Maneuvering through Narita International Airport is a breeze..
The taxi ride to one of Tokyo’s thousands of APA (Always Pleasant Amenities) hotels is uneventful.. Hmmm, smooth sailing.. should I be alarmed?
Arriving at 12 noon, 3 hours before check-in, garners me no brownie points.. Maybe I can request an early check-in?.. Japanese tend to play by the rules. Besides, the prepubescent desk clerk will have little if no appreciation for my witty charm and womanly wiles.. It’s obvious he’s used a marker of some sort to emulate facial hair.. He can barely peer over the check-in desk.. He has on the exact Velcro collar/tie combo my dog Wolf used to wear..
Leaving my entire life in the hotel’s “baggage closet” till my 3pm check-in is pretty much my only option..
Flashbacks of my suitcase rollers falling into train track rivets embedded in every sidewalk throughout Japan solidifies my decision.. *Side note, turns out those rivets I find so annoying are in almost every street in Japan to guide the blind. Japan scores.. I am a bitch*
I clutch the thin white paper embossed with the numbers 205567.. This piece of paper with this nonsensical number — which I cannot even try to make mean anything — is all I have of my life.. I really don’t like the number 5.. and there’s 2 of them.. 7 is a cool number.. 2 I can work with, but the double 5 just leaves me cold..
Ridding myself of all I own has always been the game plan..
Since my initial purge of 2010, I’ve felt the need to live with less.. Purchasing my tiny house in 2013, I believed would free me of the need to have stuff.. Oddly enough, I still managed to fill that 399-square-foot Barbie Palace with a ton of stuff..
Here’s the pisser.. It is soooooo easy to get stuff. Getting rid of it is the hard part.. Think about it.. OK, this is not a come-to-Jesus kind of blog.. Not here to advise or lecture or inspire or motivate or even question. However, I never thought about how “not easy” it is to actually physically deal with what I’ve accumulated in any given period of time let alone most of my life.
3 PM on the dot..I’m back and anxious to gather up my stuff.. Anime boy — standing on a wooden box, no doubt — orders me to scan the QR code in order to release MY stuff. He pretends he’s authoritative while asking for my passport and reservation number.. I play along.. I pretend I’m not annoyed.. As his fingers fumble on the keyboard looking up my room details, I remind myself that being kind to those of lesser intelligence..
Before I can finish the thought, The Youth of APA informs me that I do not have a reservation at this hotel.. My reservation is at the APA hotel a block and a half away.. I don’t recall ever wanting to smack anyone’s face as much as I do at this exact moment..
Maintaining pretend mode, I smile-ish and ask if he would be so kind as to call a taxi for me.. He reiterates that the hotel is a mere 2 blocks away.. Does it not occur to your snot-nose imbecilic self that while blind people benefit from those divots on the sidewalk, people like me with heavy-ass luggage find them impossible to maneuver.. Aren’t the Japanese known for respecting their elders..
Wait a second.. His little shit-head self views me as his peer.. Not an attractive yet aging woman with good skin, whiteish teeth, muscular physique, coltish attitude.. Between the age of 30 and.. All is immediately forgiven..
Ridding myself of stuff is one thing, ridding myself of vanity is, well.. Impossible..
