From Tokyo Airport to Hotel - A Dad's Diary by Clayton Frech - August 21st, 2021

This blog post originated from Clayton’s Frech’s personal Facebook page. He is chronicling his journey as a dad with his son that is headed to Tokyo.

(For somewhat more live updates, you can follow me on instagram. I am trying to drop updates into my stories. and of course follow @teamezra05 on instagram as well.

So we arrive at Tokyo’s Narita Airport around 3pm local time, maybe a little after that. We wait for quite some time to get off the plane. We are immediately moved into the “quarantine” process. There were rumors that this could take a long time. We had been warned to be prepared for a long wait, many lines, many “opportunities” to show our credentials… and to play the waiting game. Man, did that ever happen. I can’t even remember how many times we were queued up to have our papers inspected. Easily 10 times. At one moment, like 3 different Japanese women came by and checked my credential. Made me quite nervous.

Airport Covid check

It seems the bulk of the process is designed to 1) make sure you have all the right pre-flight tests and paperwork completed and 2) to get you a new covid test. We were moved from line to line to line. It was unclear why we needed so many intermediary steps, unless this was a way of controlling flow for times that things were super busy so you had a variety of holding areas for the flight cohorts?

Any how, the staff at the airport during the whole covid process were friendly, kind, and helpful. No complaints there. Finally, at one point we had to do a saliva test (our first). We had a little stall to spit into a test tube, and handed it over to the Haz-Mat worker. Then we went into a lounge area that was pretty comfortable. We had assigned seat numbers and most of us didn’t realize we could move around until hour 3 or so. It was quite comfortable. But no food was available. Ezra and I started to get hungry at one point and I was glad I had trail mix and bars ready. They were passing out waters which was great.

The Inconclusive Test Extends Our Quarantine

So after maybe 2 hours of not hearing anything from anyone, they announce it will be another 45 minutes. This sucks but we can live with it. Then, not even five minutes later we are told that it is going to be 2 hours MORE! OMG, we all started to lose it…. So we hunker down again. The rumor was that there was a positive test from our plane. But they let a couple groups of people go – including team usa’s sitting volleyball athletes and some Columbian athletes. Then we hear we have an inconclusive test in our cohort. So at least there’s a story here.

Trust Your Gut

At one point in the quarantine period, the staff came to me and said my test was negative and that I could go to the next station. She seemed really excited and happy to tell me that. However, I didn’t want separate from Ezra and LaTi. I was handling all of Ezra's paperwork and we were essentially going through the process together. I told her that I wanted to stay and she sort of tried to convince me to leave the room and go to the next stop. Almost like, we want to get the negative test people out of here. To my knowledge they didn’t do this to anybody else. I had to make a decision and told her I was going to stay back with Ezra. When I look back, we were maybe 1.5-2.0 hours into the 4.0 hour quarantine! I would have been stuck at the next stop, in a way less comfortable area, without Ezra, had I taken their advice.

Finally we get out of testing after just about 4 hours. Wow! Then we proceed to the last phase where we went through immigration, get our bags, and pass through customs.

We had not put name tags on our checked bags… I was freaking out that we would not be able to find the bags. Luckily, USOPC grabbed all the bags and had our information from United so they knew exactly whose bag was whose… I guess if you don’t put a name tag on a bag, it’s good to do it at the Paralympics.

Once I realized Team USA’s staff was fully in control and the last thing for Ezra to do was to climb onto the team bus, LaTi and I decided to head out to our hotel.

The Most Patient Taxi Driver in the World is Japanese

After arriving a little after 3pm we found our taxi driver, who, incidentally had been waiting since about 5:30pm for us to arrive! How incredible is that? He waited 3.5 hours for us! I felt like there was nothing to see for a long time on the drive to the hotel. Like the airport was in the middle of nowhere. I just googled and yes, that airport is really far out of town. We eventually find our way into the city and it is really stunning at night. It’s about 9:30pm, a little more than six hours since we arrived at the airport when we take off for our hotel.

Hotel Arrival

We arrive at our hotel around 10:30pm and immediately run into problems. It’s my credit card. My primary card is not working in Japan. Chase bank has put a fraud alert on my card. I immediately called the bank and got somebody on the phone. She tried multiple times to unlock the credit freeze to no avail. They keep charging and trying but it’s not working. Ultimately, she says she has to elevate me to the next level. I waited ALMOST AN HOUR to get the next person on the phone.

In the meantime, I am starting to get delirious. It’s pushing close to midnight and we just need to get to our rooms. So I offer to pay cash for the first night and solve the credit card problem in the morning. When they calculate the total bill, it is some huge number of Yen. I asked for the rate in USD and she calculates it to be $184.00 per night. Great. I take $400 and exchange it in their exchange machine, hand it over, and assume we are good.

Not so fast. With the exchange fee and exchange rates (you know the rates are not the same anywhere), I had lost enough money that I was now SHORT and couldn’t cover the bill. It was a small amount, but they were unwilling to give me the room for a slight discount. And then, funny enough, the exchange machine magically runs out of money and is out of order! So I can't even give them more money. They won't take US Dollars.

I am losing my mind at this point. Finally, magically, somebody finally shows up on the chase bank line that I have been on for almost an hour. A new lady tells me to try the card, and it works. It’s now basically midnight and we are getting our room keys!

Travel Hours Summary

4:30am PST Wake UP – 4 Hours of prep, travel, check-in

8:30am PST LAX to SFO – 4.5 Hours of flight and layover

1:00pm PST SFO to Tokyo Flight Leaves – 10.5 Hours of flight time

3:00-9:30pm JST Airport – 6.5 Hours of quarantine / customs time

9:30-12:00am JST Travel and Hotel – 2.5 Hours of travel and check in time

28 Hours of Travel Time

Interesting observations about Japan

• They take covid very seriously. The airport covid teams looked like Haz-Mat workers.

• The toilets have instructions that are incomprehensible to me. Some of them must have artificial intelligence flushing technology… I just look for the handle!

• Hotel rooms have virtually no storage. I have to use my 2nd bed for my gear. It forces you to be more organized, which is a good thing.