The process was unexpectedly smooth and quick. The uniformed man asked me to accompany him to the back room with the carriers. I removed each cat, one by one, from her carrier and held her up so he could scan her microchip. Once this was complete, I filled out more paperwork, and handed over the original copies of all the documents I had lovingly and painstakingly completed over the past 8 months.
Poof and pop. Done. Our 3 cats, formerly rescued kittens, were now international travelers and residents of Japan. Meow meow.
We rounded the corner, suitcases, cats and jet lag in hand, and emerged out into the waiting area for international flights.
Aya spotted Bob first, dropped everything (including one of the cats) and threw herself at him. Patrick and I shook our heads, and heaved everything out of the way of other incoming passengers. As you can imagine, lots of hugs.
Once the glee of reuniting had ebbed, we noticed something else:
we were sweating. Profusely.
Ahh, Japanese summer.
Okaeri Nasai.
Welcome back.
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