Recent holiday to the British Isles, Part 8 - How I Got Home

On the 13th of January, I left England. Gillian had instructed Ant to pick her up after work, take her home so she could change and eat, and then we would head for Heathrow. But we knew that Gillian would take forever to get ready, so we just picked her up and went straight to Heathrow. So the last time I saw Gillian she was bitching and moaning WHICH WAS NOT NICE, GILLIAN! She got all stubborn and wouldn't let me buy her food at a gas station. Silly thing. I still have that 5 pound note I tried to give her, and I can't do a thing with it.

I rang Nanna from a payphone at Heathrow, checked in and then went through to the departures lounge. I ended up sitting staring at a screen for ages. There was no gate number printed on my boarding pass, just a section. In Heathrow (or the part of Heathrow I was in), you have to wait for your gate to be displayed on the screens before you know where to go. Gates are displayed 20-40 minutes before your plane leaves. But if you are sitting at one side of the terminal, and your gate is on the other side, it can take 20 minutes to walk there. I don't think it is a very good system.

But I got to my gate without difficulty (although it was a long walk and I had to hurry) and soon found myself on the way to Paris. Because it was an evening flight and usually I fly day flights, I spent a while looking out the window at the lights of civilisation below. Cars look like blood cells from above at night. But then it got cloudy so I couldn't see anything anymore. Too bad. I would have liked to be looking for boat lights on the English Channel.

I had to wait an hour or so in CDG for my boarding call. I had put some Euros in my wallet, intending to buy tea or something while I waited, but the teashop in the waiting lounge was closed. The only beverage that was available was beer, and I don't drink beer very often. There weren't even any drinks machines (which is shocking for someone who has lived in Japan for a while). Eventually the boarding call came. There is no queue area at the gates in Paris, and since there were so many people on the flight, there was just this big crowd of people milling around and pushing forwards trying to get on the plane. What a mess.

When I got on the plane, I found that the seats were in a 3-4-3 arrangement, and I had a window seat. Uh-oh, I thought. I am going to get trapped in my seat, aren't I?

The woman sitting next to me was a Japanese woman who had just spent two weeks on a home stay in France. She knew some French but not English, which is very rare for a Japanese person. I was talking to her for a while, but after dinner she and the person next to her went to sleep for most of the flight. I was indeed trapped in my seat and unable to go for a walk. What made the situation worse was that the woman in front of me spent the whole flight arguing with her chair to get it to go further back i.e. closer to me. She kept bashing at the chair so violently that if I had a drink in the cup holder, it would splash out of the cup. She managed to get her chair to go much further back than an economy class chair is designed to go. It was much further back than her grandson's or daughter's seats were, and they had put their seats right back. It was so far back that I couldn't stand up to exercise my legs or rest my backside. It was so far back that I had trouble seeing my LCD screen when it was displaying some colours. It was so far back that the back of her seat was ABOVE my knees. It was an uncomfortable flight.

We got to Japan, and started flying towards Tokyo. The weather started getting very bad because there was a storm sitting right on top of Tokyo. The turbulence got very bad. I was looking at the progress screen, and saw the plane turn around 180 degrees above Ibaraki Prefecture, and I thought Uh-oh. Then an announcement came saying that we would be landing at Nagoya instead because of extreme weather at Narita. Now, this was an extreme inconvenience for everyone on the plane, including me, but after another half an hour the plane turned back around and headed towards Tokyo again. Everyone stopped panicking for a minute until an announcement came saying that the plane would be landing at Haneda instead of Narita. So most of the people on the plane started panicking again, except for me and the lady next to me. My hotel was actually near Haneda because I was catching an early morning flight from Haneda to Shonai the next day, and Ryoko-san (the lady next to me) lives in Yokohama, which is fairly near Haneda. So the two of us were rejoicing. But most of the people on the plane were French people headed for a final destination of New Caledonia, and they were annoyed. It was not nearly as much of an inconvenience as Nagoya would have been, though.

So we started our descent towards Haneda. Now, Haneda is not really all that far from Narita, as far as weather is concerned anyway. It has more shelter from storms from the east than Narita does, but the weather on the approach to Haneda was still right on the borderline. I was looking out the window, and in the moonlight I could see that our plane flew underneath the edge of a huge storm head as we reached Tokyo. It was a beautiful sight, but frightening. Then the turbulence got very bad. Kids started throwing up in sick bags, and I was fanning my face with a notebook so that I would not have to do the same. I kept looking out the window in sick fascination. For a long while there was no way to see what was going on outside, until suddenly the bright lights of a freight ship appeared out of the murk beneath us. That too was a beautiful yet scary sight. We got lower and lower, and I just stared at the water that was fast approaching. The plane was being buffeted around in the wind of the storm, and the sea was so close beneath us . . .

The edge of the runway appeared beneath us only a few seconds before we touched down. Haneda is only a domestic airport, and our plane was very heavy, so it must have been a difficult landing for the pilot. Then before our plane had lost it's momentum, there was a rather loud BUMP noise as the plane swerved . It didn't lose control, but I am afraid it was close. I was happy, thinking that from then on there would be no troubles.

We came to a stop, and people immediately began gathering up their hand luggage as normal, but then an announcement came telling us to remain seated. After a while another announcement came telling us what we were waiting for. Because Haneda is mostly a domestic airport, it does not have a full-time Customs staff. People are only brought in when a flight is due to arrive from Korea. Therefore there was no one at the airport qualified to check our Passports. Also, even though the storm had moved on, we could not fly the plane to Narita because we may have sustained damage during the landing and the plane was not cleared for flying again yet. We were told that Customs people were coming from Narita, and so we would have to wait.

So we waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. It got very hot in the plane. After an hour and a half, they opened something somewhere and allowed some fresh air into the plane. My happiness that I was so close to my hotel was replaced by worry that by the time we were let off the plane, the public transport would have stopped. Then an announcement came. The customs people were stuck in a traffic jam.

We landed at Haneda at a little after 7.30pm, but by the time we were allowed off the plane it was nearly 11pm. Three stuffy hot boring hours straight after an uncomfortable long haul flight. We were bussed to the terminal, went through customs and then everyone stood at the baggage collection carousel and waited for the bags to arrive. And waited . . . and waited. Did they unload the baggage from the plane while we were sitting in the parking lot for three hours doing nothing? Of course not.

By the time I got out to the front of the airport, it was nearing midnight and public transport out of Haneda had indeed stopped. So yet again I had to fork out for a Tokyo after-hours taxi. That time it only cost 6,000 yen. Only, she says. That is a lot of money for a taxi ride, in my opinion.

I got to the hotel alright, but only got a few hours sleep because I had to get up bright and early for my flight back to Tohoku.

So at 6.20 in the morning I set out on foot for Hamamatsucho Station in order to catch the Tokyo Monorail to Haneda. The hotel information said it was a 5 minute walk away. So I hauled my luggage 5 minutes down the road, and was confronted with a staircase saying 'station this way' or something to that effect. So I climbed the stairs, and was confronted with a long tunnel with signs saying 'JR this way' and 'Tokyo Monorail this way.' My back was dying by this stage, but I plodded doggedly onwards. Then I had to climb another staircase and cross a bridge over all of the tracks. I was a bit surprised about that, because Haneda is on the side of the tracks I had started from. But I kept following the signs, getting slower and slower. I went down a set of stairs, through the station concourse, and up another set of stairs and finally found myself at the Monorail gate. So I bought my ticket and took the escalator up to the platform. The Monorail, as soon as it starts, crosses back over the tracks and passes my hotel on the way out to Haneda. Why does that keep happening to me?

After I got to Haneda, I hauled my bag through the Main Concourse, checked in, and went through baggage check. Then I went looking for my gate. As I am sure you can guess by now, my gate was at the very end of the terminal, so I had to walk a long way.

While I was at the gate, I looked out the window and saw the Air France plane sitting outside being serviced. That plane had to go back to France a few hours later. I wonder what happened with that?

The flight to Shonai was very nice. That storm had already left, and Tokyo was sunny. I had another great view of Tokyo and Mt. Fuji. Then we flew over the spine of mountains that runs through the middle of Japan, until we got to Yamagata. I had all sorts of interesting sights to look at. I could see the distribution of snow over the country i.e. none in Tokyo, then on the mountains only, then everywhere. I landed at Shonai safe, and caught the bus back to Sakata Station. Now, I had been expecting to miss the 9.30 train north and have to wait for the train that gets to my town at 1.10 in the afternoon. But I got to the station at about 9.15am and therefore was back in my town by 10.30am. I hauled my bag to my apartment. I was physically very tired by that stage, and I was stumbling the last 50m but I did it. I was home, my back not unbearably sore, my pipes weren't frozen: I had done it! It was the 15th of January, and I was home. All I had left to deal with was the jet lag (which was terrible, but I won't bother describing it; most people have already experienced it before).