Golden Week: Leaving Japan

Literally right after ensoku, I left Tsushima for Fukuoka. Yonekura-sensei gave Joe and me a ride to the airport. Joe, Joey, and Mike are heading for Bali, where I know for a fact they'll have a mind-blowingly good time. The three of them were planning on staying at their regular hostel, and they booked me a room, too. It was about $20 per person for a four-person room, with a clean communal bathroom. The whole thing was great, and it makes me feel dumb for having spent triple that each night I've stayed at the Comfort Hotel in Hakata.

After dropping off our stuff, we headed over to El Borracho, our favorite/the only Mexican restaurant in Fukuoka. We feasted on an awesome dinner of sincronizadas and margaritas. Anticipating the tiring travel day ahead of us, Joe, Mike, and I got back to the hostel by around 1. Not surprisingly, Joey went out to party.

We all got up and out by 7:30. Check-in at the airport was uneventful, and I hung out with the guys at their gate until their boarding time. Joey broke out his football and we started tossing it around. Not long after, we were approached by someone from their airline. We expected them to ask us to stop horsing around, but instead he asked Joey to deflate it before takeoff to prevent explosion. Odd.

My flights were kind of screwy: first was Fukuoka to Hong Kong, though we stopped in Taipei to refuel. In Hong Kong, I had 40 minutes to disembark, go through a ridiculously crowded security line, and take the skyway to my gate. Thankfully, Cathay Pacific (my airline) had people along the way keeping an eye out for us. I made it just fine.

The flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok was awesome. Cathay Pacific (or at least this particular plane) is pretty swanky. The TV screens had a ton of movies and TV shows on demand. The flight arrived in Bangkok right on time, and I didn't have to fill out a visa application. Hooray for America!