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Just a quick note to let everyone know I got back OK.

A few memorable notes from my trip back from Seoul through Japan and Los Angeles and finally back home...

A situation of much gravity
After parting with my Seoul traveling companion, I went around to collect the luggage I'd stored and the one piece I'd shipped, and went to check in. Since the layover was so long, I had an hour and a half before check-in was even supposed to start, so I found a seat next to one of the entrances and pulled out my DS. Soon, a crowd of people with press badges and cameras started crowding around the doors. Soon a minivan pulled up and a big guy in traditional Japanese wear got out. After much shuffling and popping of flashbulbs, four sumo wrestlers walked into Narita Airport. I didn't find out who it was until I was standing directly behind him in the customs line. In an amusing twist, one of the workers there, a petite young woman, tried to get his attention to ask if he wanted to bypass the lines. But another line immediately opened up, and he went to the front. Hey, I wasn't gonna argue with the guy.

The next person who brings a baby on a trans-Pacific flight gets keelhauled
The flight back on Singapore Airlines was fantastic, even better than the Japanese airlines if possible. My scale goes something like this:

American carriers : meat cargo :: Japanese carriers : human beings :: Singapore Airlines : royal family

Of course you get alcoholic beverages without being nickle-and-dimed to death (oh I do hope you have exact change on United) but the staff was also dressed to the nines in suits and dresses. Movies included the standard almost-new fare with shitty headphones, but they also had quite a few older but good movies, and more quantity than most airlines-- I stopped counting at 25 and there were still some left. A few things are unavoidable on a Boeing aircraft, such as the movie controls being easily bumped (hope you like fast-forwarding) and screaming-baby syndrome, but for the most part the flight was more pleasant than I remember.

Under renovation my ass
Los Angeles was another story. Despite being "under renovation" for the past 5 years, the whole place still looks and smells like an industrial art fair reject. Picking up a customs form required marching to a single table tucked away into the far end of the immigrations area. Half the area around the luggage carousel was blocked off and used for the customs lines, and the three or four flights of people that arrived with us had to filter through a grand total of two customs agents. LAX still has no signs or maps to tell you where the terminals are-- their idea of a substitute is allowing people to basically panhandle outside the arrival gates in exchange for information. If there was a free shuttle I didn't see it. The oft-used international terminal is still about a mile walk from the most popular local terminal, Southwest. (I remember passing Lufthansa and Air Cathay and quite a few airlines I'd never heard of.) And of course there are still the ridiculous hoops of dragging your luggage to the Southwest check-in counter, weighing it, and hauling it back to a separate security point. Apparently LAX staff haven't discovered the technological marvel of "conveyor belts". Insufficient seating in the gate area and a lack of power outlets made a long wait even worse, and as hot as it was I'm certain the A/C wasn't functioning. These posters were plastered around the area. Lax expectations, indeed. They'd do the city a service to demolish the whole place and start over.

Things learned:

• A Honda minivan can comfortably seat four sumo, and can even move while doing so.
• The reputation of Singapore Airlines is rightly earned.
• Avoid LAX like the plague.