Flying to Japan

Over the middle of the Pacific, 32,000 feet in the air, the sea is a blue mat far below, the clouds a dotted carpet of white puffballs. In that moment, not sure whether it is day or night (the windows have gone blue; instead of shades, in this new plane they darken and lighten within the glass) I feel as if everything I am has been removed; all the people disconnected, all the experienced places far behind on another land mass, and the future is a large question mark.  I sit in my window seat and struggle with my phone, which won’t communicate with the United wifi (it later won’t communicate with the Haneda airport WiFi, and the eSim for Japan I purchased).

My feel my position is untenable. Not just because I’m way up in the air, watching the wing of the plane as it cuts through the air which, as I muse, is getting close to the truly airless region, the stratosphere. But because … it is connection which makes us real. And my connections are all somewhere else. 

Why am I here? 

I am just a little worried. There are, to my mind, two main challenges on this trip. The first will be clearing customs by myself, the second will be climbing Mt. Fuji. Of course, procedurally, clearing customs should be a shoo-in. Getting sent back to America isn’t really a thing. But my emotions are uneasy. I will have to be a stranger, someone who doesn’t know, someone who doesn’t speak the language. Perhaps ridiculous, foolish, making mistakes that I can’t possibly explain. Because of flying to Japan.

I read in my book on the history of Japan, but not for long, as soon it gets dark in the cabin and I find myself wondering what I will do for nine more hours. Apparently, after we had dinner (sweet and sour beef, in my case) everyone is going to try to go to sleep. I puzzle over this since it is only 2 p.m. Los Angeles time, but since our arrival, which is at 10 p.m. Los Angeles time, will actually find us in Japan time at 3 p.m. in the afternoon on the next calendar day, we need to sleep lest we find ourselves staying awake for 36 hours or so. 

What to Watch Over the Pacific

I am sitting with a woman and her son. They are Japanese. I do not try to talk to them, although they seem friendly. The young man is perhaps 18, tall and bulky, and watches a TV show in Japanese, the Kanji character subtitles rolling across the screen on a tablet he sets up on the tray table. I consider watching a rom com my the seatback screen. But I realize that there might be scenes it would be embarrassing to view in mixed company. I finally got the United wifi working well enough so I can watch a movie on my phone. The sound quality of the earbuds the stewardess gives me is poor, but I get by.

Crazy Rich Asians

I look through United wifi’s movie catalogue and decide to watch Crazy Rich Asians. I am intrigued by how much the heroine looks like my youngest daughter. Although she is Chinese. 

The rich family in the movie seem westernized in the worst possible way. I am reminded of my son in law talking about Miami, the rich kids filling Miami Bay with red Solo cups that you could find every Saturday and Sunday morning, from yacht parties which lasted most of the nights … young rich people, Gatsbyesque. Even though the hero and heroine have good hearts. The theme, that money is a danger to your character, and that old story of a new person (someone’s fiance’) trying to join a family that thinks it may be okay without them, is drawn with a wide brush. But it’s a good movie, good plot curve, beautiful people and places. 

Flying to Japan is a Time to Watch Cartoons

I finish the movie and fall asleep. When I wake up, I go to the bathroom and notice many people are watching Disney-type cartoons. Perhaps they, too, are sitting next to someone with whom they don’t want to share off-color jokes or compromising scenes. So I start watching Moana. This is a good choice. But I fall asleep part way through and sleep for another hour. When I wake up, they are already serving another meal, but I decide I don’t want it. I will just have some coffee. And I continue watching Moana. The songs cheer me up. So does Maui, the singing demigod, played by Dwayne Johnson, The Rock. He is very funny. 

Even Flying to Japan Comes to an End

I don’t know where the time went, but I look out the window and the island of Japan is below us. I will not have time to finish the movie. We are descending. I peer out and have my first look at Asia. The countryside is cut into farmlands and hillsides, with small groups of buildings, and curving roads, and flat green rivers. Clearly, a well-watered and fertile agricultural region, this. I wonder what the crops are. There are large green squares, which could be rice. And there are smaller blocks that could be vegetables. Then a couple of golf courses. 

We come down and down and cross Tokyo, gray and white, and see boats crossing the bay. A Top-Golf like structure. Skyscrapers. Sets of white apartment buildings. We come down right over the water. It is one of those approaches where the plane comes down so close to the water you wonder. 

“It’s like San Francisco,” I say to the Japanese young man. When I was a child, we landed, and it was the same. I swore we were just 10 feet above the bay when the land showed. 

“Yes,” he says, and smiles. 

As we get ready to leave, I finally get the courage to ask the Japanese woman if she comes on this flight often. “About twice a year,” she says. “I have family here.” Her English is almost perfect, yet she is assuredly Japanese. She must have lived in America for decades. I wonder if the young man is actually her son. She could be his grandmother. I tell them about my daughter the marine, and they wish me good travels. 

I Step into the New Country

As we pass over the jetway, I look down at the ground crew, standing in a group, navy pants, and gray work shirts, both men and women, seeming the very same people I saw in picture albums my mother made of Japan all those years ago. The expressions, the posture, the way of walking – I can recognize it. 

I follow the crowd to customs. My phone does not work properly; the esim, as I said, doesn’t come on, and then although I get connected to the airport wifi, it goes off when we enter the customs room. But I manage to get through customs without the phone. All I needed was my passport and a declarations card. I find that there was a pre-declaration one could do online, called Japan Web. Next time.

I look around me and realize that the faces of the young Japanese remind me of the characters in Studio films. I come out and check my bag for the flight to Okinawa and the gate agent with his narrow frame and high forehead is like the man who turned into a fox in Pom Poko. The hills I saw when we flew in were like the hills of New Tama, the subdivision that replaced the racoon’s home. And the girl who sold me a box of cake slices was like one of the bathhouse attendants in Spirited Away – and now, sitting across from me in the terminal, waiting for the connection plane to Okinawa, there is an older woman with a round face and a round straw hat and sensible closed toed shoes and she is just like Granny in Totoro, who loved children and grew perfect vegetables. It is a strange thing, the feeling of recognizing something you’ve never seen before. 

And now I am in Japan.