December 19, 2007

Atlanta (USA)

Traveling Home For Christmas

I over-slept the Arsenal-Blackburn Carling Cup game this morning, but I still managed to wake up at 6am so I could begin (and finish) packing for my vacation to the United States. By 9am I was walking out the front door with Kumagai-san so I could bum a ride in the taxi to Shinagawa Station. Rather than riding the express train for Narita Airport, I used my PASMO card to take a one and a half hour local train with all the other cheapskates. I figure if I have a 15 hour plane ride to the other side of the planet, what sense is there paying extra money just to save 45 minutes on the ride to the airport?

I flew Northwest Airlines from Tokyo to Minneapolis, where I had to deal with an overzealous customs official who took it upon himself to protect the American public from returning American citizens. The international arrivals hall in the Twin Cities doesn't see a whole lot of traffic, so when our flight deplaned there wasn't enough room for the long queue, and we were stretched back through the connecting tunnel. The overall blood pressure of the lobby was rising as the official at the head of our line seemed to be grilling every person he came across. By the time I finally got to the front of the line he began flipping through my passport while eying me skeptically when he struggled to find an empty page. Naturally, he asked me about the different countries I visited, whether I handled chickens, but then he started testing me on more trivial questions that made me want to reach over and whack him.

The point of all this is that foreigners are not the only ones who are targeted by American immigration officials: even US citizens are unnecessarily hassled.

When I finally cleared immigrations, I grabbed my bags, walked through customs control (nothing to declare), and re-checked my bags for the connecting flight to Atlanta. Unfortunately, I ran into more difficulties when I went through the security check for my carry on bags. The bottle of sake I purchased at a duty-free shop at Narita airport couldn't be carried onto the plane for my connecting flight (even though I carried it on the Tokyo/Minneapolis flight), so I was forced to either check the bottle or lose it. When I walked back to the checked baggage desk with the bottle of sake, the attendants said I couldn't check the bottle because my bags were already being sent to the plane, and so I ended up having to leave the terminal, re-check in at the Delta desk, and go through the whole security-check process all over again. The only fortunate part of this entire ordeal is that the airport was practically dead - especially considering I am used to Atlanta which is the busiest airport in the world - and the lines were short. In the end, I wrapped the bottle in several old sheets an attendant gave me and checked my backpack as a third piece of luggage.

The bottle of sake survived the three hour flight from the Twin Cities to Atlanta, but I had bigger things to worry about: whether or not Jo made it on her flight from London. I was stuck at the terminal waiting around for hours, but thankfully she arrived without too much hassle. We gathered our bags and caught a ride on a hired bus to the Atlanta Hilton, located downtown. Understandably, both of us were exhausted after such extensive travel and our busy lives leading up to this vacation, and it felt good to finally drop our bags and relax for once.