It sounds like everything will be OK, but I really shouldn’t think or say that, since that will doom everything to failure. The inbound flight is on (delayed) schedule and should be on the ground soon. The Delta and Thai Airlines flights that were delayed in leaving here last night are loading up to leave, so the wind conditions are apparently OK for takeoff. It’s still too early, so I haven’t seen any inbound landings on the runway yet. From the TV news, it looks like the typhoon center is up near Miyagi and Sendai now, and heading out to sea – Hokkaido might miss most of the brunt.
Author Archive for risu
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Two – actually three if I count dinner – beers later, I’ve got a pretty rocking headache. Being homeless in the airport terminal doesn’t help I guess… Pocari Sweat to the rescue!
(0)The wind and rain peaked out between midnight and 01:00. There was some dude downstairs out by the highway in the whipping rain with an umbrella during the worst of it. I’m not sure if he was a curiosity seeker, was actually headed somewhere, or was just an idiot. The rain has stopped, and the sidewalks outside and the window glass are now dry. The wind however is still ripping, so the inbound flight is not going to have an easy time. I was thinking I’d head through immigration and go to the gate, but if I do that and the plane gets diverted, I’ll be up the creek. At least if I stay on this side, they can get me a hotel if push comes to shove. Once I “leave Japan” and pass through immigration, it’s all over.
So I didn’t score a hotel room for the night, but I got the next best thing – 2,000-yen in meal coupons. It sucked a little that they were only good for a few places, and they were given to me after 21:00, when a lot of the places that actually remain open after 21:00 are moving to a more limited menu. I went by the pre-immigration 24-hour restaurant and got a beer, some assorted sausages, and a tsukudani nigiri. About the time my food arrived, they switched to the limited menu, so I couldn’t get dessert. No problem: I ordered another beer!
While on the subject of security gurads in Japan, I was approached in English by an older gentleman at Meiji Jingu who told me, “no photography”. I was standing on the top step of the altar area where you give your offering, but on the stairway side, taking a picture of the shrine courtyard – opposite the sacred inner-sanctum (It’s pretty obvious to me to not be a cultural boor and take a picture of the sacred areas). He pointed at the one step down from the top. I stepped down one level and he walked away. Essentially, if I wasn’t on the top step, I was out of his jurisdiction and responsibility, and I could go and do whatever I pleased and he didn’t care. This is the kind of compartmentalized thinking that leads to nuclear powerplants melting down.
(0)There’s a security guard here that has been by a couple of times since I’ve been sitting here. He has gone to the window to look to see that nothing has been placed between a partition wall and the glass and opened the recycling bins. Not exactly sure what he’s actually been trained to look for, but there’s a bottle half full of fluid a couple of rows of seats behind me that has been there since three that he still hasn’t noticed. I feel really safe. This is totally “three-ring binder” security – he was given explicit instructions of specifically what to look for and where, and anything outside that scope, although potentially a threat, gets ignored. He’s totally following “the rules” and not actually “doing the job” and providing security.
(0)The Hawaiian Airlines site says the inbound flight that turns around and takes me home has been delayed by almost 7-hours. In a way that’s good, since it puts the plane on the ground here in Haneda at 05: something tomorrow rather than at midnight when the typhoon will be arriving, reducing the chances that my return flight will get completely cancelled. The suck part for me is that means I will be sitting here another seven hours on top of the nine I will already otherwise be sitting here. I sort-of doubt that Hawaiian will spring for a hotel, so I will have a homeless night in the airport!
They just closed the observation deck due to rain (duh) and high winds. Next they will start waving off incoming aircraft. If the inbound Hawaiian flight makes it to the gate, I might have a chance of getting back as planned.
There was this little blip of a typhoon down near the Phillippines before I left for Japan when I checked the weather report for the time I was going to be here. No sooner did I arrive did the typhoon pick up speed and power and make a bee-line for Okinawa and barrel headlong into the main islands. The rain it was pushing in front of it made today pretty much a wash for doing anything, so I hung out at the airport from after lunch. My flight isn’t until just before midnight, and it looks like that is about when the typhoon is supposed to be arriving in the Kantou area. Great. I hope I don’t get stuck here overnight! It’s starting to rain like a MF now, but I can still see across the waterway to the next adjacent part of the Tokyo waterfront.
PITA free HND airport internet! At least it’s free though, unlike HNL. It took me about 45-minutes and nearly 20% of my battery life to figure out how it worked. Seems to be a little less buggy than the KIX free internet. Apparently a [space] is not a “one-bit character”…