when things are good, they’re good, and when they’re bad, things can be miserable. on tuesday, taka and i flew to sfo to catch 1 of any 6 different flights to japan or korea (which is just a hop away) to attend taka’s sister’s wedding in fukuoka. the flight from lax to sfo was uneventful, ballin’ in first class, but sfo to japan was another story. for 5 hours we continuously were bumped off of flight after flight. early in the day we started drinking a beer for every flight we missed, so after the last flight departed without us, we were feeling not only defeated, but drunk.

our backup plan had been to stay in san fransisco and try for the same set of flights the following day. however after being beaten so badly and with most flights for the next day already almost full (and being drunk), i opened my wallet. turns out a pair of roundtrip tickets to japan, 14 hours before you want to leave when most airlines are completely full is kinda expensive. in this case “kinda” is a euphemism for “are you fucking kidding me?!” but these are the things you do for family. we both hadn’t been back to japan since our wedding, so it would’ve seemed pretty disrespectful if we didn’t show, regardless of how good of an excuse we had and we’d both been looking forward to this trip for a while; lord knows taka was deserving of a vacation.

so as i sit here blogging away in the most expensive economy seat ever sold, i vow to never again fly standby to any destination where my presence is required. standby can be great if you have a few days to waste and plenty of backup destinations, but a raving, screaming bitch when she has a bad day.

(i actually wrote this in the plane about a day ago and just now found a chance to upload it here in a small internet cafe in ginza)