Japan day 14; Sunday, June 10 2007

Got up and did the Japanese bath thing. We have a tiny Pullman kind of thing in our hotel room with an Engrish sign on it saying “Please to provide this bath arrangements. A traditional Japanese bath is located off of the hotel lobby.”

Translation, “please don”t use this dinky tub and shower, bathe normally in the traditional baths.”

In Japan it is traditional to bathe before going to bed, I intended to but just before the public bath closed down a bunch of drunk salary-men came in and about six of them started whooping it up in the public bath. I was not too worried about those guys but they were being very loud, I was cranky and tired so I used our Pullman tub that night and bathed properly in the morning.

We hitched a ride on the train. We had a bit of time before the airport train so a quick lunch in the train station I got into a conversation with a fellow from Pakistan, he was in Japan getting training at a Caterpillar factory, then he and some friends of his (who did not speak English and were both dead ringers for Fidel Castro, even down to the uniforms,) were on their way to Afghanistan.

We then got on the airport express. Went got our luggage, repacked stuff. Then we went through customs. Our luggage was a little overweight (big surprise!) they fudged on one suitcase and we paid extra on another. Some jelly goop that Ericka’s family gave us got bounced by the security people. We got all the booze and other liquid things in check baggage and forgot about those.

The flight was long and boring, just the way I like them! ( I slept through most of it.) When we got to George Bush Airport in Huston Texas it was back through immigrations, run luggage through customs, re-check luggage, go back through security. All American style which means overly paranoid. long lines, people yelling, grouchy inspectors and smelly feet. Really, no one is going to get away with commandeering a plane using box-cutters again. This whole terrorism paranoia is really irritating me.

Then we had a three hour layover.

We walked clear across the terminal, sat around for a while some of the girls slept on the floor.)

Of course we discovered they had changed the gate so we picked up and trudged back across to the far side of the terminal, getting to the gate just at they were loading.

We got into Tampa around 11PM , got home at midnight.

The end.

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