Joe Biden made a victory speech as the President-elect today after mysterious ballot-counting processes. However, the Supreme Court of the United States will decide who the real winner is because President Donald Trump is filing cases to courts of several States on the results. No matter which will be the next President of the United States, his policies will affect Japan a great deal because the Fifth Air Force Commander, the head of the US-Japan Joint Committee, actually controls Japan’s politics.
One of the significant concerns for the Japanese is the homeland security of our nation. Countries around Japan have repeatedly been threatening it for years, and the firm alliance between the United States and Japan has prevented it from falling into a deadly situation. Proper maintaining of the coalition between the two countries is the key for Japan to survive because it can’t stand alone without America’s help.
Some say that the new President-elect has strong ties with China, as Mike Pence said in the vice-presidential debate, “Joe Biden has been a cheerleader for communist China over the last several decades.” Others say that his son, Hunter Biden, received money from China and Ukraine. These facts make many Japanese people anxious that they may jeopardize East Asia’s peace in the next four years.
“Is Joe Biden going to make a deal with China to give the Senkaku Islands to it?” some Japanese are anxious. “Even if China or North Korea attacks Japan, America may pay no attention to it.”
Once Joe Biden becomes the next POTUS, Japan’s only option is to fly to Washington immediately to ask him to maintain the strong relationship between the United States and Japan to secure the US Forces Japan for keeping the peace in the Indo-Pacific region. To do it is Prime Minister Suga’s critical mission.
I live in Japan. I have bank accounts in Japan to get a monthly income and make regular payments. Besides, I have bank accounts in the United States and Hong Kong to put some of my money into different banks in different places with different currencies to minimize the risk. I manage my assets in these countries because there are more options for investment than in Japan.
A
consideration is how to transfer the money you get in Japan to a foreign bank
account. Wire transfer at a banking institute in Japan costs very much. I tried
some online international money transfer services. All of these services require
no less than 2,000 JPY of fee per transaction, so sending tens of thousand Yen
with these services is costly.
Having
two Paypal accounts can resolve this problem. I got two Paypal accounts with my
different email addresses and linked one of the Paypal accounts to a debit card
of the bank account in Japan and the other to the bank account in the US. When
money was credited to the Japan bank account, I logged in to the Paypal account
linked to the debit card and sent money with the debit card to the Paypal
account linked to the US bank account. Then I logged out and logged in to the
other Paypal account, and I withdrew money credited to the account to the US
bank account linked to the Paypal account. The fee is cheaper as long as you send
a small amount of money. However, you cannot send money from Japan to Hong Kong
because if you live in Japan, your Paypal account does not allow you to link to
any bank accounts in Hong Kong.
I think it’s too late to write this entry, but I visited Portland and Boothbay Harbor, Maine in this September. I watched a musical play Carousel at Kokugakuin Tochigi High School performed by its musical club a few weeks before. Carousel is a musical that features a love story of a young girl and a barker in Maine, filmed in 1956. That inspired me to visit this state and, if I could, eat some lobsters and clambakes.
There were no direct flights from Tokyo to Maine, so I chose flights from Tokyo (Narita) to New York (JFK), and from LaGuardia to Portland (Maine’s largest city). All flights were Delta Airlines.
The flight to JFK was noisy by Chinese passengers around my seat chatting all the time. A middle-aged Chinese woman next to me even talked to me in Chinese though I didn’t understand it. She was too helpful to me, lending a neck pillow to me and even giving me some local sweets (I couldn’t eat it because I didn’t know what was contained).
JFK Airport was busy, and there were long lines in front of the immigration. It took almost an hour to pass the immigration counter. I expected a free WiFi service in the building, but all hotspots were encrypted and payment was needed to get passwords to access to them. So I was IP-unreachabel until I had a new SIM card activated at Hudson News of that terminal. There were no vending machines of AT&T’s pay-as-you-go smartphone in that terminal.
I had to take a shuttle bus to LaGuardia Airport. I had to wait for a long time to get in the bus because busy traffic around JFK delayed its arrival at that terminal I was in. After I waited for more than 30 minutes, the bus managed to arrive. It took me to LaGuardia Airport, and let me off at the terminal B while I had to check in at the terminal C, so I had to walk thousands of feet on the walkway to the terminal C dragging my suitcase.
Thank God I managed to get to the boarding gate without missing the flight to Portland because it was delayed about one hour.
I had dinner within the food court of LaGuardia Airport. It was a combo of roasted beef sandwiches, a bowl of Manhattan clam chowder and a glass of white wine, costing about $50 including a tip.
After dinner, I bought Barrons at a local newsstand and got to the gate C12, where the next flight was supposed to be ready. Actually it wasn’t ready when I arrived, because the aircraft was so delayed that it didn’t arrive yet.
When the gate was ready, the staff told us that the aircraft was too small for our carry-on baggage to get inside the cabin. He gave each of us a baggage claim tag and put the same-numbered one to the corresponding baggage. He told us to leave our baggage on the shelf in front of the ramp before getting on the plane.
It took about one hour from New York to Portland, Maine. Getting off the plane, the passengers who had left their baggage were told to wait in the boarding bridge in front of the door to pick their baggage up, instead of picking it up at the baggage claim area.
It was 50 degrees outside. I felt it was much colder than New York and Tokyo. I took a taxi cab to take me to the motel. It was already midnight when I got there.
Day 2: Boothbay Harbor, ME
It was the video that I recorded next morning the motel where I stayed. It was very refreshing for me even to eat breakfast at such a standard American motel.
I walked 3/4 mile to the rental car office by the airport to check out a car I had made a reservation. I wanted to go to Boothbay Harbor, about 30 miles away from Portland, where I heard that Carousel was filmed.
It was a minivan that was assigned to me as a rental car. It was Nissan’s Quest, a bit larger and more difficult for me to drive as I usually drive a small car in wrong side of the road ;-p The maneuver of the car was a bit confusing because driver’s seat was on the left, a steering wheel was on the left, a gear stick on the right of me, a rear-view mirror on the right of me, and everything but the gas pedal and the brake pedal was on the opposite side to what was in a car I drove in Japan.
Driving in the US was a bit confusing, but it wasn’t so difficult. It was not so exciting as I expected, as roads in Maine weren’t so wider than normal country roads in Japan and I didn’t think it was quite different from that in Japan except that I was driving in the opposite side of the road.
It took about an hour from Portland to Boothbay Harbor, driving US1. Here are some pictures and videos of Boothbay Harbor.
I ate lobster rolls and steamed live lobsters at Shannon’s Unshelled and Boothbay Lobster Wharf.
That’s Carousel Marina, named after the musical film Carousel.
And this is Carousel Music Theater near that downtown Boothbay Harbor, where a musical troupe performs a show along with dinner. Actors and actresses of the troupe are waiters and waitresses as well, and they serve dishes for visitors as well as sing Hello Dolly‘s numbers and other oldies songs on stage.
Backyard is a footpath around Penny Lake.
Day 3: Portland, ME
Next day I walked around downtown Portland.
A guided tour with a boat was available at a wharf. I paid $24 to apply for a 90-minute lighthouse tour.
That’s Berlin Wall.
There was a restaurant at the wharf.
It’s fried clams. It wasn’t so nice though….
Day 4: Portland, ME to Detroit, MI, Seattle, WA, and Tokyo
I flew back from Portland to Tokyo via Detroit, MI, and Seattle, WA.
The more we headed to the west, the more I felt there were Japanese and other Asian people around us. In Detroit, there were signs written in English and Japanese. I don’t know why there were Japanese, and no other foreign languages in the signs.
In Seattle, I saw many Japanese tourists walking in the concourse, while I saw very few foreign people in Maine (99% of people in Maine I saw were Caucasian Americans!). I realized that the West Coast is the gateway to Japan!
I expected Microsoft Store or something like that in Seattle Tacoma Airport as Seattle is home to Microsoft, but there were no such stores in the concourse. Maybe American airports were not willing to sell local products. I didn’t find any local bourbon whiskeys in duty free shops, where they sold normal alcohols sold in standard international airports.
The departure information for the flight to Tokyo didn’t appear in the display, so passengers for that flight couldn’t get any terminal information of it. I didn’t know why.
I managed to get to the terminal S8 where the flight to Tokyo were going to depart, as I had TripIt in my smartphone and updated flight information came into it.
Actually I wasn’t so interested in cosmetics or expensive liquors sold in duty free shops, but I wanted to get American sweets, drugs and commodities sold in Hudson News. I bought them as many things as I could, because Seattle was the last stop and it was the last chance to get them in that country. I paid almost $100 there for candies, pain relievers, handy wet wipes, travel goods and more. I think I spent too much money.
Today I went to Taco Bell at Shibuya, which had opened last Tuesday as Japan’s first Taco Bell store and hundreds of people had waited in the queue for more than two hours in front of the store on the first day only. Today there was a long queue, too. A staff member standing at the end of the queue said that I had to wait up to two hours to be served from there. It was a bit tough for me to wait such a long time, but it couldn’t be helped to do it to enjoy the American taste I’d ever had in New York where I had travelled for a business trip.
