My family and I have safely made the hop back to Japan. Although we had fun in San Diego, zipping around the freeways and shopping for clothes and shoes in U.S. stores and enjoying the warmer weather, it’s nice being back in my adopted home country. It’s such a difficult time for Japan right now, and I’m happy to be back where I belong so I can help her get back on her feet in the coming months.Japan is 14 hours ahead of California (13 hours during Daylight Savings Time in the summer), which has the convenient side-effect of making it possible to forget important birthdays of family members back home for a whole day before you get in trouble. When you take the 12-hour flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles you essentially arrive earlier than when you left, stretching that “day” (as your body perceives it) to 38 hours or so. But nothing in life is free, and when you travel back to Japan you have to give that partial day back — we basically got on the plane at 2 pm on Sunday and arrived at 5 pm on Monday, totally killing a day for us. My son was really unlucky this trip: the day we “lost” just happened to be his birthday, which he only got to enjoy a few hours of, local time.
Creepy Hot Dog Guy greets new arrivals at Narita Airport.
