Tokyo 2007 recap part 2 - Preflight inspection

Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2007

I thought that I had everything tied up in a neat little bow (if I had the manual dexterity and aesthetic sense to tie a bow, that is).

I had the plane tickets. I had already packed my suitcase a day and a half before departure. I had just called my credit card company and my bank so they wouldn't be alarmed that their customer was suddenly making purchases in places with names like "Akihabara." Andy and Mike P had both provided handy-dandy checklists for making sure I had everything I needed for my first trip to Asia in around 20 years (the last time I went to Taiwan).

Last thing on my list was to photocopy my passport and credit card. Since I was at the office at the time, I figured this was the easiest part - just walk around the corner and make the copy. As it scanned and the copy came out, however, my eye fell on one line in the passport page next to my high school picture (which probably should have been a clue):

EXPIRES: 2006 JUL 21

Well, crud.

Talk about your rookie mistakes - since I hadn't flown internationally since the Spain trip in 2005, I didn't bother checking my passport - I just knew I had it. Turns out it had already been expired for half a year. I spent the next hour alternately moping and beating myself up over my stupidity, checking the US Passport website to find out that even rush service would take 2-3 weeks, notified family and friends that I wasn't going to be able to make it, and resigned myself to wasting a lot of money on a vacation I wouldn't be able to go on - one I needed after working extremely hard throughout the winter holidays that most people got to relax on.

Then, Mike sent me a few websites of companies who are in the business of, shall we say, streamlining the renewal process. I'm not sure exactly how. But as I began checking through the websites advertising next-day renewals, my fading hopes began to flicker just a bit, and soon I was in full-on manic mode flipping through Google listings, reading through fine print, and making phone calls to see whether this would really be possible. As my coworkers began packing up to go home for dinner, I happened upon the Travisa agency, which had an office in San Francisco, and confirmed that they had one more opening for a fast passport renewal that would enable me to get it back Friday evening.

I ended up changing my flight (I was originally going to fly out with Mike Friday morning, direct to Tokyo, and changed it to fly out Sat morning with a transfer at LAX), woke up at 6 in the morning Thursday to drive up to SF and drop off my renewal material, worked a full day, then on Friday, dropped Mike off at SFO, came back, worked, then drove up to SF again to pick up my passport, enduring some bumper-to-bumper traffic along the way - it took 2 anxiety-filled hours as the office that had my renewed passport closed at 5 pm, and I had to call them and rely on their good nature to stay late on a Friday night so I would be able to pick it up (I tipped the guy that stayed).

Even with passport in hand and other loose travel ends tied up (some Japanese currency on hand, packed, etc.), I was still a wired ball of anxiety, as I've only flown once by myself before (and that was domestic), and never internationally, and particularly not to a country where I didn't know the language. I overreacted quite a few times, from worrying about making it through the security line in time to get to my gate, to wondering whether my luggage would be able to follow me through my LAX transfer, to trying to study as many common Japanese phrases as I could get through while finally on the plane to Tokyo. Turns out that everything went exceedingly smoothly - made the flights with time to spare, landed in Tokyo at 3:30 pm, picked up my luggage that was already circling, and was on a bus direct to the hotel by 3:55 (now that's efficiency). When I finally knocked on the door of the room and Mike welcomed me with a "Hey, you made it!", I finally took a clean breath for the first time in 4 days.

So, some takeaways and comments from this whole experience:

- Even though I'm close to 30, I'm so immature/unsavvy/naive in so many ways. Check the important stuff, stupid. Don't take things for granted, like "They'll send me a notification if I need to renew my passport, right?"
- Thanks to Mike for finding the info on companies that can do fast renewals.
- Turns out that as cynical as it can sound... money can actually provide opportunities when it seems like there are none. 'Course, he who continues to throw money at problems without actually solving them or preventing them from happening in the future, will soon be without any money.
- Things that are more likely to stress me out are circumstances that I cannot control, such as traffic delaying me from making a deadline.
- When I'm under stress, I tend to withdraw and get really, really quiet (Shally got to experience this, for the first time in our relationship).
- Speaking of Shally, thanks to her for being a great support and outlet to help me get through everything:
[06:12:35 PM] Shally: how ya doing?
[06:12:41 PM] Bob: stressed
[06:13:15 PM] Shally: can you take a sec to take a deep breath, praise God cuz it's gonna work out?
[06:13:59 PM] Bob: thanks for the reminder... just did :)
- I experienced a lot of grace - undeserved favor - in this whole ordeal. There was only 1 more spot open that week for a fast renewal, and I got it. The folks at the company staying late to let me have my passport. I even lost my parking ticket for 5 frantic, muttered-curse-filled minutes in a parking garage before reminding myself to take a deep breath, recenter on God's presence, repenting, and then realizing it was stuck in a crack in my cupholder. It was enough to remind me to leave a Starbuck's doughnut next to a guy sleeping on the street in SF.

Next up: some highlight experiences, and the top things implemented in Japan that we should do here (and vice versa, which is a much smaller list).