That was one long trip...

Two train rides, two plane rides, a bus and a car ride, and about 30 hours. That's what it took to get me from Takayama back to Denver for the holidays. All in all, it was a relatively painless trip (minus the sleep deprivation), I made all my connections no problem and even made a new friend on the flight from Tokyo to San Francisco.
This is from somewhere between California and Colorado... probably Utah?


The biggest hurdle I've had so far occurred during immigration in San Francisco.

Me: *taking every opportunity to make small talk now that I'm surrounded by English speakers* "that's a really old passport. It never works in the new readers they have, you have to type everything in by hand"
Passport guy: *looks at passport* "yeah, it is old. It's so old in fact, you won't be able to leave the country with it."
Me: "eh?!?!!"
Passport guy: "yeah."

Apparently, if your passport expires in less than 6 months, you have to renew it before you are allowed to travel abroad. Mine was good until April of next year, four months after when I plan to head back to Japan, and two months shy of the cut-off (>.<)

So my first full day back in the US was spent getting a new passport, which went surprisingly smoothly considering how horrible the process of obtaining official documents usually is. The first thing I had to do was to contact the Japanese consulate, who informed me that all Japan cared about was that the passport and my re-entry permit were still valid when I went back (I can renew the passport in Japan). The US immigration office didn't really care what the Japanese had to say though, I got the feeling that even if the Japanese would have let me in, the Americans still wouldn't have let me leave.

As it turns out, if you can prove you are leaving the country within 14 days, you can go directly to the passport agency to get a new one. Lucky for me, there is an office in Denver, so I set up an appointment for the latest possible time that day, which was 11 am. This was at about 10 am, we live around 40 minutes from this place, and I was still in pajamas. So I basically got dressed and out the door, didn't even have time to brush my teeth, and headed straight for the passport agency.

After more than a year in a country where if you miss your appointment by like, a minute, you're out of luck, I was a little apprehensive. But, we just managed to get there before my time (yeay!). The guard asked me if I had 1) an appointment (yes) and 2) passport photos (no) and told me to run down to Kinko's to get them. When I expressed some concern about missing my appointment time he told me "don't worry, you have an appointment, we'll still let you in". I love America! Ha ha ha.

Anyway, I got the photos (dirty hair and all), got the stuff turned in, and after begging and pleading with the man behind the glass, talked them into letting me pick it up the next day. My argument being that the American and Japanese holidays overlap in an inconvenient way - the US offices are closed over Christmas and the Japanese ones the four days after New Years, so if I needed to transfer the re-entry permit I needed to get the documents back ASAP.

Other than that exciting start to my vacation, I'm just looking forward to being back for two weeks in a place where I can read all the signs and understand the announcements without having to think about it. Also, I've been eating Mexican food like nobody's business. Viva la burrito! Chipotle, to be precise (-_^)

Oh, and Merry Christmas!