japan and homeward bound

the flight from saigon to tokyo, which was supposed to leave at 11:30, got delayed to 2:20 a.m., so that gave me plenty of time to sit around in the airport. it had been a long day - i'd gotten up at half past six in order to take the long trip out to the mekong delta, so i'd been looking forward to getting to the airport and going to sleep on the plane. but what's three more hours?

i stayed awake, fearful that if i fell asleep i'd miss the boarding call and, like my mom before me in bangkok, have to purchase another ticket home. fortunately, the saigon-tokyo flight was very empty, and i had three seats to myself. i think i was asleep before we even took off and woke up about four hours later when we were cruising over the southern half of japan. i looked out the window to see if i could see where i had lived while teaching english in iwakuni, yamaguchi prefecture, earlier this decade, but it was cloudy. i also hoped to see mt. fuji, but i think i was on the wrong side of the plane.

we had originally been due to land in tokyo at 9 a.m., but the delay in saigon pushed our arrival back to noon. i was kind of sad, because even though i'd only be in the airport, i was still excited to be in japan, and intended to do some shopping and eating of japanese food in japanese restaurants. after all, it's not like it is any more expensive to eat at a meal in an airport restaurant, since the country's so damn expensive to begin with. when i lived there, i discovered that the cost of food was comparable to doing all of your shopping not at a discount grocery store, but at a 7-11.

i ended up having *plenty* of time for that shopping and eating, however, since my flight from tokyo to dallas/fort worth got pushed back from 2 p.m. to 4:30. doh! i wouldn't have minded having more time in japan (and if we'd arrived in the early morning at the originally scheduled time, this would have meant that i would have had enough time to leave the airport and go out and explore the city of chiba, in which the airport is located). but being late to DFW would suck because i was going there for one reason: to spend the day with my dad. the plan had been to arrive at DFW at 9 and then be back at the airport at 5 p.m . for my 7 p.m. flight home to ontario airport in california. but now i wouldn't be arriving in texas until almost 1 p.m.

i ended up using the internet in a free yahoo! internet place they had in the airport, walking around the terminal i was in, watching people arriving on flights from all over the world, then walking around some other terminal after taking the tram thing over to it, then eating yakiniku (mmm....chicken!) and ramen, then shopping for japanese goodies in the stores. i didn't leave out of the international area during the entire six hours.

perhaps the best time i had on this abbreviated trip to japan involved the bathroom. i love japan for many reasons, and one of the big ones is the omnipresent goofiness inherent in things like their fanatical devotion to high-tech bathrooms. you haven't lived until you've dropped the kids off at the pool on a heated toilet seat (don't knock it 'til you try it) on a cold iwakuni morning. sure, the heating wasn't really necessary in the middle of august in a climate-controlled airport, but it was still a nice touch, as were the multiple buttons available to help with booty cleansing after you are done with your business. the press of a button sprays water, bidet-like, and different buttons control the temperature, pressure, and angle of the water. you can have a focused spray or a gentle misting action. afterwards, press another button and a wave of warm air will warm your buttocks before you get back to your day. all the while, sounds of birds eminate from the toilet in order to cover up any embarrasing noises that may be emitted during one's posterior region during the defecation process.

i love japan for things like this, and for the ladies who bow at you when you reach the top of the escalators, and (back to the bathroom) how the bathroom itself was more clean and sanitary than any restaurant or hotel or guesthouse i had used over the past two months. i love the way the people never stop working. i love the strange formal way some of the women (both young and old dress), with kerchiefs and dainty sweaters and fancy shoes and leg hosings and socks that are gloves for your toes (with individual spaces for each individual toe).

watching all these things helped pass the time and it was 3:50 and time to board before i knew it. the 777 was totally packed, but fortunately i was seated next to a cute little japanese girl, a senior in college, who was leaving the country for the first time for a semester abroad at cal state sacramento. we talked alot during the 12-hour flight. she was impressed with my caveman-level japanese skills and my arnold schwarzenegger impression. she was meeting up with other students at DFW (???) and was very nervous. she was very thankful to me for showing her how to use the TV screen in the seatback in front of her and the fold-down meal tray, and she jumped with excitement and glee when, ten hours into the flight, we emerged into daylight (it had been night and dark through much of the trip) and we were over the rockies. "so beautiful!" she kept repeating. then it was kansas, oklahoma, and down into texas.

we landed and made it through customs very quickly. i wished the japanese girl "gambatte" (good luck) before she went off with the group of people who were waiting for her. the guy at the immigration counter asked if i was coming from vietnam because of the conical rice-picker hat i was carrying with me. i said i was, and he welcomed me back to the united states.

"it's good to be back," i told him. "it's been a long time."

I spent the afternoon with my dad and my sister, tera, and ally, tera's three-year-old daughter. i showered and changed clothes and we went out to lunch at a mexican place in bedford. i was overcome by jetlag while we were waiting for the food to arrive. later, i had to take a half-hour nap before it was time to go to the airport for the final flight, back to ontario, where my mom and my brother would hopefully be waiting for me.

the last flight, like all the others, was delayed - but only 15 minutes. i got really tired again while waiting for the plane, but managed to stay awake until boarding. i slept pretty much the whole way back to california, and we were landing in the inland empire before i knew it. mom and jeff were there, in my car (which had been sitting in mom's backyard in riverside for two months). we drove back to mom's house, chatted for awhile, and then i took off for my house, on the other side of riverside, barely remembering where it was since i'd traveled all the way around the world (and then some) since i'd set off from my driveway many weeks ago.

that was two days and nights ago. it's sunday night now and i'm getting ready to go back to work tomorrow morning. we have teacher in-services monday and tuesday, and then students will be there on wednesday. i'll have some good stories to tell them, i guess.

so you know how you feel sad sometimes when you come back from vacation? i stopped feeling like that a couple of years ago. there will (hopefully...probably...most likely) *always* be another trip in the future. the term "trip of a lifetime" doesn't apply to me, not even a two-month trip around the world. my "trip of a lifetime" will be something that i hope to choose on my deathbed, many years from now, when i look back and reflect on all the places i've been and faces i've seen.

there's always another trip. i thought about that as i drove home tonight from dinner at mom's house. and california's not so bad a place to hang in the meantime, at least on a night like tonight. sure, it's traffic-filled and smoggy and there is a severe lack of culture in the area in which i live, but as i watched the palm trees of riverside framing the stars (very visible on this night), and felt the cool air of the summer evening rush past my car as i drove with the window down, i was glad to be home.

at least until the travel bug starts biting at me again, prompting visits to kayak.com and the ordering of lonely planet books from amazon.

expect that stuff to start up probably, oh...tomorrow!

THE END