Home for a rest.

I got back to Toronto last night. Spent about 28 hours airborne, and made a bad show of it the whole way.

To begin with, I missed my connecting flight in Tokyo. I had a total of three flights to catch: one domestic from Kansai Airport in Osaka to Haneda Airport in Tokyo; one from Narita to Detroit; and a final flight from Detroit to Toronto. Knowing it was Christmas and all I got to Kansai with time to spare, but the airport was basically empty and I ended up sitting in the terminal for two hours. From there to Haneda, and then a train ride across the entire goddamn city of Tokyo to get from one airport to the other. I think I'll elaborate on this point.

There are two airports in Tokyo. Haneda has existed in one form or another since the prewar era. Narita was opened in 1978 to much domestic protest. In order to build Narita the government had to confiscate a lot of farmer's land, and as a fairly vocal, grassroots, anti-Narita movement popped up. This was in a country that doesn't see a lot of protest movements. Anyway, the airport was built, and now handles most of Japan's international flights, while Haneda has become a domestic airport. While I can't pretend to speak for the farmers, I too have a problem with Narita airport - namely, it's on the other goddamn side of the city from Haneda. This means that if you, for example, fly in from Osaka, and are on your way to, say, Detroit, there is no way in hell you can make your connecting flight because it takes two hours to get from one airport to the other, not counting processing time at either end. Just for example.

Anyway, I paid the penalty fee to get on the next flight and arrived in Detroit some 15 hours later or so. Saw Pirates of the Caribbean II on the flight, it was quite good. Hung out in Detroit for a few hours, had trouble finding somewhere I could eat, but in the end got a veggie burger and it was delicious. I miss burgers.

The flight from Detroit to Toronto was pretty unevenful. I'd been in transit for a full day by that point and was so exhausted that I slept right through takeoff. When we landed we went straight to customs and I realized I'd left my passport in the seat pocket. By the time I got to speak with someone the plane had already been sent off to Minneapolis, but they're going to check when it lands and hopefully I won't have to go back to the Passport Office and the Japanese Embassy and so on.

It is nice to be home though. My family is nice people.

It's already Christmas in Japan. We've still got 12 hours to go in this time zone though.