And how grateful I am that the good people in Kasumigaseki (literally, mist seat, politically, the subway stop where the Japanese governments are)\u00c2\u00a0 have realized swine flu will not kill us all.<\/p>\n
A while ago I heard horror stories from returning Golden Week travelers.\u00c2\u00a0 They spoke of bunny suits, ski goggles, ir thermometer guns, and hour-long trapped-on-tarmac inspections.\u00c2\u00a0 As my plane touched down at the end of May, I was fully prepared for an extra half hour of boredom. In fact, I was even a bit paranoid because I was feeling a little chill. Perhaps the flight itself had tipped me into the “feverish” zone?<\/p>\n
A pleasant surprise then, to only suffer suspense for ten minutes, as a blue smocked fellow walked down one aisle and up the other. I actually mistook his actions as preparation because he wasn’t really looking at anyone.<\/p>\n
Moral of the story: low expectations save the day.<\/p>\n
Expectations were higher for customs, however, because I am a triply registered alien. Registered to work, registered to leave\/enter the country, AND registered for (wait for it) the Automated Gates.\u00c2\u00a0 This lets my bypass the entire customs line when leaving and entering the country – since only registered people can use the gates, I get through even more quickly than most Japanese citizens.\u00c2\u00a0 Kind of like Clear, but free. \u00c2\u00a0 You scan your passport, scan your fingers, an attendant does a brief verification of stuff, and on you go.\u00c2\u00a0 I like systems that reward people who know what they’re doing. On the other hand, I feel like I’m being rewarded for something like my willingness to suffer through the initial registration process.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Reminds me somehow of taking standardized tests.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe because it’s a really esoteric “problem” but once you get the patterns, it’s really easy.<\/p>\n
Anyhow.\u00c2\u00a0 This totally wouldn’t save you time in the US because you’d have to wait an hour for your luggage to appear.\u00c2\u00a0 Coming back to Narita,\u00c2\u00a0 I got through customs and baggage in 20 minutes.\u00c2\u00a0 Happy camper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And how grateful I am that the good people in Kasumigaseki (literally, mist seat, politically, the subway stop where the Japanese governments are)\u00c2\u00a0 have realized swine flu will not kill us all. A while ago I heard horror stories from returning Golden Week travelers.\u00c2\u00a0 They spoke of bunny suits, ski goggles, ir thermometer guns, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9WqcV-1T","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions\/119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}