Click here to see all of the photos I took on this day...although there aren't too many.
When I say "the longest Thursday of my life" I mean that quite literally. From midnight Thursday morning to 11:59 Thursday night about 36 hours passed. The Sun rose and set twice, but it never quit being Thursday.
We started off the morning with a McDonalds breakfast. As I mentioned yesterday, we had discovered that in spite of packing loosely for the trip over we still didn't have enough luggage to carry all our stuff back home. The Limousine Bus to Narita Airport was leaving at 1 PM, so we had all morning to find another bag to buy. We decided that we'd buy a new carry-on that was as large as airlines allow and I'd use it instead of the backpack I had used on the way to Japan.
Unfortunately, here's where we ran into another strange thing about Japan: While they seem to be up and heading to work early in the morning, the stores in Tokyo don't open until 10 or 11 AM for the most part. We walked over to Tokyu Hands and found that, indeed, they didn't open until 10. Checkout time at our hotel was 11. There was nothing we could do about it, so we decided to just explore some parts of Shinjuku on foot until Tokyu Hands opened.
We walked a bit farther North than we had been previously, and saw several businesses setting up signs out front about the new model of the PlayStation Portable that was being released this morning. When we made it around to Yodabashi Camera, we actually saw a long line of people waiting to buy it, but the store wasn't opened yet. Erin bought just one last gashapon. We came across a store selling some luggage, but it was all too expensive and not quite what we were looking for.
It was now 10 AM, so we headed back to the hotel. At this point we did something we had never done before on our trip to Japan: we split up. Erin went ahead to Tokyu Hands to find a suitcase (it was a couple blocks away across a skybridge over the JR train tracks) and I went up to the room to unpack the backpack and fit as many unbreakable things as I could into our checked luggage, including the backpack itself. Then I headed over to meet her at Tokyu Hands.
She had already found a beautiful bright orange carry-on that she thought I would like. I agreed, and we bought it along with a Crocs cellphone case for my sister. After we bought the case, the cashier cut all of the tags off the baggage, opened up all of the compartments and removed the dessicant packages, then showed me that in one of the pockets there was a lock and key we could use. Then Erin headed back to the room to pack up our stuff and I headed up to a higher floor of Tokyu Hands to find the middle section to a three part Dragonball toy I needed, having bought the other two parts on an earlier day elsewhere. After asking for help in Japanese and carefully trying to explain in several different ways that I needed the middle of these three sections, the girl finally managed to interrupt me and say in English, "I'm sorry, but we're sold out of that part." Oh.
I headed back to the hotel to help Erin with the packing. When I got there, she was already finished, and everything had just barely fit. After a final once-over of the room and a last sniffly glance at the view out the window, we took our luggage downstairs and checked out. Under Japanese law, it's illegal for a hotel to hit you with extra taxes and fees when you check out (they are required to include those in your initial price), so all we had to pay was for the breakfasts we had charged to our room. They took our luggage and put it in a cordoned off section of the lobby with a net over it and gave us a claim tag.
With all of that taken care of and a couple hours to spare before our ride to the airport, we went back to Yodabashi Camera to buy my dad a little toy Mazda as a souvenir. People were now buying their PSP-3000s and TV crews were on hand to interview customers. One of the crew members gave me a funny look, as if for a second he thought we might have come all the way from America just to buy this new PSP. After that, we decided to go eat lunch at a bakery we had seen when walking past Takashimaya Times Square earlier and then do a little window-shopping in Times Square itself.
Takashimaya Times Square is a very high-class department store. We saw $1500 pairs of shoes and a guarded display of some Christian Lacroix (a famous designer) clothing from fashion shows of the past. In the basement of the store there was a large supermarket. We saw square watermelons and actual roots of wasabi for sale. I asked the ladies standing nearby if I could take a photo, and they gave me the emphatic head shake and hands raised to make an X that I was now all too familiar with.
We walked through a concourse tunnel that looked like it would be for employees only, but actually led to a bookstore. Erin found all of the books in the "Chi's Sweet Home" comic series and bought them. We then headed back to the hotel to wait for the bus.
We both slept on the bus to the airport, although Erin got a bit more in than I did. After the 90 minute ride, we were dropped off on the upper level. We had exited on the floor below when we arrived in Japan. It was a very intelligent setup, actually.
Navigating Narita Airport was a cinch. We scanned our passports on a kiosk and were given our boarding passes. They were printed on nice card stock instead of the flimsy receipt-style paper we had received in Oklahoma City. A woman said, "You want to see all of your bags when you arrive in Chicago," meaning that we had to claim all of our baggage and then re-check it for our connecting flight. We made our way though the security checkpoint (which had signs asking that you pack your bags neatly so that it would be easier to tell what you had in the X-ray) and to our gate. The flight didn't leave until 4:50 PM, so Erin sat and read her comics, and I set off to find her a Dr. Pepper and explore. The terminal was full of duty-free shops, bars and "last chance for good sushi" restaurants. At the far end I found a snack bar that had bottled Dr. Pepper, so I bought one and headed back.
Finally, the time came to board our plane. As we taxied down the runway, a deep red sun was setting; the perfect ending to a perfect trip to Japan.
Although the flight was supposedly completely booked, we were lucky enough to have no one sit in the aisle seat next to us, so we were able to get up and move around without having to disturb anyone and just generally be more comfortable. We saw several movies and an episode of Monk, but I slept a great deal more than I had on the way over. They fed us a strange meal (an omelete filled with spinach and a side of half a hashbrown and a little hot dog, or "pasta" that was really penne pasta with a hot dog cut up in it). Later we had a bowl of instant ramen again, followed by another meal, which was a hot sandwich or pot roast.
As I said, the Sun set as we were taking off. A mere 5 hours later, the Sun rose again. We were given US customs forms by the flight attendants, and they were a bit troubling. It explained (not very well) that each US citizen was allowed to bring $400 of items into the US duty free. Beyond that, you were supposed to list the items you had bought and their values on the back. Well, there were five spaces provided. We had bought dozens of individual items in Japan, and they were all packed. We had saved the receipts, but they were probably in our checked baggage. We decided to just wait and ask what to do when we got to Chicago.
Because of a strong tailwind, our flight was at least an hour shorter than scheduled, and we arrived in Chicago at 3 PM...two hours before we had left. O'hare Airport is a busy mess, even on a Thursday afternoon. We waited in a line for about thirty minutes just to reach the desk where we had to present our passports. During this time -- from discussions with others in the line -- we decided to just write "(dollar amount): Souvenirs" and "(dollar amount): Gifts" on our customs form and see what happened.
After showing our passports, we then went to a baggage carousel where we waited another 15 - 30 minutes for our bags to show up. Then we waited another 10 - 15 minutes in the customs line. We were nervous.
Finally, we got our turn, and I handed our form to the guy, who read it aloud, followed by, "Is this correct?"
"Yes, sir."
"Could you prove all of this with receipts?"
"Yes, sir. I believe so." Erin and I started scrambling for the bags to get the receipts, when he stopped us.
"Wait, wait, now. I didn't ask you to prove it. I just asked you if you could prove it."
"Oh, yes."
"You're confident in these numbers?"
"Yes, sir. If anything, we overshot."
"Alright. Have a good day."
I then realized that customs officers don't want to go through your stuff any more than you want them to.
Next, we boarded a train to the terminal where we would catch the tiny plane to OKC. We then waited in the longest security line ever (at least another 30 minutes) to have our carry-ons checked yet again. The security officer started asking me all about our Nikon D90 camera (which he had read about but never seen), and we walked through the unbelievably crowded terminal to our gate. There were signs all over about how Chicago was a candidate city for the 2016 Olympics just like Tokyo. If this airport is this bad on a normal Thursday, I don't think it could handle the kind of traffic the Olympics would bring. With all of the lines we had to wait in, if our flight hadn't arrived an hour early we would have missed our connecting flight.
I called home and told my parents that we'd like them to meet us at the airport in OKC, because we were afraid we'd fall asleep on our way home. I think they were glad to hear it. We both slept this entire flight, and when we arrived in OKC the Sun was setting just as it had been when we took off from Japan.
We walked the length of the terminal and got to the exit, and were both very happy to see my family there waiting for us. Sid ran up and gave us hugs, and we all went down to the baggage claim. Then we got our car and headed to Whataburger for dinner. I drove home and never felt tired simply because I was too busy telling my dad all about our trip.
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