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Show Columnly speaking By DON ETA GATHERUM The Japanese vacation starts with strange delay On July 28, 1983 at 10:30 p.m., I was standing with my husband and our two children in the empty Osaka airport, wondering where we would spend the night and how we would find someone in the empty building that could communicate with us. This was the beginning of a wonderful summer vacation, traveling travel-ing through Kyushu, the southern island of Japan, as guests of the Nakashima family from Sasebo. We became acquainted with the Nakashimas in 1981 when Miyuki, a 13-year-old La bo exchange student, stu-dent, stayed one summer month in our home. This was a wonderful experience. In April of 1983, Miyuki extended extend-ed an invitation to our family to visit her home. The arrangements were carefully made. Our only major problem was to locate enough luggage to hold our clothes and a few gifts we wanted to take to the Nakashimas. The members of the Gatherum family are not world travelers. Most of our vacations have been spent in remote areas of Utah camping out with a hiking tent and a backpack. We finally located four objects that could roughly be described as suitcases. This included one that we tied shut with baling twine. The Northwest Orient 747 plane that was to take us to Tokyo and Osaka was an hour and a half late leaving LAX. This should have been a clue that the first day of our dream vacation would contain some elements of a nightmare. At the Norita airport in Tokyo we were given a hands-on lesson in the capitalistic practice of overbooking a flight. For two hours we sat on the plane waiting for four people to give up their seats in exchange for "wonderful prizes". The incentives got up to an overnight stay in Tokyo's finest hotel, dinner, wine and $400 per person. If we could have foretold the future by just four hours, we would gladly have spent one day and night in Tokyo. Finally the plane got off the ground. By the time we arrived in Osaka, the airport was closed for the night We quickly moved through customs. After exploring a large, nearly empty airport for about a half hour, we discovered that there were no more flights leaving Osaka until morning. This meant that our Japan Air Line (JAL) connecting flight for Fukuoko, the city where the Nakashimas were waiting to pick us up, had gone without the Gatherum family. The four worried members of our family found an off-duty JAL worker who spoke some English. She agreed to call the Fukuoko airport air-port and tell the Nakashima family about our missed flight Our next problem was locating our luggage. The JAL employee said it was in the airport but on the wrong side of a tightly-guarded electric-eye sensitive door. For many minutes we tried to discover a way to beat the security system and grab our possessions. A JAL flight attendant who spoke limited English connected us with another English-speaking airport air-port worker who united us with our four suitcases. The next step was to find a hotel. Again, the airline employee graciously made these arrangements. arrange-ments. We were told to stand on a platform plat-form outside the airport and wait for a shuttle bus. The night sky was invisible in-visible because of the massive neon-lit advertising signs that were located across the street from the airport. This was the first of many amazing things we would see in Japan. A non-English-speaking Japanese couple who were also waiting for a hotel shuttle bus helped help-ed us board the right bus for the Fuji Hotel. Riding in a Japanese-driven motorized vehicle along narrow, crowded streets at seemingly excessive ex-cessive speeds is not a good idea. After nearly killing three people, the driver stopped by the entrance to the hotel. We were safe and comfortable in lovely hotel rooms with Western-style Western-style toilets. Our first day in Japan wasn't what we expected. We survived sur-vived because many strangers became instant friends to four people peo-ple far from home who needed help. In spite of a rather shaky beginning, beginn-ing, the rest of our month-long stay was incredible. We saw things that only a few lucky tourists are able to witness. The people of Japan were extremely courteous and pleasant to their foreign visitors, and because of this kindness and hospitality, our family has a month full of memories that will last a lifetime. |