Snowy Roads & Superpowers & Why I Love Flying Overseas

I can handle my kids just fine when they’re not around. The feeling is mutual I’m sure since most of what I say is warm fatherly stuff like Turn that off and Clean this up and GARBAGE goes in the #$%* GARBAGE CAN!

What passes for dinner conversation in our house is mostly about past or future stuff. (It’s hard to polish the present with nostalgia or hope.) And a lot of that largely revolves around traveling, our only strong event in the never-ending Family Olympics.

In December 2019 our conversations were particularly lively; for the first time in three years we’d be flying to New Jersey for Christmas. My wife loves going to my mom’s house and ravaging her nuclear holocaust supply of canned soup. My kids love Grandma’s house for the cable TV, the pool table and the pinball machine.

Three kids with three diversions to share. They fight over all of it the entire time we’re there.

The (Genuine, Actually,) Joy of Flying

The trek from our home in central Japan to Tokyo, to New York and then to my mom’s in New Jersey on a direct flight to Newark takes about twenty hours.

Everyone loves it. Seriously, we do.

My kids love these long flights because it’s the only time Dad doesn’t care if they watch TV for twelve hours straight. My wife prizes the chance to ignore the kids and sleep for twelve hours in the window seat she always assumes out loud that no one else wants. Meanwhile I’m in 34-E between my daughter, who has had her nose in the TV screen since her butt hit her seat, and a stranger who has been snoring since their neck pillow thing hit my shoulder during the if-the-plane-crashes speech. Like anyone is going to remember how that life preserver works if the plane is simultaneously burning and sinking into the ocean. If anyone is even alive.

I’ve developed a habit of ordering a beer from the flight attendant who lost the game of rock paper scissors and has to hand out the pretzels. I know I’ll be told I’ll have to wait until we reach cruising altitude but I want them to know right off the bat what to expect from 34-E for the next twelve hours.

I used to read in-flight magazines with an innocent traveler’s interest. Now I pore through them for reasons to scoff at the stories written by people who have the job I want.

After leaving my illiterate mark on the crossword puzzle and totally destroying the Sudoku I order another beer and ply my TV screen for the greatest contribution to the history of television: Impractical Jokers.

Consisting of four guys who dare each other to do the stupidest things they can think of – the rule being “You refuse, you lose” – it’s a lot like college except we never got our own TV show (though I think we may have been the news once).

One other standard United Airlines offering that makes the prospect of sitting for hours on end attractive (besides the beer) is The Mentalist, a show centered around a smooth, smug consultant for the California Bureau of Investigation. Done up in dirty blond hair, great teeth and a three-piece suit, he tags along with the detectives, analyzing crime scenes and asking questions in a way that generally pisses people off. The guy is a perceptual wizard. Quite frankly, he pisses me off too. He’s good-looking, he’s brutally incisive, and he’s totally sarcastic. And though he doesn’t carry a gun, he is unhesitatingly cool as he knocks the proverbial teeth out of people with only his words. I, on the other hand, am good-looking, brutally incisive, and totally sarcastic but I rarely keep my cool as I try not to knock the literal teeth out of whoever left their garbage all over the b¶ÃVF living room again. Good thing I don’t carry a gun.

This is all on my mind at dinner in the days leading up to our December 2019 flight. My kids were already arguing about the pinball machine. My wife couldn't hear them. She was daydreaming about soup.

All the while, a bunch of meteorologists somewhere in Japan were frowning at the weather patters on their screens.

Snow & Our Superpowers

Our original flight was at 10am. This meant waking up a half hour before we went to bed to make the five-hour drive to Tokyo-Narita Airport with enough time to strip down at security and get dressed again.

My wife, however, has magical powers. She can convince a ticket agent to risk their job and change our outgoing flight for free. This compliments nicely my mysterious power to schedule a flight for 10am.

Another superpower she possesses – and I don’t – is the ability to think ahead.

She woke me up at 1am, phone glowing in the darkness of our room. Outside the snow was coming down so hard I think I saw penguins.

Sections of the expressways – the ones that crossed the mountains between us and Narita – were closed to all vehicles except those with chains on their tires. In Japan it’s either the expressway or the local roads through town; there’s nothing in between. If things didn’t change – and soon – we were going to have to hit the road at quarter to dawn for our 200-mile drive down Main Street.

“We’ll be fine,” I breathed, and rolled over. Denial. That’s my superpower.

My wife continued plying for information, narrating every detail. Another of her powers.

A half hour later I rolled back over. “Let me see.”

One twisting “chains required” section of the highway had gotten shorter. But by how much? How much was still closed? At this rate how long until everything would be passable?

Bleary-eyed I tried to do the math.

Forget it. The snow would be gone and our plane would be over Alaska and I’d still be carrying the one.

I told myself I’d check the road reports again at 5am and make a decision. I set my alarm just in case.

At about 4:50 I fell asleep.

At 5am the future looked sketchy. Not gloomy, but certainly unsure.

By 8am only a few short stretches of expressway remained closed.

By the time we reached those mountain stretches there was not a speck of snow on the road.

My wife continued pecking at her phone, searching for some bad news to share. She has this thing about things working out and having nothing to blame me for. Whatever. I stopped fighting that long ago. I felt good. So good I wanted to talk to my kids.

“You know guys,” I said. “We’re pretty lucky it stopped snowing, and that the roads cleared up.”

No response. In these instances I don’t know if they aren’t listening or they don’t know that they should give me a grunt to let me know they heard me. They also probably weren’t checking road reports all night.

“These roads were all closed last night, except for trucks with big chains on their wheels.” This, I knew as soon as the words left my mouth, was going to raise questions in their heads. Questions that, because I haven’t taught them the conversation skills I should have over the last ten years, will remain unasked.

“But you know what else?” I asked, then waited in the silence. I think their minds were already on the plane. “People have been up all night, driving big snow plows and clearing the roads so people like us can drive safely.” My oldest kid gave me a glib “Wow.”

From here the conversation could have gone in a hundred different directions. Instead it went nowhere. I don’t take it personally, but I do think it’s my fault.

Can’t See Tokyo For the Trees

The name Tokyo hardly evokes thoughts of mountains blanketed in thick forests of cedar and pine. Yet that’s almost all you can see when you cross from Yamanashi Prefecture over the border into Tokyo. Technically speaking, Tokyo isn’t a city. It encompasses a wider area that includes some tame yet untouched terrain.

I’ve been down this highway dozens of times. And the idea of getting down and seeing Tokyo again does excite me. But each time I pass through this area, this westernmost part of the greater district that the name Tokyo comprises, I tell myself next time I’ll pull off the highway. Take some time and go for a long hike in Chichibu-Tama National Park. Show the kids something new, even though they would much rather just get on the plane and start binging on TV and unlimited soda.

Maybe I’ll just go by myself.

Tokyo-Narita Airport lies in the relatively open spaces of Chiba Prefecture, on the far side of Tokyo. One might think it would be quicker to go around Tokyo than try barreling right through the heart of it.

One who thinks this isn’t familiar with Tokyo.

Traversing Manhattan requires navigating the city streets. Getting across Los Angeles requires a full tank of gas and a bottle of Xanax. Tokyo, in contrast, carries you along a series of elevated expressways that lead smoothly among the skyscrapers and along the skirts of Tokyo Bay so fast you almost wish you had more time to take in the fleeting views of Yoyogi Park and the twin indoor sporting venues from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics; the teeming, neon-drenched streets of Shinjuku; the wooded grounds of Meiji Shine; the ships and barges plying the waters of Tokyo Bay; the grounds of the Emperor’s Palace; the unmistakable 634-meter Tokyo Sky Tree.

As a sort of consolation, from the highway running six stories above street level, right past the windows of the buildings lining either side of the noise barriers, you might get a glimpse of that creature of urban legend, the eternally-laboring Japanese salaryman, toiling away at his desk for the eighty-fourth hour straight because hey, there’s work to do.

On the way out of the city you pass Tokyo Disney. I used to say the kids were too young to fully enjoy and appreciate it. Soon I’ll be able to say they’re getting too old for it.

The expressway eventually throws you back out into the land of yore: forested hills and meandering rivers and rice fields tended by a breed of hearty gray-haired Japanese folk for whom I have nothing but the utmost respect.

It isn’t long before the signs for Narita Airport begin to appear.

Saving Cash & Sailing Through Check-In

Not a superpower so much as a compulsion, my wife digs for ways to save money like the 49ers in 1860s California dug for gold, albeit with much more success. Handicapped parking is available at Tokyo-Narita Airport at a handsomely reduced rate. My wife did the legwork on that ad then told me how much I’d have to pay. “Make sure you bring two thousand yen. Here, give me your wallet so you don’t forget…”

My daughter’s condition allows for us to use handicap parking, but generally I avoid it. She can walk well enough – certainly better than the seniors shuffling up and down the aisles at the supermarket – but at the airport the closest regular space can be a mile from the front door.

At Narita Airport our spot was only a half-mile from the door.

From the Lot 5 garage we lugged our bags (and rolled my daughter) along a painted path leading to and through an adjacent parking garage, up an elevator, along an elevated walkway, down another elevator, along more painted walkways across more pavement, up another elevator and through another elevated walkway into Terminal One. We lost no children and no bags the entire way – though the two younger ones were getting a bit testy. As if they’d been awake all night.

The people at the airport – like the people in every other building in Japan where you don’t have to be Japanese to get in – are so endearingly pleasant and interminably helpful I almost want to spend my vacation right there. My wife triples the time it takes for us to check in by confirming and reconfirming and re-reconfirming the application of our miles to each of our five accounts, the existence and validity of which she just confirmed and reconfirmed. Meanwhile I’m trying to make light, distracting conversation with the baggage person as I stick a supportive toe under each bag I place on the scale.

Freeing ourselves from all our luggage is like diving into a cool river on a steaming hot day. That everything we check in will be handled by Japanese people is akin to knowing there are no leeches or parasites in the water; no fears of getting our bags tossed like trash into a garbage truck or unofficially inspected by a baggage handler who hasn’t finished his Christmas shopping. I never get that feeling when we fly a Chinese airline.

I want to meet the people who designed Narita Airport. I want to bow to them, shake their hands, buy them a round of beers and maybe kiss the females if they’ll let me. Because all the good stuff is on the far side of security meaning I can enjoy them without the looming prospect of scrambling to get three kids and a wife (who is toting two massive carry-on bags and a sack of homeopathic medicine that has to be hand-checked because the x-ray machine will reduce it to pixie dust although sometimes I think that’s all a lot of it is) through the process of taking off their shoes, taking off their jackets – “Empty your pockets please!” = putting it all on the conveyor belt along with their backpacks – “In separate trays please!” – and walking – “Wait until I tell you to go, please!” = through the metal detector, all while I’m dealing with my own shoes and belt and jacket and phone and backpack and trying not to lose my wallet along the way.

I don’t miss the days when my daughter couldn’t walk through the metal detector on her own.

The security people are always polite. But I never want to kiss them. Not even the females.

Leaving security behind is like floating on an inner tube down a lazy river on a warm summer day. The Niagara Falls of the luggage carousel at Newark Airport is a half a world away, so we can enjoy what time we have before boarding wandering the efforts of those airport designers: the outdoor observation deck looking out over the runways; the shopping areas filled with pricey bits of uselessness; a display of watercolor paintings by elementary and junior high students, some of them surprisingly impressive; and during December, the Christmas decorations and intermittent musical entertainment.

All this walking makes for a healthy prelude to all the upcoming sitting. I have more energy than my kids though (another way to say my mid-life crisis-driven sense of mortality is burning in desperation) and I head off by myself, to check out what’s on the shelves at the bookstore and sample the freebies being given out at Sugar Heaven or whatever they call the confectionary gift shop now. In both cases I hang out until I am politely asked to leave if I am not going to buy anything.

The Final Hurdle

I have this aversion to approaching the person standing behind the desk at the gate. They always look busy, though a part of me suspects they’re faking it so no one approaches them. I do the same thing at home.

I can’t blame them for this apparent deception. Most people are not as calm and collected as I am there at the gate since I’ve already unloaded whatever frustrations I’m harboring at the uniforms at security, mainly at the person responsible for making sure my four-foot daughter walks through the metal detector by herself, suspicious-looking as she is.

So I hate to approach these people, but I have a good reason that requires just a small amount of special consideration. My daughter can walk, but not for the entire time we are navigating the highs and lows of the airport so I push her around in her sporty little buggy, right up to the gate where we hand it over and let them deal with it until Newark.

With this it is apparent to the person manning the gate that it would be best to let my daughter and the rest of us board ahead of the impending tsunami of people and coats and carry-on bags.

And so we have the time and space to make it down to Row 34 and settle into our seats – my wife in the window seat and the kids wherever they want, a ruinous gesture that puts me in 34-E. It also serves as an indication of who harbors the biggest aversion to sitting next to Dad for twelve hours.

Not that I’d be upset if they said I could go sit in an entirely different section of the plane.

As soon as the kids have forgotten there’s a world beyond their TV screens I kick off my shoes. My wife already has her head against the window. She’s either watching the baggage handlers or she’s already dozed off.

I feel good. I want to laugh. I reach for the in-flight magazine in the seat pocket in front of me, keeping an eye out for the person handing out the pretzels.