Japan: Getting There
I left for Japan at 11:30 PM on February 22nd from LAX with an estimated arrival time of 2:00 PM on February 24th. The excitement of changing time by about 15 hours and crossing the International Date Line helps add to the crossing two days in one trip. That said, I was in the air for about 18 hours by the time it was all over. So, lets roll that beautiful in-flight story!
Being at LAX very late at night does nothing to change crowding. If you want to go anywhere in Asia and get there sometime during daylight hours you will be leaving at night. So I got to be in line with every other person who didn’t want to get to the Far East at 10 PM two days later. Even getting through checking in with two large bags and two carry-on’s was an adventure in spatial logic.
Luckily the whole process was fairly painless. I even had a quick conversation with a fellow American who was traveling to Manila in the Philippines. Through that I got to change lines a couple of times and do multiple security checks as is now so standard in our airports. I have finally accepted that taking off my shoes is fun.
Once on the flight a got a pleasant surprise. I was seated directly behind the ’staff only’ bathroom. This meant two things. First, I had a ton of extra legroom since there was no extra seat to pack in front of me. Second, the staff really doesn’t use their in-flight restroom so no odd smells from passengers was present. The location also offered itself to excellent tea and coffee service.
My neighbor for this leg of the 14 hour flight also just happened to be the guy I had talked to at the initial check-in line. By odd serendipity his name was Charlie Brown. We talked on and off through the flight and make observations about how cute our stewardess was.
Once landing in Taipei, a location well past Japan, we parted ways. I was now ready to face the challenge of finding a connecting flight in a foreign airport. Now, being that the Taipei international airport is new and fairly large, you would imagine it would be fairly clearly marked where you would need to go. That would be wrong. There was one sign pointing in the general direction of connecting flights and that was the end of anything except for sign signaling the letters of terminals. The airport is also empty, very empty… Ghost town empty…
After wandering down a few hundred yard of hallways I decided to check at a flight counter where my flight was actually supposed to be (the one time a long connection time is a good thing). After just a little bit of getting past the language barrier I found out that my terminal was in another building that I needed to take a tram to, glad any of that was either on the ticket (the concourse letter) or any signs gave a hint of where to go. Oh well, at least the tram was easy to find.
Once there I needed to check-in with United Airlines to finish my trip. No happily going in the right direction, I was ready for anything… Except finding out that the UA counter had no employees and would not have anyone there for about two hours. Luckily that was about an hour before my flight, so I had time to wander around the empty but very spacious hallways with two heavy carry-on bags. Greeting me down the length of every hallway were very well stocked Duty-Free stores that had alcohol, tobacco, and chocolate. Every store also had the proper signs to announce this.
While wandering I also found out the airport was indeed being used for more than one flight. On occasion a plane would arrive and people would stream down the hallway, then it would end again.
Luckily the UA staffers did show up at the time I was told they would. So I got my tickets and prepared for another flight that would actually take me to Nagoya; where the fun would really begin.
