28 October 2018
Narita airport DNA test
Arriving at Tokyo Narita airport on Singapore Airlines
Greetings from Narita airport where I have been DNA tested, finger printed, iris scanned, bag searched, laptop contents checked and questioned extensively as to why I am a single white male in camo pants traveling alone. The answer to the camo pants for travel is the pockets to carry stuff like my passport in.
The flight from Singapore to Narita was very early, nearly an hour early, due to a roaring tail wind. Nothing much of interest happened on the flight, but since it was only 5 hours they only allocated 1 hour to sleep, preferring to serve a meal up until 2am and then another meal an hour later. So now I am doing my usual super over tired zombie walk, where I stare at people without realizing and cant hear my own footsteps. Maybe I will have a tantrum and cry hysterically like a baby?
The real fun started at the customs in Narita, there is now a 3 stage immigration / database profiling procedure, followed by a 2 stage customs procedure. Let me explain further.
It used to be that you did the finger print scan and photograph and passport check all at the one counter, they have separated that now, and also selectively take a cheek swab DNA test to add you to their national database of foreigners to frame for crimes.
Next up is the passport check, which was longer than normal, the guy asked me why I am here, why did I go to China, not sure why thats any of his business.
Then you go get your bag, for whatever strange reason in Japan they take the priority bags off the belt and store them out of view so that you stand at the belt for 20 minutes like an idiot until you realize a small man already carried your bag away for no good reason with his white gloves.
Then you line up to have your bag inspected, mine got inspected fully, and they made me boot up my laptop and the guy pretended to look at windows explorer. Not sure what he thought he would find just by watching me scroll through the list of folder names.
Then comes the extensive questions about why I am in Japan, what will I do, do I have money, do I know anyone here, am I on drugs, am I carrying alcohol, do I intend to leave, am I a foreign spy, do I intend to impregnate any pure blood locals, what do I think about Shinzo Abe.
After all that I was still too early for the post office to collect my WiFi puck/dongle thing so I had an expensive coffee that was actually quite good and started typing this nonsense.
Right now I am on the Kesei Skyliner Grand Rapid Limited Reserved Partial Express heading to Ueno, where I will be many many hours too early to check in at the local APA hotel that specializes in re-imperialising once glorious Japan.
Narita airport has a viewing gallery! And its full of people with very fancy huge cameras. It is outside the customs area so I guess if you like to take photos of planes you can just come here whenever you feel like it. Unfortunately the selected location is not great for viewing anything except the other people doing the viewing.
Proof that I was at Narita Terminal 1 viewing gallery. I must silence all doubters.
In case you cant wait to even leave the airport to buy plastic trinkets, dont worry, theres thousands to choose from as evidenced in this out of focus photograph. I selected a teddy bear sitting on a toilet and an anatomically accurate ghost.
Before boarding my train I decided to wander around the streets for a while, see if I could hide in the luggage compartment of a bus or just generally cause the airport police to become concerned. I am very good at making Japanese department of gardens and zebra crossing police nervous.