I don't know how long I had slept, sitting on that bench at Narita International Airport in Tokyo, but I was startled awake by the synthesized sounds of Gary Wright's "Intro to the Dreamweaver". What startled me is that Wright's Intro to his song was the ringtone of my phone, and I had no cell service in Japan. Confused and still dazed, I pulled my phone from my breast pocket, and swiped my finger across the screen to answer the call. It was my wife back in the states. "Uh, hello" I said fairly cautiously as I still was unsure why my phone would ring when there was no compatible cell service in Japan. "Have you found Adam, yet?" she asked me, and then I heard my name called over the loudspeaker to go to the information booth. At least it kind of sounded like my name. I advised my wife that I was being paged, and that I would get ahold of her sometime later. I struggled with my large bag, my medium sized carry-on, and my cane to get across the room and over to the nice gal at the Information Desk. I finally got there and told her that I had been paged..."Dad!" Adam was there at the Information Desk and was standing right next to me. I was so out of sorts that I was unaware that he had been standing there when I walked up. We embraced, thanked the gal at the Information Desk and headed towards the other end of the airport where he had been able to park the car. Adam told me all about his adventures that day. From his house on the Airforce Base, it should have taken about an hour and a half or so to get to the airport. Having never driven to the Narita airport before, he relied on his trusty GPS. He had purchased and installed the maps for Japan, and the GPS was right on target. Until he got near Tokyo. Near Tokyo, things went horribly wrong, the directions kept telling him that he was fifty minutes away from Narita irregardless of how much time had passed or how many miles he had driven. He discovered that he was several hundred miles North of Tokyo when he started seeing fields of Rice, and unfamiliar names that he located on a paper map that he had acquired. He had left home four hours early, and showed up at least that late. Now we were attempting to get back to his home in Fussa, Japan. I sat in the passenger seat on the left side of the car and observed what Adam was talking about as the GPS could not make up its' mind about which way we should travel (it turns out that I heard from a few other service people that they had the same experience). As we were trying to make our way back to Fussa, where the Airforce Base was located, I admired all of the beautifully lit buildings, and even a few large Ferris Wheels that were all lit up. Really cool. Lots of Toll Booths though. More Ferris wheels. More Toll Booths. Even more Ferris Wheels. Wait a minute. I think that these have been the same Ferris Wheeels that we have been passing, and probably the same Toll Booths. Over, and over. Hey, look there's the Rainbow Bridge. Hey. There it is again, and again...we have been blindly driving in circles around Tokyo. Hey! There is Narita! We started there two hours ago! Okay. There is a 7-11. Let's stop there and ask directions. It was pretty much like most 7-11's in the states...no one spoke english...yup. No different. We asked Toll Booth attendants, flaggers, Police Officers for the direction to go. They all just shrugged and vaguely pointed out into space. We finally got a call on Adam's Japanese cell phone from another serviceman who was very familiar with the drive, Adam's wife Megan had called around, realizing that we must be having difficulties finding our way back and asked him to call us. It turns out we had been missing our turn many times. It was small and really easy to miss he said. That was an understatement. Once we made that turn, it was about an hour and a half to get the the Base. Then I had to acquire my day pass until Pass and ID was open the next day, when I could get my month long pass. Not surprisingly, the Guards at the gates were all Japanese as well, since they are local contactors. We finally were at Adam's apartment on Base. I was definately ready to call it a night.
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