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JOURNEYSBusted at Narita: Notes from
the Interrogation Room My flight from Bangkok touched down in Narita Airport, Japan sometime around noon. I flew Egypt Air, a good Muslim airline that abstained from drowning the nerves with endless drink, and so for once on my travels I arrived at my destination with a clear head and all my wits about me. Little did I know at the time how much I would need them. “Be sure to wear something nice when you go through customs,” my girlfriend had warned me in her last email. “If you show up in sarong and sandals, they’re liable to turn you away.” I packed my carry-on with this is mind, stowing away one of the dress shirts I’d had tailor-made on Kho San Road so that when I emerged from the plane I looked as respectable as was humanly possible after an eight hour flight. At first, things unfolded without a hitch. I breezed through the passport segment of customs with flying colors, earning myself a 90-day tourist visa and when I walked up to baggage claim, my packs practically hopped off the conveyer belt on their own to rest at my feet. Even the drug dog that welcomes the new arrivals barely offered a sniff in my direction. Perhaps, I should have second guessed my good fortune at this point, having learned a thousand times that backpacking around the world rarely transpired with as much grace and ease as did my arrival in Narita Terminal. Only too soon would this omen prove itself once again to be true. Maybe my attempt at a friendly smile was read as overzealous; maybe the dapper new button down failed to make up for the three week filth on my khakis; whatever the case, the customs officer at baggage inspection took one look at me and my passport and invited us both to join him in the interrogation room. As I took a seat at the desk, we were joined by two other officers who immediately began to dig through my bags with a surgeon’s precision while the first officer placed before me an album containing photographs of a wide variety of contraband and illicit goods: heroin, hashish, firearms, pornography; the look on his face assured me they were quite positive that they would find all these and more after in their search. It is amazing how much crap you can accumulate over the course of only a few months of traveling. For this very reason alone, I had personally avoided digging any deeper into my pack than was absolutely necessary. But these guys went through everything: Turkish candy wrappers and dog-eared postcards of the Seine; old train tickets and Spanish beer caps were sifted through and set aside for further study. A brown crumpled leaf was picked piece-by-piece from the bottom of my daypack and tested for marijuana (it was later revealed to be 100% deciduous). My toiletries were dumped out on the table and diarrhea pills were examined with the most anal of care. But the irony came when the one set of photos that had separated from the rest in my pack turned out to be from my week in Amsterdam and I was suddenly confronted with an image of my own likeness puffin’ on a nice sized cone at the Bull Dog Cafe. “Marijuana? You say you not smoke marijuana!?!” Now there is not much you can say or do when only minutes after vehemently denying and sermonizing upon the demonic use of illegal substances, you are suddenly confronted with evidence as red handed as a black ‘n’ white glossy of oneself “caught in the act” so to speak. This is it, I thought to myself, as the officers exchanged words and photo between the three of them. I’m busted, destined to spend my remaining years in a Japanese prison, the conditions of which I was not exactly certain of but suddenly clips from the movie Midnight Express began to fill my head-rotting away in some maggot ridden cell, walking endless circles in the asylum courtyard, begging my girlfriend to press her boob up against the visiting-area glass (if you haven’t seen the movie, then you’re probably a little confused at this point). This was it-the end of the line. I hung my head in conceded defeat and began to hold out my hands in anticipation of the cold metal cuffs that were sure to be slapped upon my wrists… But then something happened. Something wonderful, miraculous I would dare say if I were a believer. The officer behind the desk said something in Japanese to his fellow officers and began to laugh. The photo was again passed around the room and suddenly everyone was laughing, including myself, who always considers humor to be a good sign in any situation where you’re sure to be serving hard time. “Amsterdam,” I tried to explain, as one of my interrogators busted a gut on the linoleum. "It's legal there. Mary-Juana. Everybody does it.” This sent everyone in the room into a further fit of hysterics and my nightmare visions of Midnight Express quickly dissipated into a scene from Mary Poppins: suddenly I was Uncle Albert serving tea from the ceiling and keeping everyone afloat with my jovial wit and cocktail humor; suddenly I felt free-I was going to make it out of there; everything was going to be alright; everything was… We all came crashing down to the floor when the door of the small white room was thrown wide open, and in its wake stood two men who obviously did not find the scene as humorous as the rest of us. These boys did not wear the friendly peacock blue uniforms of the customs officers, but rather, were dressed in dark three-piece suits. These were the Feds, by any other name, and they were ready to haul my ass off to jail for any excuse I could give them. “Mr. Milo (the names have been changed to protect the innocent)” the more severe of the two stated, after reading my passport. “Prease sign this form so we may take x-ray of stomach.” Now I don’t care if you’re as clean as a rubber duck, or touting a 12 pack of smack-filled domers in your gullet, when you, a gaijin, walk into the Narita Airport Medical Clinic accompanied by five customs officers, you are bound to feel a little guilty. On our way there, I did my best not to return the looks from those we passed, both accusatory and sympathetic and instead focused on the previous twenty four hours in order to determine what exactly was sitting in my belly at that moment. I concluded that the only thing they would find down there was a mulch of half-digested airplane food, which although some might claim it to be a rather sadistic crime against humanity, had yet to be made illegal. As we waited for the results of the x-ray, I chatted with one of the officers who had been searching my bags. It appeared that even suspected felons were considered fair game for practicing one’s English. He asked me how long I would be staying in Japan and suggested places I should check out during my visit. I took this to be a good sign: speaking in a future tense about things to see and do after interrogation should probably suggest that you’ve been assumed clear of any offense. As certain as I was of my innocence, however, I must admit that there was a point when the doctor and Feds walked into the room where I suddenly found myself nervous of what they would say. But for the first time throughout the whole ordeal, the boys in the sober suits wore smiles on their faces as they announced to me that I was free to go. The atmosphere was a lot more jovial as we headed back to Interrogation to fetch my bags. The customs officers apologized for any inconvenience and helped me to get the last of my belongings in order. The last thing I heard as I walked down the hall and out into the bustle of the terminal was one of them welcoming me to Japan. I ignored the irony of the comment as the door shut behind me and I made my way to the NEX wicket, and bought a ticket into the city.
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