Christmas and Airplane Hell 2008

I was going home for Christmas for the first time since I moved to the States from Japan. It had been 5 years since I had been back for Christmas. Since I didn’t have any plans going home for a while, I decided that I would go home for about three weeks and just hang out. My plan was to eat myself silly and come back fat and happy. Some of you might think that is such a waste after 16 hours of flight time. However, it is no different than going back to Idaho Falls to be a couch potato, Japan is just a little farther away. My Father and I have a trade that we buy each other a lot of food from wherever we are coming from. On his annual visit to the States, he brings me a lot of Japanese snacks that I love. Which is consisted of seaweed, sour pickle plums and dried squid. In return, I get him peanut butter cups, starbursts and beef jerky. I thought it would be a great idea to buy a shopping cart full of American snacks and bring it over to Japan as a Christmas present. I was wrapping them up six hours before I was supposed to be at Boise Airport trying to get ready to leave the country. Yes, that is right. I didn’t start packing to go to Japan till midnight and I was supposed to be at the airport at 6:15 am.


At 3:00 am my boyfriend at the time called me up and notified me that my airplane to Portland had been canceled due to snow. In fact there had been no airplanes going to PDX or SEA in four days. I was panicing. I was on hold for about an hour and a half with my airline when I realized there was one airline that was flying out of Boise to Portland. I bought my airplane ticket two hours before the departure. To my big relief, not to miss Christmas in Japan, I left to the airport. After a 12 hour flight next to an obnoxious ice cream eating redneck, that was on his way to meet his Thai wife for the first time, I arrived to Tokyo.

The delay in PDX pushed my arrival to Tokyo and I only had 3 hours to connect to the next flight. When I say I had only 3 hours to connect, I am talking about two different airports located across Tokyo. I ran through the airport with my big pink suitcase half drunk from the airplane and I jumped on the bus hoping that I didn't have to spend a few days in Tokyo by myself. I barely made it to the other airport to find out that my airplane had been delayed due to snow. I finally made it to Sapporo after one canceled airplane and two delayed airplanes due to snow.

Feeling like I was under a lot of stress for the last 30 hours and no sleep I got rudely woken up by my 5 year old brother pouncing on me telling that Santa came at 6:00am. Confused where I was and wondering who Santa was I got out of bed with Godzilla dolls and Mothla lined up in a circle. Joe, my brother, told me that they were having a Christmas party. I came to a realization that this was our first Christmas together and figured I will play along. We opened some presents and candy and talked about Santa. He was looking for the chimney Santa crawled through in our urban apartment. I told him that the technology in Japan allows him to go through walls. This was kind of reminding me how I couldn’t figure out how Santa found me after we moved to Japan when I was a little girl. Not to mention that Japanese people really don’t carry the tradition. Santa was only coming to my house in my neighborhood. When I was a girl, I had to find out about Santa, the tooth fairy and the easter bunny in one sitting. It is hard to foul a kid when you are trying to carry an American tradition in a Japanese household. But believe me, I think I am still in shock from the sea of truth and secrets that were reveled from that transaction.