narita international airport – tokyo, japan
http://www.narita-airport.jp/en/
By the time we landed in Tokyo, I had watched two movies (Juno and Motorcycle Diaries), two episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and slept a whole lot of hours. I love the 777 planes with the entertainment systems that you can control. There’s a jillion movies and TV shows to watch and you can start, pause, rewind, and fast forward at your own convenience. It makes the flight seem not as long.
The Narita airport is really weird. Right when we got off the plane, there was a plastic table set up in one of the hallways and about ten Japanese girls who spoke heavily accented English who tried to flag down passengers who were trying to catch a connecting flight. They had pieces of paper spread out on the table (much like a registration table at a conference or seminar) and had to look for corresponding passengers one by one. The girls were very nice and helpful but I was a little taken aback by how manual the process was.
They told us that we were currently in Terminal 1 and that we would need to catch a shuttle bus to Terminal 2. Imagine my surprise as I saw Aeromexico airplanes out on the Tarmac. I had no idea they serviced Tokyo.
It is easily the slowest bus I have ever been on. It only runs every thirty minutes and there is no other way to get from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2. You can’t walk it because they are two separate buildings and the bus basically drives on the tarmac, dodging luggage carts and other trucks and buses. It was fine when we were going to Taiwan but on the way back, our layover overlapped with lunch and there was an hour gap between when the buses ran. We asked the man in the shuttle waiting area if we could walk it and he looked at us like we were crazy. So we went back upstairs and ate Tempura Udon and Tempura Rice to kill time. It was expensive! They really need to invest in making an automated shuttle between the terminals or maybe build an airwalk. Or maybe even just a designated sidewalk.
This little point and shoot camera was on our row of chairs we were sitting in when we were waiting to board our plane. There was no one around it. I didn’t know what to make of it so I took a photo of it. The husband told me to stop looking at it and stop acting suspicious. I thought maybe it was a “Hidden Camera” gag where the first person to reach for the camera would get swarmed by a Japanese SWAT team. Proactive policing. That sort of thing. I got bored of it after awhile and a group of American girls came over and collectively squealed. One of the girls snatched the camera and hugged it to her chest, looked up towards the ceiling with her eyes closed and said,”Thank God it was still here!”
They were oblivious to my existence. They did, however, notice the computer terminals next to where we were sitting and some got on the computer and paid the hourly charge to check their Facebook accounts. It made me feel like home.
While we were standing in line to board the airplane, something really stupid happened. I was trying to show the husband a photo I had taken of our living room and in the background you could see him in the kitchen in his underwear (this photo will not be uploaded). I was trying to zoom in so that he could see how funny it was and I accidentally changed the display setting on my camera to where it was all in thumbnail view and when I selected a photo it was in zoom mode. I tried to push all the different buttons but it wouldn’t go back to the normal view. The line to board the plane started moving and I began to panic. If I couldn’t change it back to normal, I wouldn’t be able to quickly review the photos I take. I couldn’t believe this was happening before our big trip. It was so stupid. I kept zooming in and out of the same stupid photo. We had our boarding passes checked and we were actually on the walkway to the plane when the husband, seeing how distressed I was, stopped to the side and took his laptop out. We sat on the floor on the side of the ramp while others walked by us and gawked. I was nervous that security would stop us and question us. It didn’t look good. It looked like we were hacking into their system or detonating a bomb. The husband was finally able to connect wirelessly to the internet (it was an extremely slow connection) and we googled “d200 thumbnail view display” which brought up a page that showed us how to get back to the normal view. I think it was to hold the thumbnail button down and rotate the dial back. Something really simple. The husband saves the day. Again.
And thank goodness the husband as a corporate iPass account. It has come in handy countless times.
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