Diving Into The Wreck

The Good Life

"We are now boarding Flight 4201 to Tokyo, departing from Gate L8. Please have your boarding pass and identification ready..."

"Finally!" Blake exclaimed as he got up from his seat and headed toward the gate.

"Not quite yet," Tommy said, just as I pulled off my headphones, about to follow Blake. "They're only taking parents with young children and passengers who require special assistance. You'd know that if you were listening."

Blake cursed loudly, causing one of the mothers in line to quickly cover her daughter's ears. As the passengers continued to board the plane, both of us sat back down, furious that we still had to stay put. The flight had already been delayed twice. If we had to wait any longer, we would risk missing our first Tokyo show.

The tour schedule was simple. There was a venue in Tokyo that had booked us for three nights in a row. We would start there, and then spend Christmas and New Years' in Tokyo. There would be some time to explore the city, but after New Years' was over, we would travel to Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Sapporo, and Sendai. Once we were done playing in a new city every night, we would drive back to Tokyo and then fly back to Cleveland just in time for school. It seemed as if nothing could go wrong.

I put my headphones back in, but it wasn't long before we had to board the plane. "I can't believe that we're going to Japan," Mom said to me as we walked onto the plane. "I'm so proud of you and your band, Dani."

"Thanks, Mom," I said, even as I searched for a seat that was as far away from her as possible. Although I was a little bit worried about her embarrassing me on tour, and I wasn't exactly thrilled by the idea of my mother watching all of Blake's antics, I was also glad that she was there. I wasn't sure what I would do without her. I couldn't even find the food court without my mom's help, and we hadn't even left Cleveland yet.

I ended up sitting next to Blake on the plane. "Do you want to watch a movie with me?" he asked.

"Sure," I replied. We spent a while scrolling through the plane's selection of movies. Blake was quite indecisive - he loved horror movies, but he also told me that he wanted to watch Batman. I tried to ignore the crying baby across from me and the toddler behind me kicking my seat, but it wasn't easy. I told myself that the misery of the plane ride was a small price to pay for the opportunity to tour Japan.

Blake and I finally decided to have a Batman marathon sometime during the layover in Chicago. During the fifteen hour flight, we watched five different Batman movies. I tried to get some sleep a few times, but the crying baby across from me made that impossible, so I just relaxed and watched each movie. I just hoped that I could get through our first Tokyo show without falling asleep in the middle of it.

After what felt like forever, the plane finally landed in Tokyo. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Narita International Airport," the flight attendant said. "The local time is 11:13, and the temperature is seven degrees Celsius."

There was still some time before we could get off the plane, during which the toddler behind me decided to give my seat one final, aggressive kick. "I need some coffee before I can play," I said to Blake, resisting the urge to turn around and glare at the small child or its mother.

"There's probably a Starbucks in the airport," Blake said. Strangely enough, he didn't seem tired at all. Blake seemed ready to jump onstage and scream his lungs out, so maybe it wouldn't matter if I seemed a little bit lethargic. Everyone would be paying attention to Blake anyways.

We finally got off the plane, and of course, our first stop was Starbucks. Every single person on the tour ordered something, either a snack to get something in their stomach after all of that awful airplane food, coffee to wake them up, or both. After that, we got our bags, and then Tommy led us into another terminal. He walked up to a man in a suit, bowed, and then started talking to him rapidly in Japanese.