I saw a friend at school on Thursday. "Going anywhere on spring break?" she asked. "Yeah. Japan."
With my rather elastic sense of geography, Japan seemed just as easy to get to as New Jersey. But whereas I'd been to New Jersey before, I'd never been to Japan. (Well, I'd been ON Japan last summer when I changed planes for Bangkok, but that doesn't count.)
Meanwhile my friend's job situation happened to leave him free in March. In an email to several friends he said, perhaps only semi-seriously, March is a good time to come visit. So I cashed in some frequent flyer miles, and now here I am...
Getting here was a bit of an ordeal, although at the beginning it went well. For a change I had good T karma, meaning that when I got to the T station the train was just pulling in, rather than just pulling out... I was also processed through airport security expeditiously and got to Chicago O'Hare with more than two hours to spare.
The problem with this trip, however, was that my sinus problem seemed to be more than a trifling cold. All the vegetables, sleep, and fluids didn't seem to shake it, and I didn't have time to see a doctor before I left on my trip. I emailed my friend, "Um, I may need to find a doctor once I'm there..."
I guess it wouldn't have been the end of the world if I'd needed to. My friend would have helped me navigate the system. I've gone to doctors in foreign countries before, including several times in France. (In fact, one of the best doctors I ever had was in France, but that's another story for later.) But at least in France I can speak the language.
It turns out that in Chicago I can also speak the language as well. Which would be apropos of nothing, except that in the airport is a medical clinic. I've seen signs at other airports for medical clinics, but I've never had occasion to use one. But here was my chance to get looked at by a doctor I could talk to and get whatever medicine I might need.
It turns out that I had a 102 degree fever, which, while on the one hand made me feel good as a means of documenting how crappy I felt, on the other hand still meant that I felt crappy. But once I got my prescription I felt much better, if just from relief from not having to worry about how I would take care of it in Japan. I limped back to my plane, boarded at the earliest opportunity, and waited to be whisked away.
And waited and waited and waited... I'm not sure the full comedy of errors that ensued, but first there needed to be refueling, and its corresponding paperwork. Then they needed to check out an electrical smell. Then they needed to figure out why the back of the cabin was so warm. (This problem, in particular, took a while to solve.) Then they had to refuel again because we'd used so much while troubleshooting the problem, and then do even more paperwork. Then we needed to wait an inexplicably long time for an air compression truck to help turn the engines back on (I think this is what the pilot said). Then just when we were good and ready to leave, a passenger decided he was good and ready to leave the plane RIGHT THEN, so we had to let him off and then turn off the engines AGAIN so they could find and remove his bags. By the time we were "on the road" we were about three hours behind. Thus making a 12-13 hour flight even more interminable.
Eventually I and my semi-ambulatory self arrived in Tokyo, where my friend met me. We went back to his apartment, a convenient three hours away from Narita... and there I am this morning - sniffly, but at least medicated.
It's 3/6 in Japan when I wrote this.