I’m not sure I can explain why I am going to Japan. Friends and family ask but I have no answer. Many of them tell me, “I’ve always wanted to go!” When I ask why, they are equally stumped. Our curiosity is vague.
I took an Eastern literature class my freshman year of college, a class I took with my then boyfriend (now spouse), Z. Of the literature we studied, I was most captivated by the Japanese texts: The Pillow Book, The Tale of Genji, In Praise of Shadows. Our professor showed us Noh and bunraku performances before we watched Spirited Away. (Recently, Z and I watched this, me thinking it had been my first time. He reminded me that we had watched it before.)
Since then, I have ready just about every Japanese novel I could get my hands on. There is something indelible about these Japanese novels, a matter-of-factness that is somehow also avoiding speaking directly. There is a deceptive simplicity. I don’t know how to describe it, but they leave me with a particular feeling by the time I’m done reading and I wish to write the world like they do. They stir my mind.
Somehow, the logical consequence of this decade long curiosity was to board a plan and stay for 40 days.
But not, I now observe, to learn the language. I am in possession (on this plane, on my way to Tokyo) of three phrases in Japanese. Konnichiwa, sayonara, and sumimasen. I’m hoping that the legend of Japanese hospitality is all it is rumored to be. Learning a language in isolation is difficult and I begin to panic when confronted with the incomprehensible signs of Japanese. I know it’ snot impossible–but I decided to take the risk of travel while hoping for the best.
***
The plane I board from Detroit Ft. Worth airport is the biggest I have ever flown on. There are no final, desperate calls for gate check, as there usually are when I fly out of my home airport in Helena, MT. I have flown from Helena to Detroit because there is a direct flight from DFW to Haneda. I stayed the night in a questionable airport hotel, hoping splitting travel would make it less miserable.
Now I really am on my way.
For those of us in economy, there are three sets of three seats per row and they seem to stretch backward into eternity. Ahead, in comfort and first class, there are far fewer seats, seats that recline and shield the traveler from the inconvenience of other people. Even though the only ticket I could afford was economy (and it was still roughly $900, not including my flight from MT), I had an entire row to myself!
I buckled up and then ponder, as the final passengers board and the flight attendants do their final checks, what on earth I am going to do for the next thirteen hours of my flight. I have dreaded this coming confinement, a terrifying prospect, a sacrifice I must make to get to Japan. I realize that shuttling from midwest America to Japan in only thirteen hours is a miracle of human engineering, a journey that would have taken far longer earlier in history. Isabella Bird would probably have given her right arm to make that journey shorter.
(Aside: what do we lose when our goal is to get from one place to another as quickly as possible? Why is efficiency and speed always the goal of travel? In America, we have very little time off, so there’s a personal reason. The reason we have so little time off is because of capital, of course. This mode of travel is specific to capitalism, which needs to do everything as quickly as possible to generate more profit. Further, the airline industries are heavily subsidized by state governments. In the US, during COVID, the airline industries were bailed out because they were financially irresponsible. I hate that public money went toward private gain; these airlines rake in profits while making flights more miserable and destroying the environment. Anyway, if we want to recover other modes of travel, we’ll have to fight for funding for trains, boats, etc.)
The pilot announces take-off. I have already taken my motion sickness medicine and closed my eyes in preparation. Normally, take-off is the worst part of the flight for me (except for having to deal with the petty dictatorship of TSA) but I fall asleep briefly, waking when the pilot announces there it will be a 12 hour flight to Tokyo.
Twelve hours!
Prior to travel, I read many blogs and reddit posts about how to cope with the huge time difference. Clear instructions: try to sleep while you fly, lining up your body clock with your destination’s time zone. Wear compression socks. Stand often so you don’t get Deep Vein Thrombosis (always capitalized). I followed all the advice except the socks. Thirty dollars for knee high socks seemed a bit much.
In retrospect, it seems silly to try to “beat” jet lag, as you will be tired no matter when you arrive. You’ll have been traveling unnaturally fast. Your body protests this! Travel has its costs and flight tries to circumvent them, unsuccessfully. It seems best to just pay the cost rather than trying to avoid it. (More on this later.)
The monotony of the flight was interrupted by the first meal service. I receive my meal before everyone else as I have “special” requirements. On my first international flight to Dublin, the food was barely edible. It was so bad. But this food is delicious. There’s a seasoned rice with curried okra. A small apple pie, too. It tasted a bit like chalk and coated the tongue much the same, but it was a nice touch.
After my meal, I lay across the seats. I managed to sleep not one bit, suspended in the eternity that is not sleeping, in which time passes all at once and not at all. Eventually, I get up to use the closet-sized bathroom which is immaculate when you consider how many people are on the plane. I go back to my seats and wonder whether this hell will ever end. I wonder why I wanted to travel so far away from home in the first place.
I was shaken awake gently by the flight attendant bringing breakfast at a biologically unsuitable time. I told the woman I couldn’t eat the meal and she is befuddled. I take the fruit off the tray and hand everything else back to her. I have snacks in my bag that will have to do.
Looking at the time, it is morning and I’m supposed to be awake. According to the coffee in my hand, it is morning I’m supposed to be awake. By the glare of the lights, it is morning and I’m supposed to be awake. Something like my sleep command center, in my upper chest and connected to my eyes, disagrees with this state of affairs. I am so tired I will no longer be able to sleep.
The only good thing to watch was a short season of Golden Girls so I sat through episode after episode, letting nostalgia wash over me. In this moment, I recognized that TV often functions this way in our day-to-day lives, a way to kill and waste time, a way to endure in time with one screen or another glued to our faces in an addictive loop. On a more positive note, I’m reminded of all the Golden Girls episodes I watched as a child at my grandmother’s house. The humor now is a little offbeat, sometimes sexist, but still has its witty moments and the relationship between Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia is charming.
As I finish the last episode (in which Stan has sex with Dorothy’s sister as a hurricane unfolds), the pilot announces that we are beginning our initial descent into Haneda airport. It is literally unbelievable to me that I am about to land in Japan.
Kaelie Giffel 