The End, More or Less

As I've said in the past few posts, I'm back in the United States, which marks the end of my study abroad trip to Japan. It was fun, educational, expensive, and delicious, though if you were to ask me to put those in order, I don't think I could.

The best thing about going has to have been the people I was able to meet. I made a number of friends with whom I identified with in a surprising number of ways, and I was able to experience and relish in the rich variety of languages and accents, as well as getting to see little bits of the world from other people's points of view.

One of my goals while I was in Japan was to eat ramen. Sure, it sounds silly, but I'd only eaten instant ramen prior to coming to Japan, and I did so on a daily basis for upwards of eight years. So I wanted to eat lots of varieties of ramen. While I was able to try a number of shops' ramen - probably around 30 - I still couldn't tell you whether I like the miso-, soy-, or salt-based ramen best.

While tasty, my primary reason for coming to Japan was not to eat ramen, or gyuudon, or takoyaki, but to study Japanese, and my stay there was - of course! - invaluable to that end. I'm still very weak with kanji and my vocabulary is very small compared to a native speaker, but the difference between when I left and my current ability is no less than marked.

Writing on this blog was an experience all of its own, and I'm glad that I did. I'll be able to look back on this much like I might a journal.

For those of you that have been reading this whole time: your time and your comments are appreciated.

For who have supported me in other ways, be it in the form of money, cookies, a partner for Super Smash Brothers or DDR or that taiko game, or help defrosting my fridge because I forgot and was late to miss plane, I cannot thank you enough.you for your efforts and your friendship. I don't know how I would've survived this year without the help I received from others.

I hope that many others have the opportunity that I did, and I hope that maybe this log will help one or two of those people out at some point.

Good day and best wishes.
- William Lockwood

Arrival

And I'm back in the real United States. Feel free to not worry now.

Edit: It appears that there was considerable worry, as the blog's front page usually gets about 30 page loads a day, but during my little stint with air travel, it got nearly 400 hits in the span of three days.

Hawaii Arrival

Well, I'm officially back in the US now. It's 7:15AM according to my computer, which is theoretically what time my body should think it is. On the other hand, I did kind of jerk around my sleep schedule right before I left, so who knows? I slept for about two hours on the flight here to Honolulu, and watched a movie.

It's weird being here. I mean, first of all, there are so many... white people. I want to say "foreigners", because that's... just how it works. In Japan, less than 1% of the people in any given sample will be foreign, and 80% of those people will be Chinese or Korean, so seeing a white person is fairly rare, though much more common in Kyoto (where I lived) as it's a big tourist destination.

It's a little hard to say "I lived in Kyoto" instead of the present tense "I live". It's a year of conditioning to say "京都に住んでいます", and the simple act of putting it in the past tense makes it feel really final. I think that is has made my departure sink in the most. Because of my plane-boarding failure and my six-hour layover in Hawaii, I've been slowly sort of fading out of Japan and Japanese culture on the whole. I keep apologizing to people in English, and I feel kind of ADD because I'm so used to going "OMG ENGLISH WHERE?!" that having it spoken all around me is kind of overwhelming.

And I don't have a nice way of saying this, but I never realized how much of our population is overweight. Like, I've seen the statistics. I get that. But there's a big jump from knowing a number and seeing it firsthand. While I was in Japan, seeing people that were even slightly overweight was fairly rare. At 90 kg (190 pounds) I was, at almost any given time, the largest person for half a mile. After being in a country full of short, thin people for a year, being back here where I'm short and merely average weight is very strange.

Security Ordeal...

...Not!

I managed to get through security and customs with no problems.

... Really!

I'm now in the secure area right above the wireless access point that I have been using for the past two days. Though that it happened to be right here where I pulled my laptop out is kind of strangely coincidental, I think. There also just happens to be a power plug right here, as a random bonus.

Surprisingly enough, they didn't even pat me down or have to have me do anything weird. I even made it through the metal detector without having to take my belt off - a first! More surprisingly, I'm wearing my huge brown Marine desert boots and didn't they didn't make me take those off either. I was a little worried that they were going to say something about the fact that my ticket says I'm coming back in three weeks, but that my visa ends in about two, but I said I wouldn't be coming back for a while, and it was okay.

One guy at security was determined to talk to me in English, but after struggling his way through "Check... you... plane... on... [gesture at passport]... 20 o'ten... ride." he let us finish the conversation in Japanese.

Now, I'm killing another 45 minutes while I wait for them to begin boarding the plane.

Status Updated: Missed Flight, part three

See the previous two posts for detailed information on the extent of my foolishness as it relates to international air travel.

Alright, they were able to get the fare difference down to $800 ($2,000-$1,200) and I think they completely dropped the change fee - for reasons unknown to me - but we were able to get it paid for. By "we", I mean Dean, in case you're wondering. One stack of various cards later, I have in my pocket my boarding pass.

Now there's only one more thing to worry about on this end, which is security. The boarding time is listed as starting at 8:10PM for my flight at 8:50PM, but I fully intend to go there around 7:15PM or so and stare at them until the time comes. Then they will, no doubt pat me down. I've made sure that I don't have a bunch of stuff attached to my belt this time, and the only even vaguely dangerous things I have with me are two pens and a notebook.

Bets they confiscate the notebook?

Status Updated: Missed Flight, part two

I am (as of 10AM February 19th) still at the airport, and I'm doing alright. It's looking like my, uh, little mistake is going to cost my family about $1,500 on top of the $1,200 it already took.

Moral of the story: Don't miss your flight.

[Update:
The moral of the story is still "Don't miss your flight". The people at Northwest have been very helpful, especially when compared to the nice, if rather English-challenged lady I talked to who was with Travelocity. They were able to get it down to $1,200 by waiving a couple of fees and doing some kind of magic - this is actually what the woman said - which is pretty cool. If I were to wait a week, I could get it for "only" $300 on top of my current ticket price, but that flight was taken by the time I talked to them about it again.]

[Edit: Oh, and this is the 400th post to this blog. Beth put up two or three, so it's not my 400th. I had been hoping to hit 500 before I left, but I guess the number's not really important.]

Status Update: Missed Flight

I missed my flight. I'm accessing the Internet from a free terminal that's set up by Domestic Arrivals at Kansai International Airport. I have the beginnings of a nice set of blisters from carrying my luggage around, as a bonus.
So, for the "WTF HOW?":
- I underestimated the amount of time it would take to get everything moved out of my apartment and packed, etcetera. Even with the massive - and I don't want you to think I'm overstating that - amounts of help I got from QB, Yanavy, Angela, and Cassie, I ended up leaving nearly an hour later than I had planned to.
- In an effort to avoid spending massive amounts of money on sending a bunch of books to the US by mail, I picked up a surplus duffle bag and shoved all the books in it and a bunch of clothes. I then stuffed it and my decent-quality duffle bag (with wheels!) until they were at the the weight limit, 23kg or 50 pounds, and preceded to attempt to lug these around on the train system. Now, I think what got me here is that I somehow was thinking 23 pounds when I was thinking about how much the whole thing would weigh. But that's 50 pounds times two is 100 pounds, plus a further 15kg (35 pounds) of backpack, camera, etc, and I'm hauling 140 pounds of crap around, and 50 pounds of it is in a completely static sack - i.e., a duffel bag.
That wasn't so bad, but what is usually a five-minute transfer became a thirty-minute ordeal with rest breaks at each flight of stairs.