Tokyo Vacation May 2018 Day 11 Departure

First some initial reflections and thoughts. Comparing two brief snapshots may not accurately propose a complete contrast and summation, but Tokyo does seem to have appreciably changed just in the two-and-a-half years since Justin, Scott, and I were there in March 2016. Since my first visit to Tokyo in the early 2000s, Tokyoites have traditionally always avoided wearing t-shirts with prominent images. Large text has traditionally been acceptable, but not images. The status quo is still in place, but it appears to be weakening. This trip was, I think, my ninth visit to Tokyo. I believe I saw more Japanese people wearing t-shirts with large images – especially geek culture images including references to vintage anime like Jigoku Sensei Nube and Dr. Slump, to Marvel superheroes – during this visit than on all of my prior visits combined. Similarly, the de facto prohibition against PDA (“public display of affection”) appears to be weakening. One Sunday morning while waiting for the shuttle bus at Shinjuku station’s central west exit, in just a brief span of time I counted three couples walk by while holding hands.

Japan’s respect for order, formality, and pragmatism, however, is still in sharp relief. Despite being a city of over 13 million, Tokyo remains remarkably clean and orderly. During our twelve day stay, we only once saw a single elderly Japanese man raise his voice in anger during an altercation with a police officer on the street while his daughter tried her best to calm the man. At the Astop rental case store on the fourth floor of the Akiba Cultures Zone store, I stepped up to the cash register to present and pay for my purchase. The cashier gently but firmly directed me to step back behind the “stop here” notice painted on the floor. As soon as I fell into line, he motioned me forward. Ritually Japanese people riding escalators stand on the left, leaving the right side open for pedestrians who choose to climb rather than ride the moving stairs. Common practice at American fast food restaurants is for patrons to clear their own trays. But in Japan patrons diligently pour out their unconsumed beverage and ice into one receptacle, drop the burnable trash (paper tray liner, napkins, wooden chopsticks) into a second trash receptacle, and the plastic trash (cups, straws) into a third bin. At restaurants including Lotteria and Sanuki Udon Hanamaru, patrons slide their trays onto shelves for the dishwasher to reach rather than leave their detritus on the dining tables.

Perhaps the claims of rare, retro, and vintage video game collectors are true that Tokyo has been picked clean of bargains. But I’m not a video game collector. For anime otaku, Tokyo still offers an overwhelming abundance of bargains for those willing to excavate them. Justin, Scott, and I all collect different sub-sets of anime merchandise. All three of us found countless more bargains than we could manage to purchase due to the limitations of our luggage space and the prohibitive expensive of overseas postage. Indeed, many of the stores have recognized the influx and the impact of foreign collector tourism and adjusted their prices accordingly. But there’s literally so much anime merchandise available in Tokyo that supply will always exceed demand, resulting in great bargain prices. And Japanese collectors can be brutally demanding. I found figures with discounted prices because the box had one dented corner. Scott purchased a large bishoujo figure at a steep discount because of a crack in the clear plastic tray that holds the figure in place inside the exterior box.

Figures and toys that are popular at the present time, and brand new releases command premium prices, but characters past their 15 minutes see the value of their merchandise plummet tremendously. As of this trip, Re: Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu’s Rem was particularly popular – so much so that figures of her cost marginally more than matching figures of her twin sister Ram. Kemono Friends merchandise also seemed to be particularly popular. Love Live seemed to overwhelm the otaku scene.

Visiting Tokyo can be affordable. Our round-trip airline tickets on American Airlines from Los Angeles to Tokyo and back were $700 a head. However, hotel rooms in Tokyo can be prohibitively expensive. Eating in Tokyo is surprisingly affordable. In eleven days, nearly every meal we ate cost under $12, and we ate a variety of tonkatsu curry, ramen, udon, takoyaki, gyudon, and burgers.

In eleven days, we didn’t actually tour a large variety of locations. Actually, we spent the majority of our time bouncing back and forth between Nakano Broadway and Akihabara. However, the three of us knew in advance that the goal of our vacation was to treat Tokyo like a giant extended anime convention weekend. We didn’t visit Tokyo to immerse ourselves in staid, ancient Buddhist culture, for religious asceticism, or for hedonistic nightlife. We deliberately went to Tokyo to surround ourselves in anime culture and treasure hunt for additions to our collections. We went to have fun, and that we did in abundance in spite of some blisters on our feet, some frustrations, some headaches (both figurative and literal), and a lot of physical exhaustion. But we did experience a lot of new and unique situations and circumstances including eating dinner at an izekaya (order as you go) dinner restaurant specializing in cuisine from Hokkaido, flying into and out of Haneda airport, eating at the limited Cowboy Bebop and Final Fantasy XV cafes, visiting the official Godzilla store, seeing the life-sized Unicorn Gundam and touring the Tokyo Gundam Base exhibition & store, seeing a new anime movie theatrically at a theater we’d never been to, patronizing a Tokyo flea market, for Scott & Justin, visiting Tokyo Character Street and the Ghibli Museum, and in Scott’s case, doing laundry at eleven pm in a Tokyo self-service laundromat.

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On the morning of Monday, June 3, Scott called the Hilton front desk to request late check-out at noon instead of eleven. To our surprise, the hotel’s standard check-out deadline was noon. Although Justin & I had largely completed our packing the night before, we still had small tasks to face while Scott likewise finished up his final packing preparations. After waking himself up, Scott took a walk out. He returned with a cardboard poster tube that he’d purchased at a nearby post office branch for 100 yen plus his final onigiri of this Tokyo vacation.

Since I’d arrived with a backpack and two sizeable roller totes, I’d hoped to leave with the same. Although the airlines would allow me to embark with a fourth “personal item” bag, I simply didn’t have enough hands to manage a fourth bag. But considering the number of items I had, I ended up stacking 39 doujinshi into my second daypack. Justin had two glass jars of sake which he had no room for. So I transferred three small figures from one of my plastic crates into the extra carry-on backpack, creating enough room for Justin’s two bottles. Similarly, Scott didn’t have room for his single serving package of habanero chips. So I tucked them into a round plastic container for safe-keeping and put the plastic tub into my second carry-on. I discarded only one pair of unwashed socks. I also left behind two paper bags with the Ghibli Museum logo. Merely as exclusive souvenirs, I wish I’d brought one of them back with me. I do have a “Mamma Aiuto” Ghibli Museum gift shop bag, though. I also left behind two paperback books I’d brought with me – books I’d intended from the outset to abandon. And between Scott and me, we left behind close to a hundred all-ages and adult doujinshi that we just didn’t have space for within our luggage. Atop the two stacks of Japanese comics, I left paper notes with “gomi” spelled in katakana so the maid would know that we’d deliberately left the books behind rather than forgotten them. If the hotel management thought we’d accidentally left personal belongs behind, the hotel would make efforts to return them to us. That effort is not what we wanted. Scott graciously offered to transport my second carry-on bag onto the airliner for me.

At noon Scott went downstairs to formally check out. He returned to the room virtually shocked that the front desk had asked, entirely on an honor system, whether we’d consumed any of the retail snacks housed within our in-room mini-refrigerator. Scott had told the front desk honestly that he hadn’t taken anything out, although we’d temporarily put plenty of our own food purchases in. So we remained in the room until 12:30 when we went down to the lobby. The Airport Shuttle bus from the Nishi Shinjuku Hilton to Haneda airport took an hour due to the bus stopping at multiple hotels, and cost 1,230 yen per passenger. The hotel staff tagged our luggage and saw it onto the bus. We boarded the bus and half-consciously rode to the airport while bidding farewell to the city.

Checking in and handing over our check luggage at Haneda airport was painless. Although we’d previously confirmed that Justin & I were stuck with middle seats in subsequent rows, upon check-in at the airport, we discovered that Scott had the $157 legroom seat upgrade he’d paid for, and Justin & I were now arranged beside each other in an aisle and middle seat. To pass through the security inspection I had to take my laptop out of its bag, and we all passed through full-body x-ray scanners. But we didn’t have to remove our shoes or belts. Likewise, passing through customs inspection was a bit time consuming due to the line but otherwise painless. Once into the gates, we passed by a Tokyo Souvenir Shop that had a prominent Gundam RX-78 figure on display at the shop’s entrance. We decided to grab a bite from the Dom Pierre Jet restaurant counter. Once again, since I had no Japanese currency left, Justin ordered us both a tonkatsu curry for 1,200 yen plus one fried jumbo shrimp each. Scott ordered a tonkatsu curry with egg & beef curry sauce containing large chunks of simmered beef. During our meal, Justin & Scott heard a PA announcement regarding our gate & flight. Scott & Justin both interpreted the garbled, muffled announcement as possibly a poor Japanese attempt at pronouncing their respective names. So Justin left the final few spoonfuls of his rice to me and advanced to the departure gate. After we finished eating, Scott & I followed along. At the gate we confirmed that the attendant had been summoning a “Robert,” but not our Robert Scott Semple.” So we sat until boarding.

Justin sat on the aisle. I sat next to a young Jamaican man whose father sat on the aisle in the row ahead of us. I don’t know whether the young man spoke any English because our only communication through the entire trip was done with gestures. He gave me his potato salad. I took and handed his trash to the flight attendant and woke him when the second meal service came around. On the flight’s personal video screens, Justin watched Hostiles and Journey’s End as well as sleepily watching Maze Runner: Death Curse and most of American Hustle. I spent as much of the flight as I could attempting to sleep. Against my better judgment, I watched Jackie Chan’s latest film, Bleeding Steel. It was largely incoherent and terrible, characterized by awfully expository dialogue and gargantuan sized plot holes. Scott watched Game Night and a few episodes of the Crash television series.

Unexpectedly, our scheduled twelve-hour return flight took only ten hours. Also unexpectedly, the plane landed on the LAX tarmac well away from the airport terminal. The passengers exited the plane via a portable zig-zag walkway then boarded busses that drove us to the terminal five minutes away.

Fortunately, due to updated immigration control technology, as returning US citizens, we didn’t need to manually fill out paper customs declaration forms. The entire re-entry approval was processed through computer terminals. Then, as expected, we were waved through customs because none of us had dangerous or prohibited belongings, nor did any of us declare more than $800 worth of goods being patriated. The LA airport provided luggage carts for free. So Justin & I loaded our suitcases onto carts. Scott wheeled his two hard-side suitcases since both had four wheel bottoms. Unfortunately, Scott noticed that the Sanrio Pochacco luggage tag he’d purchased for 100 yen at Can Do had separated itself from his suitcase and vanished. In a convoy, we walked the length distance on the sidewalk from the Bradley international terminal around to terminal one where we entered at baggage claim at took the elevator up to departures. We checked in at the Southwest terminals but found that we could only check baggage four hours in advance. So we literally stood at the machines for three minutes until the clock hit 11:30 and we could check in our bags. Unexpectedly, after the self-service terminal printed the first of Justin & my four luggage tags, the machine presented an error message. So the staff directed us to a human attendant while another staff person cleared the paper jam from the kiosk printer. After handing over our luggage, we had nearly four hours to wait for our next flight.

So we found the gate and took seats. I purchased a 20 ounce bottle of Coke Zero for a staggering $3.32 including tax. Scott spent an even more outrageous $21 for a plain, underwhelming cheese burger, single-serve bag of potato chips, and a bottle of soda. Shortly before boarding our gate was changed from Gate 16 to Gate 17B.

On our Southwest flight from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Justin & I were boarding numbers B2 & B3. So Scott pre-boarded and sat in the first row. Justin & I sat in the row behind the middle exit row, initially in the aisle and middle seat. When the plane filled, I moved to the window, leaving an empty seat between us so we had some breathing space. The flight to Vegas literally seemed to just go up and down. At the Las Vegas airport we disembarked and navigated through the terminal to the “C” concourse. But as soon as we turned a bend the entire atmosphere of the airport seemed to change. Suddenly the hallway was far more populated and congested, and as though the air conditioning wasn’t functioning, the terminal was muggy and the air thick.

Once again, Scott sat near the front of the plane while Justin & I shared a row with an empty middle seat toward the rear of the plane. Scott was unfortunately surrounded by ignorant, inconsiderate passengers for the duration of his five-hour flight. Justin managed to sleep through most of his flight, I a bit less. But I still managed to sleep enough to make the five-hour cross-country flight feel very tolerable.

In Tampa, when we picked up our luggage I noticed that the combination lock on one of my cases was gone. A minor casualty not to be worried over. Just after we wheeled our luggage out to the curbside, Aimee pulled up to fetch Scott. Even before he’d finished loading, Naomi pulled in behind Aimee to collect Justin & me.