Monday, October 9, 2017 – Nagoya to Atlanta

We greet the day with such mixed emotions!  It will be so difficult to leave;  but I will be so happy to get home and see my guys!!  And sleep in my own bed!  First, though, there’s the thirty-six hour day ahead of us as we hop over time lines!  Ginger gets all those bits and pieces into her suitcase with just a little left over for her new bag. And she doesn’t have as much in her new bag as I do!  Andy comes over to check on us and Sachiko offers us cold green tea and Japanese cookies that are delectable! 

We go next door to brush our teeth and say good morning to Tae and the kids and it’s just about time to put everything in the van.  Everyone is going to the airport with us and we’ll have lunch there, Grandfather’s treat.

It’s quite a long way to the airport;  but we’ve left in plenty of time.  Tae drops Andy, Ginger, and me off with the luggage and goes off to park the car.  We learn that, although we are traveling internationally, we need to check in at the domestic JAL desk.  We turn in our suitcases, get all our boarding passes, and are just in time to meet the rest of the family.  We go upstairs to a ramen restaurant where you use the machine at the front to order and pay for your food, then go sit down.

It’s a perfect last meal, and, once again, just a bit more than I can eat!  Ramen in the broth usually used for soba noodles, two halves of hard-boiled egg, dumplings, seaweed sheets, and thin-sliced meat – so good!  When we’re through with lunch we find a place to sit for our last time together.  Last hugs and giggles and the tears begin.  Definitely time to get out of Dodge before it’s too late!

You can hardly tell she's crying!

These are all made of SUGAR!

With the family gone we still have a couple of hours, so we investigate one of the shops, then head for security.  That was easy and so is passport control and we head toward our gate to begin the long journey home.  We go from Nagoya to Tokyo to Chicago to Atlanta and it will still be Monday when we get home!!  We figure that from the time we got up this morning to the time we get to bed tonight will have been about twenty-eight hours without sleep.

Quite honestly, even though it was just yesterday, most of the trip has run together.  I know that for the long leg (almost eleven hours) from Tokyo to Chicago, we were in the middle section but it only had three seats.  Ginger had the aisle and I was next to her.  Our seat mate was a Japanese man who smiled when I gave him our extra little bottle of sake.  The alcohol was free, even though we were flying American Airlines.  They are JAL’s partner and we’re accustomed to getting sake, so even though it wasn’t offered, I asked for it from the attendant in the right aisle.  She was going to look for it, so when the attendant in the left aisle came by, I asked her.  That yielded me two bottles!  Ginger got one, also, and later, when they asked again, we both got another one, for a total of five!  When we got off the plane, the attendant called us the Sake Ladies!

Really?!

This kinda makes up!

During the first leg, just an hour or so from Nagoya to Tokyo, we were offered beverages and very tasty treats that included sesame sticks and teriyaki flavored crunchies.  The food on the long leg was pretty mediocre, not at all like a JAL flight would offer.  Dinner was a chicken and rice and veggies dish that was pretty tasteless, with a nice green salad, some potato salad, a roll and butter, and a strawberry mousse kind of dessert thing.  But the sake was great and the movie selection was good.  I watched “Beatriz at Dinner” which was billed as a dark comedy, but was really just dark.  I also saw “The Hippopotamus” from a book by Stephen Fry, “The Big Sick”, “King Arthur, Legend of the Sword”, and “Berlin Sundrome”.  There was a snack which was a ham and cheese sandwich, three grapes, and a small KitKat bar.  Just before landing breakfast consisted of under-cooked scrambled eggs, a small triangle of hash browns, a small slice of Canadian bacon, and a fruit cup with two slices of honeydew melon and one extremely sour red grapefruit slice.

The good news was that going through customs in Chicago is really, really easy with the Global Entry card!  There are separate machines for Global Entry and other citizens.  Ginger was in the other line and I was able to do the entry machine, find the carousel with our luggage and retrieve all of it before Ginger got through her line!  We had to take our luggage to the domestic AA ticket agent and recheck them.  When the agent asked how we were, Ginger said, “Tired!” and she felt sorry for us.  She printed us new boarding passes and these said TSA pre-check, so security this time was a bit easier.  Ginger got dinged both times we went through security.  The machine didn’t like her bra or the rivets on her jeans the first time;  and they confiscated her tiny little embroidery scissors that she always take.  The second time the x-ray machine didn’t like her little fruit picks that Satchiko gave her;  but at least they didn’t take them!

As our flight is boarding we are watching the number of people with two carry ons and wonder why they haven’t announced that they might be taking away your roll-a-boards.  Well, as they get closer to our group, the announcement comes.  The problem is that the two carry-ons that I have can't be shipped.  One has my computer and camera in it and the other is a cloth bag that doesn't seal shut.  The gate agent says she understands my problem but has no solution.  I tell her that I'll work it out somehow and she says that's a good idea.  I don't know quite how, or what she knows that I don't.  In the mean time Ginger has stuffed her computer into her bag, her coat into her backpack, and given up her backpack to be shipped.  When we get on board there is still enough room in the overheads for both our bags and Ginger could have kept her backpack, too!  I guess that's what the agent knew!  Good lesson for the future!

We got settled into our seats for the last leg and my screen didn’t work.  I asked an attendant and he said he’d have them reboot it.  So, instead of a blank screen, I had one that said, “Please wait.  Your entertainment will load shortly” with a spinning circle of lights - or the entire two-hour flight.  Luckily I was too tired to care and just drifted in and out until it was time to land in Atlanta.  We were offered beverages and pretzels.  It took a while, but they found another can of ginger ale, so I could settle my tummy a bit.  All the noodles and breads are beginning to take a toll;  but it hasn’t been bad at all.

Our suitcases should be on carousel nine;  but we can’t see a number nine on the north side, so we check the south which is usually all Delta.  We’re not there either, so we ask and learn that carousel number nine is actually all the way at the other end and DOWNSTAIRS!!  What a bizarre design!  By the time we’ve connected with Ben and traced down our luggage, an attendant is taking it away!!  We have to show our IDs to get it away from him!!  We’ve done a ton of walking in airports today;  but we’re almost home!!

We stop at Steak ‘n’ Shake for the all-American meal, hamburgers and French fries, and it’s truly nice to be home!!  And back at Ginger’s I get to sleep in a real bed that’s more than two inches thick and isn’t sitting on the floor!  My back and shoulders will be so grateful!  And tomorrow I can do my yoga in her sunroom and not on tatami mats!  In a week or two I should be back to normal!!  And Wednesday I’ll be really and truly home!

But it’s been a trip of a lifetime, seeing and doing things I never thought I would!  I’m so very glad we had this opportunity!!