Japan Recap, Part One
As you know, I was out in California for the week preceding my trip to visit in the in-laws. The conference ended Friday afternoon and my flight was not to depart until Saturday around noon, ...so on Friday night I left our nice 4 star resort and headed for a hotel closer to the airport.I stayed at the Handerly Hotel and Resort, and suprisingly, it's not as nice as its picture. The room was tiny, dark, on the first floor, adjacent to TWO parking lots (yes, two), and smelled like a cheap motel room in the Dells (damp, moldy, damp, cold, and damp). And the porn they offered via pay-per-view was priced way too high. I'm not paying $14 to watch some 90 minute low-budget softcore crap when the internet offers so much more for free.
Oh, and the wireless broadband internet access they advertised? You have to pay for it! $10 a day! So, pay I did because email I need. My growing addiction to Star Wars, Knights of the Old Republic prevented me from really getting my money's worth.
When I checked in, I asked the desk clerk for the best way to get to the airport in the morning. He said they have a contract with a cab company and they will take me for a flat rate of $14. He told me to call the desk 10 minutes before I needed to leave and one would be there for me when I left. Ok.
So, 10 minutes before I leave, I call the desk. A young slacker answers, ...
"Yeah?"
"Hi. I'm checking out in a few minutes and I'm going to need a cab to take me to the airport."
"Ok ..." There was an openendedness to his incomplete sentence that suggested, what do you want me to do about it?
"So, ..."
"Well, I think there's one out there, ...hold on."
I hold. About 60 seconds later he returns from the 10 foot journey to the front door, "Ok, there's one out there now, so you can have that one."
"Well, ...how do we know it will still be there?"
"If not, we'll call one."
I let it go, knowing I had plenty of time to spare, but I wondered what his concept of "service" was. The reason I was calling him ahead of time was to avoid sitting in the lobby waiting for a cab to be dispatched. The fact that one was there now doesn't gaurantee one will be there when I arrive. Not his problem, I guess.
Anyway, sure enough, the cab was gone when I arrived and he had to call a new one for me.
It was a pleasant and beautiful morning nonetheless. I got to the airport early, got bumped up to an earlier flight, got into LAX a full two hours before the international leg of my journey and bought some overpriced gifts at the duty free shop.
My stomache was empty, but I felt like having a beer, so I stopped in at the Expedia Travel Right Cafe, an internet cafe whose concept must have been great. In reality, it is a depressing eye-sore.
First, the place is devoid of music or sound. It has no atmosphere, and despite the bright colors, seems cold and distant. And the decor looks as if they was created by stuffing a Nikelodeon set down Tim Burton's throat, and then watching him vomit. It was offensive to all senses.
To top it off, I had to endure some fool from Chicago while he decided to get plastered before his flight. He downed beer after beer, did a couple of shots, then slammed his last beer just before boarding the plane. I've never understood people who wanted to get drunk before or during a plane trip.
Annoyances aside, I boarded the half-full plane and stretched out, having a row of 5 seats to myself. Unfortunately, we hit some bad turbulance about an hour into the flight. The result of turbulance and having nothing but a single corona in my stomache is nausia. For the first time in my life, I felt sick on a plane.
I held it together with some Rolaids and water, from now on I fly on a full stomache.
Movies on the flight were Mr. 3000, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, The Princess Diaries 2, and Taxi. If you would have come up to me 10 months ago and said, I've got a great idea for a movie starring Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifa, I'd laugh my ass off. God, it was too horrible to watch.
Mr. 3000 was also a bad, bad movie. Great idea, I think. But nothing about this movie would ever make me want to watch it again. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was also pretty bad. Mostly, it was boring. It was also overdone with nostalgia. If you look at movies from the 30's and 40's and wish you could have lived during that time, you'll like this movie. If not, you'll find it mostly boring, but slightly amusing. Me, I thought the movie made no sense, had some gaping holes and errors, and is basically a childrens movie.
About 3 hours into the flight some fool from one of the back rows comes into my row. He knocks down the arm rests in three of the seats and proceeds to try and sleep the entire way to Japan with his feet sticking out at me. Oh yes, and he farted approximately once every 1.189 minutes.
For some reason, a small group of itallian guys were on the flight, wearing baseball caps with sunglasses on the visor the whole time, because you know it's so bright on a plane. At one point two of them stood in the right aisle and carried on a conversation with another guy who sat 5 seats away on the left aisle. They literally talked through some poor Japanese guy, and annoyed at least a dozen people until the stewardess made them sit down. How fucking clueless can you be?
Clueless enough to play a movie on your laptop without headsets so the whole plane can listen to the last samurai with you! Eventually, the jackasses fell asleep and stopped annoying people.
I followed suit, and soon enough we were landing at Narita airport.
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