Deplaning at Haneda
Who invented the word "deplane"?
Someone who shouldn't be allowed to invent words, that's who.
I'm in Japan!
My first indication I was in Japan (other than inherent knowledge and signage) was when I saw one of those golf cart things in the airport hallway start up.
It played a little startup tune: Hi-Ho!
Off to work you go, you kawaii little golf cart!
There was a long hallway, with numerous bathrooms, eventually leading to...
Forms
On the plane flight, they give you the immigration forms. There is a part for when you land, and a part that is saved for when you eventually leave Japan. That part gets stapled to your passport (so don't worry, you don't have to work hard to hang onto it).
They ask you for some expected things, like your name, birthday, passport number.
They also ask you if you're bringing in various contraband, like drugs and weapons, which of course I wasn't. As a matter of fact, I didn't even bring the personal drugs anybody might normally bring (prescriptions, excedrine, etc.), which it turned out I would be thankful for later...
Finally, they ask you for the hotel you're going to stay in for your entire trip, your "lodging during your stay in Japan" or something to that effect, along with the address.
I didn't know that shit!
For starters, I only had one hotel picked: First Cabin at Haneda. I was planning on booking from Japan, depending on how my attempt to get a last minute JR Rail Pass went at the airport.
Second, not expecting to have to answer about my hotel on an official form, I didn't have the address handy. I never wrote it down, since it was literally at the airport, in Terminal 1.
I'm not sure how this goes in most countries (and don't recall if my hotel was on the form to get into the Netherlands), but in the US, it's common on forms to ask for lots of extraneous information that they don't want. You'll be filling out a form at the DMV, and it'll ask you for your favorite color in high school, and you'll start writing "GREEN", but the DMV worker will grab the form out of your hands, because who really gives a fuck, right?
This seemed like one of those questions.
This impression led to a very critical mistake: I opted to leave that part of the form blank.
I did intend to put the name of the hotel, once I'd touched down, but for some reason the "Cabin" part was escaping me. I kept thinking "First Class", but on the plane I was sure that wasn't it. I'd use my phone to double check the name once I touched down and had access to wifi, fill out the name, but still leave the address blank.
Or so I thought.
I forgot about the omission, and went straight for the immigration desk.
Immigration
I give the forms to the immigrations desk guy, and desk guy very quickly pointed out the omission of the hotel name and address.
Doh!
I'd never looked to get the "Cabin" bit of the name, was still thinking First Class and still knew it was wrong. I hadn't dealt with the wifi yet, so rather than set that up to get the information, still thinking it was probably more or less a bullshit question they didn't really care about, I told the truth: I forgot the name, but it was the capsule hotel in Terminal 1. I figured, working at the airport, he'd probably be aware of the hotel.
He wasn't.
His English was also very basic, and we were having difficulty communicating this.
I ended up putting "First Class Haneda" on the form, which made him happy and he let me through. At least for him, it seemed it was in the gray area of "bullshit form question": He needed it filled out, but didn't really give a crap what it said.
Whew.
Customs
Japan has two separate checkpoints to get into the country. I'm calling them immigration and customs, though I don't really know the official names. I'm not a very experienced international traveler.
Immigrations was all about you, while "customs" is checking your luggage. This is the component that was concerned with bringing in contraband and such.
Their form had the same "Hotel" section, and it was still empty on that form when I approached their desk. I hadn't really expected a section checkpoint, and mindlessly approached it, repeating my mistake from minutes before.
The immigrations guy--let's call him Bob--pointed that section out to me as well. I once again said it was a capsule hotel in Terminal 1, but that I'd only booked the first day and couldn't quite remember the name. I very quickly worked my way to throwing "First Class Haneda Terminal 1" onto that form as well, trying to expedite the same process as before and get as close as I could to making Bob happy, despite my failures in planning.
Bob gave me back the form, but then pulled out some sort of picture menu of drugs, asking me explicitly if I brought any of them in.
That felt really condescending. I mean, asking me, sure, but what was he expecting? That I would point to the picture of crack cocaine, and exclaim, "Oh, I get it! I thought you just meant personal drugs! Yes, I am bringing in illegal drugs with the intent to traffic them, and thank you for showing me these pictures of my wares so I could effectively communicate this fact to you!"
If they feel suspicious of me for whatever reason, that's fine, but you can't treat me like a mentally challenged idiot and a criminal at the same time. It's ridiculous and it doesn't work that way, regardless of which type of person I am.
He asked me if it was alright if we went to a different room so they could inspect my luggage.
I found it interesting that they phrased this as a question--what if I'd said no?
"Oh, my apologies. Go on your way!"
Probably not.
I said it was fine.
The Inspection Room
He recruited a second person, we'll call him Jim, along the way, and they asked if they could check both my bags.
I had a backpack laptop bag and some regular boring luggage with clothes, the sort with a handle that pulls out so you can roll it around behind you. I brought very little with me, in terms of variety:
- Clothes
- Toiletries (toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, glasses cleaning fluid and towel)
- Laptop and related cords
- Phone and related cords
- PSP and cords
- Yotsuba To Volume 1 (book)
- Glasses (backup for my contacts)
- Portable Hard Drive
- Mouse
- That's it.
There's no reason this should have been very difficult.
Bob starts taking all my clothes out of my bag, inspecting each one, while Jim pats me down (politely asking me if he can first).
Jim goes through my backpack, fairly thoroughly though still not with the gusto that Bob went through my actual luggage. This is somewhat ironic, as my backpack has all sorts of different pockets (some of which Jim didn't think to check--though those were all empty anyway, since they're small and borderline useless), while my luggage is just one giant box with two pockets in the front for toiletries or whatever.
There was one interesting thing about the luggage bag, though. The liner unzips, maybe so you can separate clean and dirty laundry or something, and inside that liner is supposed to be a plastic plate that makes up the back of the bag. At some point, that plastic plate cracked. I don't know when it happened, but it was that way before I packed it. There were little plastic shards inside that liner that I've ignored since I have no reason to open the liner. I don't use that feature, and have only ever used this bag one other time (it was my father's).
Bob asked me about it, I told him it's been broken. He starts pressing against every inch of the walls of the bag, over and over again, while Jim starts asking me about my trip. At the first question, it seems like it's a "tell us why you're here", but almost immediately it just becomes conversational.
"Do you mind if we X-RAY this?" Bob asks.
"Go ahead," I tell him, and Bob leaves the room with my empty bag. X-RAYing it seems ridiculous to me, since there's clearly nothing there, but I was happy to let him do whatever he felt he needed to do.
Another security guy enters the room while Bob is gone, we'll call this third guy Frank. I wonder if they have a rule that there has to be at least two people with a "suspect" at any time? Perhaps to prevent them from claiming some sort of abuse or coercion?
Jim and Frank are now both just asking me about my vacation. I tell him I'm primarily visiting Tokyo, but would like to hit up Kyoto, Kamakura, Mt. Fuji and I almost volunteered Aokigahara. It's one of the places I'm most excited about visiting, but I bit my tongue and said "the forests around Fuji" at the last minute. I didn't want them to get the idea that maybe the reason I seem suspicious--and so agreeable--is that I was planning to go kill myself in the suicide forest.
The would have been much more difficult to disprove.
Jim said that Kyoto was very cool, and Frank asked me if I was going to visit Akihabara! They both seemed genuinely interested (though probably still in a polite way--the point being that these two didn't seem personally suspicious of me).
Bob's White Whale
Bob finally comes back, says the bag checked out.
Great! I should be able to go on my way, right?
He seems hesitant...
And he starts feeling the sides of the bag again.
Because, you know, there could totally be something to find still at that point, right?
Lord.
Jim, Frank and I are just standing there for a while, watching Bob. Eventually Frank chimes in and asks a question. I couldn't quite make it out, ask him to say it again, fail to understand again and Jim clarifies: Frank's asking me if I've ever tried marijuana.
Jim and Frank seemed to like me, while Bob apparently had it set in his mind that I was some sort of drug mule. One might think there's a good cop/bad cop thing going on here, and if that was true, Frank's question would have been the culmination of that relationship.
I don't think that's the case. I think after seeing Bob desperately go back to checking the bag, Frank just decided to throw something at the wall to see if it stuck. Basically throwing Bob a bone. I'm pretty sure the both of them, like me, just wanted Bob to finish his little bag checking crusade so we could all move on.
I told them I hadn't smoked Marijuana, though it is legal now in the state I'm from (Oregon).
Jim responded, trailing off, "Ah, ah, we just had to ask because..."
Justifying Frank's question instead of letting Frank do it, I guess.
Conversation went pretty dry after that, and eventually Bob asked to X-RAY the bag... AGAIN.
I told him to do whatever he felt he needed to do.
I remained nice, but that was the point where my demeanor changed subtly from "pleasant" to "cooperative", because that was the point where, if asked point blank if I thought this was getting ridiculous, I'm not sure I could have lied and said "no".
Spoiler Alert: No Drugs!
Bob came back with the bag once again, and said it checked out once again. He paused, perhaps thinking of some other excuse to continue his brief crusade, then finally said I could go. He started putting my clothes back in my back, which I really wish he'd just let me do... when I'm being "investigated" to ensure I'm not a criminal, whatever, but once there's no specific purpose to it, I'd rather other people not touch my stuff. I'd also prefer to make sure the back is organized the way I originally had it.
Because I'm kind of an asshole control freak at heart.
Jim had left most of my possessions in my backpack, so he had very little to do. The backpack really didn't get the attention it deserved relative to the luggage. Bob finally got all the clothes in, while I had, with ginormous personal strength, resisted asking him to let me do it, and was trying to zip it up.
The bag wasn't very full at all--I've left room for souvenirs--but I assumed that because he didn't put it back in the same way it must not fit very well anymore. I offered to help close my bag, and he said I could. I pushed the top down, barely touching it, and it was clearly not going to be hard to shut at all, when the both of them suddenly put all their weight on the lid of the bag.
Over-engineered that a tad...
Both bags were shut, and finally, I was free to go.
It took an hour, but I had finally, successfully, entered Japan.
Probably Better Than The US
As much as this was an unnecessary waste of everyone's time, it could be a lot worse. The US randomly picks people to hassle, or hassles them for purely political purposes. I believe we hassle them much further, as where this guy just went a little nuts with checking my bag.
I'm not sure if this was purely because of the form omission or if Bob thought there was something off about me personally, but I think I've learned my lesson: Be complete and accurate whenever filling out a Japanese government form, regardless of the circumstances or apparent usefulness of any given field of the form!
NOTE: I want to specifically mention that I used non-Japanese names not out of disrespect, but out of fear that I would do a shitty job making up and using fake Japanese names correctly. It was a hassle, but I'm still fine with it happening (honest, gives me a story to talk about :) and they people involved seemed like perfectly nice people, even Bob, despite not knowing when to accept he doesn't have a guity party.
