10 Cities on Standby USA Cont.

(May 24th) I arrived in Detroit around 9am and my next flight to Narita airport was going to be at 2pm so I had plenty of time to kill. The airport is quite large so I took my time traveling around the airport. The airport has a train that rains on a rail above all the stores and restaurants. I burnt some time traveling on that train a few times. When I had enough of feeling like a kid in an elevator I walked to my terminal and proceeded to listen to music and read Peter Hessler's "River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze." My lack of sleep would eventually catch up with me.

I woke up before they began boarding the plane and again the terminal was completely packed with Japanese people waiting to go home. I nervously went up and asked the Delta employee if there was going to be any room on the plane. "We have a weight distribution issue so it's going to be highly unlikely that we will be able to take any extra passengers." .....weight distribution issue. Not again. I still stood there hopeful that the dedicated employees of Delta would work as diligently as their fellow employees at JFK. My hope couldn't have been more displaced. They boarded all of the regular passengers and made absolutely no attempt whatsoever to board the standbys and what made it worse was that it seemed completely normal to them. Without a second thought they closed the doors and left the lot of us rejects expectantly sitting in our chairs...bastards. I guess that's the level of dedication at the Detroit airport. Of course I wouldn't have put all my trust into this flight so I prepared ahead of time.

There was another flight leaving at 7pm for Haneda, but since I would be arriving in Tokyo past 10pm there would be no more flights departing for Taipei meaning I would need to find overnight accommodation somewhere in Tokyo and take the train to Narita in the morning...oh boy. Before I did anything else I needed a beer. "If I don't get on this flight to Narita again I'm getting a drink," I told myself before I was unable to board the 2pm flight and since I am a man of my word I went to the nearby Chili's and ordered a couple tall Blue Moons and a charred burger. Once I quenched my thirst and filled my belly it was time to start looking for a place to stay in Tokyo. I google accommodation in Tokyo and it comes up with a few results. As I search through the various areas to stay I come upon a Capsule Inn and figure when am I ever going to get the chance to stay in a capsule and booked myself in for one night. Done. I'm all set.

I head back to the terminal and wait for my next flight. When 7pm rolls around I am able to board the flight with ease, finally! I'm seated in the middle column of seats with one other Japanese man sitting at the other end of the four seat row. I start the flight off by watching The Immortals, a cheap knock off of 300 that seemed like it didn't have a large enough budget to afford even decent SFX. Although, interesting in its concept it was so poorly delivered it could hardly keep my attention...perfect! Just like watching golf on TV the movie had one purpose, throw me into such a deep sleep that I wouldn't even feel the food and drink carts bumping into my head that was poking out in the aisle. Promptly after the film I fell asleep for 10 hours of the 13 hour flight. Since I couldn't get comfortable laying back in my seat I decided it would be alright to stretch my legs out along the two seats next to me. "The Japanese guy won't mind right? I mean he's got to have kids he knows we need our sleep. Ah whatever as long as I don't poke him with my smelly toes he won't care," I thought to myself. When I woke up we were about an hour away from the airport. As we were landing it hit me that I was in another country when I saw the huge bright lit up neon sign written in Kanji through the plane window, but I still couldn't take even a second to really contemplate about it. I had one mode at that time and it was Go. Get off the plane, get my luggage, find out how to get to the Capsule Inn, find out where the Capsule Inn, and then breathe. I get off the plane and and my first Asian adventure began....