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31th July / 1st August - TELL ME, DUDE |
 The journey doesn't start well, since our 5000 euro in yen are hidden somewhere in an undisclosed branch of Banca Agricola Mantovana somewhere in Triveneto, where, thanks to my brother-in-law Giovanni we can have a good exchange ratio.
Robbberto gets to my place right on time, and just after lunch the good news arrive: the money has arrived... but it's on the other side of the province of Verona.
From here our hero starts an incredible rush armed with his trusty satellite navigator, to reach San Bonifacio and to get back in time with the money (the truth is that just outside the highway my navigator pushed the eject button telling me to handle it on my own and laughing out loud, but this is a different story – Robbberto's note).
Obviously enough during the trip towards Milano we realize we forgot the following:
Robbberto's beauty case containing among other things razor, comb, shaving foam;
Badtz Maru's carrying case;
my cellular's recharger;
Fujiko's gun.
Everything as planned, after all at that time I couldn't know that the worst loss would have taken place a few hours later.
At the airport the check-in clerk of Alitalia teases us with a indecent proposal which I accept only when so pushed by my travel mate.
We are asked to board the 18:30 flight instead of the 19:00 because the latter might be in overbooking: and so our baggage is labeled to the final destination (Narita NRT), while we should have checked in a second time.
Not bad, we think, we will have more time to eat something before the next 12 hours during which I will be forced to eat nothing, but I couldn't help being worried seeing the label “stand-by” stuck on my luggage while it gets swallowed by the conveyor belt.
I would have discovered later that I was right to be worried.
I wished I had put a giant label on it saying “I'm going to Tokyo”.
Both in Linate and in Rome the check-in clerks swear to God that they personally checked the real position of our luggage and that we can sleep without any worries.
I don't know why, but I felt it.
When at Fiumicino the transit from one flight to the other gives some orientation trouble among the many terminals, so we decide to ask a nice clerk for help who, when asked “excuse me...” answered “tell me, dude”.
Maybe it's just the Roman spirit within Robbberto that even after having lived for 15 years in Milano suggests his counterpart that he's playing on the home ground.
 For the first time I board a JAL flight and as a counterweight of the bad seats we got during the previous flights to Mexico, we get the seats in the back side of the B747-400, where the tail gets narrower and the seat rows are constrained to two wider and more comfortable seats per row instead of three.
Since I slept for most of the flight I haven't much to add but the following:
why would you offer a movie in Portoguese, French, Spanish and German on a Japanese flight leaving from Italy?
I'm glad of my idea of the preemptive dinner, the food was impossible to eat, but not for “goodmouth” Robbberto, a man possessing an indiscriminate pit (my hunger precedes me... it's not a coincidence if the final technique of the gold saint of my sign is a black hole – Robbberto's note).
The queue at passport checks seems endless and those signs saying “from here 30 minutes” just like you'd expect to find in an amusement park, don't solve the situation, one more reason, if we needed more, to avoid future night flights.
Quite tired (see picture) we head towards the baggage claim to find a not reassuring sign saying “Mr. Corsaro please contact JAL staff”; I'm not Sherlock Holmes but since Robbberto's baggage was there on the side of the sign, it was simple enough to realize why the sign was there.
I wish to add “I told you” (the truth is that I wasn't worried and my baggage was there, while, by worrying, you filled yours of negative aura so it was just a consequence that they forgot to board it – Robbberto's note).
We fill in the relevant forms with the promise (and hope) that the luggage gets delivered to us on the next day at the front desk of the Sunshine Hotel.
It's easy to realize that as a real woman, when I travel I carry with me a trolley full of shoes and that it isn't of any help for clothes change and the various make up.
And so I'll be forced to wash immediately my undies and dry them using an hairdryer, while my mate laugh (bitch!) and I wander the room without underpants and wearing a towel around my head just like a turban that would turn off anyone, and a striped old fashioned dressing gown that looks like it just came out of the Doctor Gibaud's catalogue.
But not before having had a lunch at a traditional restaurant where we ate care rice and having had our first blister playing Taiko No Tatsujin on the notes of Zankokuna Tenshi No These (Evangelion's OP) and Cha La Head Cha La (Dragon Ball Z's OP).
On the way back to the hotel, at the magical traffic light we happen to meet Kyle, the admin of cosplay.com, and G-chan, while they are having a cup of ramen at a street booth.
Yes, it's true, Tokyo is a small town where everybody knows each other :D
Just a fast note: we went to a book store which was called, without much fantasy, Libro (Book in Italian) where, incredible to say, I found the latest issue of Cosmode! In Italy book stores don't even have comics and in Japan they even have the niche products. |
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