Here’s a story with little take-home moral. :)
Tuesday morning, I woke up in Tōkyō. I got up early after four hours of sleep and caught a shinkansen (often called a “bullet train” in the USA). Three days before, I’d stayed at a hotel and sent on a suitcase full of vintage kimono and obi to the airport to wait for me. But there was a problem with airport delivery (we hadn’t known the weight of the filled suitcase and so had opted for a payment plan that turned out not to be eligible for airport delivery), and the hotel had contacted me through the booking agent to ask for my Tōkyō address instead. All that was fine.
Booking-dot-com has an instant messaging feature, which I’ve used repeatedly even for quick conversation. Despite that, they opted to instead sit on the hotel’s request for most of the day and instead email me just 27 minutes before the evening shipping deadline. Which of course I missed. So I responded immediately upon finding the email, replying via email and DM, with the address which, I calculated, could still receive the suitcase just before I left for the airport.
More than 24 hours later, the Booking-dot-com agent replied (via DM) to say they’d just seen my reply, and would I like them to forward the address to the hotel now? Someone would see my answer and respond in 24 hours.
Even with Japan’s amazing luggage transport service, getting that suitcase to the airport wasn’t going to be possible. And if Booking-dot-com waited 24 hours (again) to read my instant message, as they at least warned this time, that would be well after my flight.
So I decided to do a speed run to retrieve the suitcase myself, since that would still be less expensive than arranging to ship it internationally.
I arrived at the hotel to find it closed and locked. I should have expected that, as it was between checkout and checkin times and that’s not unusual for more traditional hotels, but it just made me panic a little bit because I was on a countdown. I found another way in (the hotel also has a day onsen, which may or may not have been open but at least wasn’t locked) and went to find staff. I stretched my Japanese to the breaking point trying to explain how Booking-dot-com hadn’t passed along the address they’d requested from me.
They didn’t have the suitcase. They’d shipped it. How? Apparently Booking-dot-com had given them my Tōkyō address, while simultaneously telling me that they hadn’t yet forwarded my message and would get back to me the next day.
I’d bought a shinkansen ticket at retail price to retrieve a suitcase that had already shipped, and was now…somewhere, on the day I was flying out.
A team of three young women mobilized to find my suitcase. They were great, assuring me they would help while calling Yamato and my Tōkyō hotel to explain the urgency.
They got an answer. Our conversation went like this:
Them: “Oh? It’s at the hotel this morning.”
Me /distrusting my listening skills for rapid Japanese/: “Right now, it’s at the hotel in Tōkyō? Right now?”
Them: “Right now, yes!”
Me: /in English, instant messaging my group in Tōkyō, not yet checked out/: “IT’S AT THE HOTEL”
At precisely that time, my friend Mark received a note under the door to claim his package at the desk. (Mark’s room, and our others, was booked in my name.) He thought it was a mistake but went anyway. So he was able to reply to my all-caps message with a photo of the suitcase.
I was very relieved, and very frustrated. As my ex-pat friend Susan later commented, “Everything worked with typical Japanese efficiency, except the booking agent.”
I hugely thanked my on-site team and asked them for a selfie with my rescuers.
Then we had the flight to DFW (arrived a full hour early!) and a layover before the flight home which, through the miracle of the international date line, was still the same calendar date. All in all, it was a long day (about 30 hours, adjusted for time zones), on 4 hours’ sleep and not enough hydration, but I did get all my things safely home.
I had today blocked for administration catch-up only, no appointments! Tomorrow I have a streaming seminar, and then a workshop this weekend, so I feel no guilt about today’s calendar block.
And the moral of the story is… Just pay the extra weight fee in case the suitcase turns out to be heavy. That would still have been cheaper than an emergency shinkansen run, and less stressful. (Also, I would have gotten to visit the Studio Ghibli store.)
For a much less stressful tale from Japan, check out this post. I’ll be sharing more here, too.