Let's go to Kyoto! 京都に行こうよ！

Waiting for my first flight. 3 hours of sleep in my system.

The first post on this blog will be one that I personally find interesting and something that gets left out of most travel blogs/journals/records: the actual "travel" to the main destination. Unlike a lot of people I know, I love the process of traveling : packing suitcases, walking in a station, sitting in some form of container for X amount of time, checking into a hotel etc.  I love road trips, train trips, and most of all, airplane trips. (Boats are excluded because I am extremely seasick)

Now that I think about it, maybe I love traveling because it is a perfect excuse to sit and never get up. Anyway.

Here was my itinerary for the day(s) of 3/31 - 4/1. It started with a 7:40AM flight from Boston (for which I woke up at 4:30AM): Boston - 2 hrs - Chicago  - 14 hrs 11 minutes - Shanghai (layover 6 hrs) - 90 minutes - Kansai International Airport in Osaka - 3 hrs - Iwakura, Kyoto

Or at least, that's how it should have gone. I'm now typing this at my impromptu overnight layover at KIX after missing my shuttle and arriving juuuust after every sort of transportation shut down the for the night. After some headaches and dangerously watery eyes, I've accepted it. I've been more than lucky in the past....20...24 hours?

My goals for the trip were threefold: get to Iwakura, find the 7-Bank ATM at the airport and get money, and get my prescription meds across without being eaten by police dogs. I wasn't too worried about the first part. I've done my share of international traveling with long layovers and random country hopping. I was however, worried about the latter two. Guess which ones I managed to get to.

A smooth sea of clouds! Actually not as interesting as puffy ones but very pretty.

(2:14AM @ KIX: Another person has joined me at the charging booth. He has a bunch of stuff and looks ready to hunker down for the night as well. Maybe I'll actually get some sleep. Or maybe he'll be the one to walk away with all my art supplies and clothing. Stay tuned.)

Okay, granted, I was a little bit worried about my connection in Chicago. A connection with less than one hour to switch is a connection that is HIGHLY UNRECOMMENDED and RISKY according to Google, everyone's fun best friend who literally knows everyone better than their moms and best friends combined and maybe even  more than themselves. Because I like to live dangerously, I ignored this forecast of doom, or a Missed Connection To a 14 Hour Flight That Is The Crux of Your Entire Journey. To cut the anxiety short (because there's plenty to come later on) I made it to the Chicago-Shanghai flight just in time for boarding. It was fine. Some other people from the Boston-Shanghai trip even recognized me, which surprised me until I remembered I now have bright, possibly luminescent, purple hair. Little kids smile at me and adults stare at me with varying degrees of disapproval. I'm okay with that.

This was the first time I saw a plane shadow on a cloud. I got a kick out of it.

Onto the long flight! Fourteen hours and eleven minutes. This is probably my fourth or fifth time on a flight of this length, but the first time I actually slept on it. My surefire way to beat jetlag has always been to stay awake for first 13 hours of the flight by desperately watching all the in-flight movies and squirming and slapping myself, and then passing out for the last hour because my eyes are literally crossing and my eyelids are getting glued together by body functions that are healthier than I am. This time, however, I was starting off with barely 4 hrs of sleep in my system and a 6 hr layover to stay awake for afterwards. I was going to sleep at least 8 hrs if I could.

I managed to sleep for 4. Good enough. 

I watched three movies on the teeny tiny blurry screen barely ten inches from my face: The Imitation Game, Belle, and Interstellar. Interstellar is not a fun movie to watch when you are in a plane; especially when the light from the airplane window is all white (like the light in Interstellar), and you do not find space at all interesting because it is the one kind of travel you find incredibly frightening. But I watched it with all the awful attention I give to horror movies even when I know I will not be able to sleep for months afterwards. As it went on, I felt more and more horrible. Then it ended, and I felt even worse. Interstellar is not a very happy movie, the science seems suspect, and the small screen was too glitchy for the visuals I've heard raves about. I also don't like space, which I know immediately puts me out of the running as a deep thinker, avid dreamer etc. I have thought about it - and I do not mind. It's too much pressure to want to be thought of as intelligent and deep anyway. 

(This sounds like I didn't like Interstellar. Which is true. Because I don't like space. But that doesn't mean it's a bad movie. It means I didn't like Interstellar because I don't like space so there was really no chance in the first place, was there?)

When flying, I always choose the window seat if possible. I don't drink much water, I'm pretty good at sitting for long periods of time without moving (it's my favorite state of being), I get a side with no other anxiety-inducing human presence sitting there, and plus, I get to plaster my face on the window without awkwardly looking over someone's shoulder! The view out of a window on a plane is the best part of the journey. Flying to China from America usually means going over the Northern Hemisphere. It's kind of amazing looking down and seeing miles of winding white ice over bare brown and grey earth. It looks like some sort of alien planet even though it's probably just a really cold part of Canada or Russia. 

Look at that! Isn't it cool! I think this was over Greenland?

Cities are super cool to look at too! I get an itch to recreate the scenes but then my mind kicks in to count how many buildings and roads and cars and details would have to be included and my passion is snuffed before I even start. I'll get to it one day, I tell myself. And I will. Get to it.

Look at all those itty bitty things. It's weird we're so small.

I also, somehow, along my 14 hr journey, made friends with the old lady sitting next to me! We had a nice conversation about where I was going, eating Chinese food in America, and some other things. I am intensely, intensely shy so this was new for me. Speaking in Chinese was great fun and she didn't comment on my hair! (She's one of the only people I know that I've talked to who didn't...) I could actually kind of let my body relax and sleep while sitting next to her without thinking about All The Things I'm Doing Wrong and How Everyone In The Plane Is Judging Me. (Which I know, is narcissistic as well as completely illogical. But being shy is kind of like that.)

I brought a bag of goldfish crackers mixed with almonds and craisins but I needn't have worried. They fed us three times on that flight and I didn't even eat the last meal. After 11 hrs of stale air and literally doing nothing, the thought of heavily flavored food just makes me want to vomit. Airplane food goes hard on their salt and grease.

So now I've gone from Boston to Shanghai, no problem. This is the second time I've been in Shanghai Pudong airport, and the second time I've been there and had no chance to actually go into the city. One day, Shanghai! One day I'll come back and have one of those egg tarts people keep telling me about.

I'm kind of in love with the ceiling design. Impossible to draw correctly though. Argh.

I was not prepared for the 75 degree Fahrenheit weather in Shanghai. It was barely 40 degrees in Boston when I left. And that's on a warm day. So I had my sweatshirt wrapped around my waist, with a button up long sleeved shirt on, insulated leggings, and a wool skirt. There's really no air conditioning in the airport, so I was feeling incredibly stuffy. I don't sweat much. I just turn red and dizzy and sick. So that was my general state during my layover. I also tried to find food, and I turned a fair shade of pink when I walked around the same area 5-6 times in search of food. My hair is purple. Obviously people remember that. Or, they probably don't and I'm just paranoid.

Hair color! And me when I still looked a bit sane.

I finally decided to start off with coffee at Starbucks (of all places), but a few moments I walked in, they lost power. Hm. There's something to be learned there. I really didn't want to go into the Korean restaurant because I eat enough of that in the US, and I'm in Shanghai, I should find something Chinese at least. But it was the only place without beer taking up half the storefront and one with actually nice seating. So I went in and paid 70 RMB for a dismal seaweed soup with probably 20 pieces of soggy seaweed, a small bowl of rice, and a tiny glass of iced latte. The price didn't feel good, but the food did. The soup was light and there was rice. I'm a being that needs rice every day and only feels half alive without it in my stomach at all times. Dumplings and noodles are poor substitutes.

After the food, I settled down by the gate and tried to draw the people in front of me without being noticed. I did not succeed. In fact I chickened out and drew my leg and everything behind them while leaving a big white space. It was nice though. I'm not very good at drawing on-site like that, but I do like doing it. It's very relaxing, until the anxiety kicks in.

My troubles began with the Shanghai-Osaka flight. Check in was 17:45, take-off was 18:10. Instead, we took off somewhere around 19:00-19:30??? I'm not sure because I was passed out from exhaustion by that time and was waking up every time the plane moved a few feet. While I was awake though, I was acutely aware that for the first time I was in a plane surrounded by a language I'm not fluent in. The flight attendants spoke Japanese and I tried relaying my orders to them using my rudimentary skills. I was half successful. The girl next to me was watching movies with Japanese subs on them. I tried to follow along. I was less than half successful. The announcements were all in Japanese, English, and then Chinese. I could make out some words and grammar points of the Japanese. I didn't really expect to understand much of anything. Three semesters of Japanese combined with my difficulty in foreign languages doesn't amount to much. Nevertheless, I was happy with what I did get.

With the flight delay, I knew I would miss my shuttle appointment for 21:30. They would be open until 22:45, I told myself. Maybe they'll let me onto a later one. It'll be alright. I'll find a 7-Bank ATM right out of arrivals. Even if I didn't understand the map (I'm also horrible at map reading. Even Google can't save me there), if I walk around enough I'll find it. If they ask me about my pain meds, I have proof they're mine. It's all okay. I was on pins and needles the whole time, though. I thought about police dogs a lot. And having absolutely no money in a foreign country.

So we land a few minutes after 22:00 and I'm like, okay I have a little time to get out and maybe plead my way onto the last shuttle. Obviously I have run out of any luck because the immigration hall is literally A Sea of Vacationing Chinese People. I forgot this is the first week of hanami. Everyone's in Japan to see some flowers and pretty sites, and I'm in the middle of it. There were probably over 300 people barely squeezed into an 8-10 lane procession zigzagging tightly to the 8 open immigration tables. It is worth noticing at this point I have a full backpack, a full side bag-purse thing, a camera bag, and a medium heavy jacket on me. It is probably over 75 degrees in that room with everyone almost face-to-back, shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone. My back and shoulders are in pain, my mind is in a frenzy because police dogs and missing the shuttle and not having any money in a foreign country and the people behind me are incredibly annoying bc they keep bumping into me, hard, with every step. There is also a sniping family in front of me and several unhappy children scattered around. I have been on the road for about 24hrs at this point and I am so incredibly done with everything because my itinerary did not include a 3 hour wait in line. 

But wait, I did. And I remember every single excruciating second of it. I also remember the moment when it seemed everyone had had enough and the barriers at both ends were somehow released so all the people behind my row swelled to the front. Indignant, people in my row took apart the barricades and now we just had a giant crowd of people pushing up against the 8 immigration officers. By this time it was 23:30AM and I was still hoping for a shuttle, or at least a subway, but also knowing that that was probably just a pipe dream. I get through immigration, the customs officer only asks me about my Japanese language skill, and I find a 7-Bank after walking left for five minutes in Terminal 1. I get my money, head to the other direction to find the shuttle service and find a paper left for me saying they cancelled my reservation because of delays. Then I sit down and connect to the blessed, blessed free wifi, text my parents and call my mom and try to not freak out in the middle of an airport at midnight. 

So now I'm here. At the airport. For 6 more hours. And I probably can't take the shuttle in the morning because reservations must be made three days in advance. So I'm gonna brave the subway system in...three hours. With my two suitcases, one backpack, and two shoulder bags. Hopefully I find my way to Iwakura.

My five-star hotel for the night. Hopelessly addicted to electricity and internet connection.