I arrived in Tokyo tired of travelling and feeling sick to my stomach, flying has never been the easiest on my constitution and these 10 hours were no different; not to mention there was one legitimate puker and 3 pity pukers surrounding me as we began to land, 3 crying babies and a snarling Japanese woman as my seat neighbor. I staggered out of the airplane pleased that I had survived what I secretly had dubbed the flight from hell. Whatever past sins I’d incurred during my trip to the States had been absolved after that flight.
I followed the crowd like a sheep to the food trough, my mind was on other things and I let myself be swept along the grey corridors, noting nothing but the whirring of my sluggish brain. I glanced up and noticed “International connections” and “Domestic Connections,” since I had successfully landed myself in Asia I took the corridor labeled, “Domestic Connections.” I braved customs and a dodged a very enthusiastic Japanese man who was insisting on telling me about the new strains of rice that were being created in Japan to help cure the Asian rice crisis; if there’s one thing I care less about when I’m queasy it’s food, and the fact that the food of topic was rice meant that my interest level was beginning to dip well below polite indifference.
I finally managed to make it to the baggage claim and that’s when it hit me, I had actually allowed myself to leave the airport central and enter into Japan. I checked my passport and saw a 90-day tourist visa attached to my passport. My heart skipped a beat. I stood in the baggage claim trying to calm myself before deciding that I could easily re-enter the airport, surely there must have been other idiots like me? So, I left the baggage claim and found myself deposited in the middle of a busy sidewalk. Busses, taxis and personal cars whizzed past me, my eyes filled up with tears, how on earth did I manage to get stranded in Tokyo? I glanced down at my flight ticket, my fingers trembling, took a deep breath, checked the time and realized I had approximately 45 minutes to figure out where I needed to be and board the airplane in order to get back to Korea on time. Thankfully, while I was standing there, a very kind, balding, wart-faced man approached me and asked if he could assist me, “You help need?” I explained my situation, “I idiot, need international flight. Korea.” He smiled at me and lightly grasped my wrist before toting me back inside the airport and to an elevator “Fourse froor! Frourse froor!” He pushed me into the already crowded elevator and the doors snapped shut on my thanks and his smiling face.
I found myself deposited on the 4th floor of the airport, I explained my idiotic situation to the smiling assistant, she glanced at her watch, her smile disappeared, she gabbled something into a walkie-talkie and directed me to the security area where I was met by a tiny Japanese man who glanced at me with disdain, the audacity of idiotic American women! He rushed me through security and we began to run through the terminal, I caught a glance of the time and realized I had 20 minutes left to make my flight. After an eternity, we were both gasping and struggling to push our way through a line of pre-pubescent Japanese women in matching tracksuits. We finally burst through the pimply estrogen line and I found my ticket and passport being wrenched from my hand as they pushed me onto the boarding walkway and I hustled aboard the plane.
I suppose if you were to affix a moral to this story it would run along the lines of; don’t be an idiot, learn to read or, even though many Asians look alike and sound alike to my American ears, all Asians are not in fact the same.
Ethnocentric karma is a bitch
Anyeong!
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