My last night in Tokyo Nigel organizes me to hook up with some employees from the Australian Consulate and travel out to spend a night at the embassy house near Yamanakako. This is a small town on the banks of Yamanakako Lake which sits directly below Mt. Fuji. I meet the other Aussies at Shinjuku station and we catch a local train to take us out into the countryside. During the train ride I visit the bathroom. By Japan standards it is state of the art. A circular hole in the floor through which I can watch the railways sleepers fly by. The room is barely big enough for me to brace both legs and both hands against the wall for stability. Good luck if you are a Yokozuna. I must be as precise with my timing as the British Lancaster bombers that delivered the bouncing bombs to destroy Nazi Germany hydroelectric dams during World War 2.
In the end it is a short ride. Mt. Fuji is only 100 miles from downtown Tokyo. On a fine day you can see the summit from the top of the Tokyo Tower, the nation's second tallest building and world's largest traffic cone. After two hours the Aussie contingent gets off the train and catch two sets of taxis out to a wooded, hilly area outside of town. This is close to where the house is. I say close to where the house is because no one on this trip has ever been to the house before. We are following the official Australian Embassy treasure map.
At 9pm, with the sun long ago set, the ten of us are still tramping through the dark woods on this hillside trying to determine which of about twelve houses is the Australian embassy one. The problem is the map is dated. There have been new houses constructed so we have no idea, as a frame of reference, which house is which on the map. What do we use as our brick house landmark? The new house half way up the hill or the old house two driveways down? We know there is a punch code on the door to gain access, but all the houses have keypads. We are just punching in codes willy-nilly at every house while keeping our fingers crossed that we aren't tripping alarms. More worrisome, what if a little old Japanese couple is sitting inside their summer cottage nervously listening to a band of frustrated Australians walking around their house abusing each other while swearing their heads off.
'Hey mate, Is this the fucking house?'
'No. Fucking Christ!'
'Who organized this shit show?'
'Barry.'
'What, does he have shit for brains.'
'I can hear you.'
'We love you Barry mate.'
'You're both a pair of fucking wankers.'
The only thing preventing terrified inhabitants from picking us off with rifles fitted with night sights is that Japanese culture has some of the most restrictive gun laws on the planet. Still, it isn't hard to imagine Mr. Watanabe bursting out of his front door with a samurai sword screaming, 'Banzai,' before hacking Barry into sushi pieces. Finally, we hit the jackpot. The last one we try is the correct house. Everyone is so exhausted that we are asleep within minutes of getting inside the door. Anticlimactic. But the trip is still worth it for the chance to do a crap though the hole in the floor of a train.
The next morning, I am up early to get back to Narita for my flight home. I have arranged for one of the taxis that dropped us off the night before to come back to roughly the same spot in the morning and drive up and down the road until they find me. I bus back to Tokyo, because they have real proper toilets on board, then catch the cheap, slow train out to the airport and save myself the dollar fifty.
The flight back to the USA is infinitely better than the flight over. I allow myself to have a drink. I was warned by the company before leaving America that while flying I am acting as a representative of the firm in Japan and shouldn't drink. I assume they were only referring to the outbound flight. Not imbibing on a plane is a waste of 75% of the best part of international travel, the free inflight drinks.
The Singapore Airlines stewardess hands me a US immigration card to fill in during the first hour of the flight. Exactly at bourbon number two in the Australian system of calculating the length of airline journeys. Rather than miles travelled, Australians measure flight times by the number of alcoholic drinks consumed. For instance, the drinking record for the flight from Australia to England was set way back in 1989 by test cricketer David Boon at 52 cans of beer. This singular achievement is the only thing Australians remember of Boonie's cricket career. A feat statistically equivalent to Michael Phelps eight gold medals at a single Olympic game. A normal flight from Australia to New Zealand is six beers. If there is a delay due to bad weather, it is six beers and a bottle of Zinfandel. Some people might argue that when I am on long flights I have a drinking problem. I am here to deny that accusation whole heartedly. I have no problem at all knocking them back.
Before I get too focused on my inflight drinking all the sections of my immigration form are appropriately filled in. Except for my passport and flight number. This information is in my passport and on the ticket, which I always pack into my carryon for security and store in the overhead compartment. After I buckle myself into my seat I usually then realize, bugger I need those. But, I am not the type of wanker who stands up needlessly to open an overhead compartment. The person who only just sat down in their seat and then realized there is something so important in their hand luggage they must stand up and rummage through it right before take-off before the hostess tells them to sit down.
Instead, to piss people off I prefer to complete my immigration form at the last possible second. When I am the next to be called forward at customs. This makes me the type of wanker who is always desperate to borrow a pen from the travelers standing behind him in the immigration line. This annoys people to no end, but it is my guilty pleasure in life. Unlike a person's guilty pleasure of watching Keeping up with the Kardashians, mine doesn't cause irreparable brain damage.
Arriving in Los Angeles from Tokyo, I stand on wobbly legs in front of US Immigration at LAX asking to the people around me for a pen. Then I realize I can't find my I-94 form. My passport is here, my green card, and the ticket stub too, but what have I done with the immigration form? I vaguely recall that I was using it as a drink coaster somewhere over the longitude of Hawaii. That was about bourbon number seven. It might still be attached to the bottom of the glass? Damn. Oh well, too late to do anything about it now. I stumble forward to support myself heavily against the immigration official's booth. 'I think my form was lost on the plane,' I closely squint at the ticket, 'Singapore Airlines flight 12.' The official sternly looks at me. What a hopeless prick he probably thinks. However, under the Constitution, being blind rotten drunk is not a reason to deny a person entry to the country. It at least confirms I am not Muslim.
'Fill in the form, please,' he gruffly orders, while passing me the distinctive blue card for passengers arriving to the US. He hands me a pen. I fumble it and it drops to the floor. First strike. I make a few attempts to pick it up. My fingers feel like they are made of the soft dough of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls before fresh out of the tin. The Immigration Official watches in stupefaction as I push the pen around his counter for five minutes unable to hold it. Strike two. He snatches the form from me, looks at the details in my passport and fills it in. 'Just sign it,' he says. As if me being unable to grasp the pen beforehand didn't foreshadow that I would have a bugger of a time performing that function as well. I grapple with the pen and finally lock it in between my digits with something approaching a death grip. I lean down close to the paper, so I can clearly see the small X beside which I sincerely hope to put my signature. To no avail. I am too drunk to even remember what my signature looks like. I am having a shocker.
I forlornly look up at the Immigration man, 'I can't do it. I'm sorry.'
'Your signature? You can't put your signature on the paper?' The way he says it makes it sound like he has never seen anyone so drunk that they can't write their own name.
'Yes, I know. I just can't. I really can't.'
The whirlwind of emotions this poor man is enduring must cover everything from, we need to enact a law to lock up fools like this, all the way to why didn’t I study harder at college, so I don't have to put up with this shit.
'Pathetic.' He states.
Thankfully I have matured since my days as a wild 20-year-old when I might have let fly with scathing abuse at everyone from the chief of homeland security to the Wright brothers. A fantastic lesson for life, if you are going to be a drunk then be a pathetic, sympathetic drunk. The type of compassion-stirring alcoholic that garners a compassionate day time talk show interview, supportive news stories, and proposals of marriage from Elizabeth Taylor. You don't want to be so pitiful as to go full David Hasselhoff. While you certainly won't be getting away with any shit pulling a Mel Gibson. Unless you're Mel Gibson.
'Are you proud of yourself?' He asks.
'I'm from Australia. Of course, I'm bloody proud of myself mate. I keep this up I could be Prime Minister one day.'
With a resigned shake of his head the Official plucks the I-94 from my hand and orders me to, 'just get out of my sight.' Strike three. I'm out. When you are genuine people have no response. I drop my passport, fall over trying to pick it up, then stagger off in what I assume is the direction of baggage claim. A week in Japan has worn off on me. There is so much about their culture that I wish existed in the western world. For instance, I could really use a little map of the airport to help me find my way around. I spend an hour waiting for my bags to appear on the carousel before I remember I don't have any to collect.