Ultimately the trip to Nagoya was uneventful on the second attempt. I was minorly annoyed to find out that I needed to get my baggage, but the reason was that Northwest put me up in a hotel attached to the airport. I arrived at 2 a.m. and my flight out is at 10 a.m. The chance to rest, shower, eat and write this for you all is welcome under the circumstances. The room has complimentary breakfast and free wireless, too.

When I rearranged my itinerary, I chose a slightly later flight so that Suka doesn't have to beg out of work hours to pick me up. My original arrival time was supposed to be 1:40 a.m., definitely not the work day even in Saipan. To get me in as soon as possible would have involved Nagoya to Narita (Tokyo) to Guam to Saipan and would have put me down at 3 p.m. Suka was going to try to leave the car at the airport and leave the keys with the Northwest desk. Her company just got in two containers of food, so they're all really busy dealing with that.

As it stands, I changed things so that I fly Nagoya to Guam to Saipan and arrive at 5:50 p.m. after she's done with work. Much easier.

And now a couple of words about Japanese gadgetry.

First of all, have you ever seen luggage carousels from a very large, full flight? Bags are falling on other bags as they come off the conveyor belts. The whole system jams up. It can be quite the mess. The carousels in Nagoya have sensors so that the conveyor stops and waits for a clearing if the new luggage would fall on anything. On top of that, the conveyor is segmented so that the only segments that stop are the ones that would cause the fall or would run into a stopped segment. But they don't bother stopping unless there is actually something on them. Very simple, clever and orderly.

Then there is the toilet in my hotel room. Comfort Inns aren't famed for their upper echelon status. But here, you have a number of amenities you don't get even in some top-end US hotel rooms. Now the presence of shavers, toothbrushes and hair brushes isn't that interesting, and the Japanese are famed for their gadget toilets, so that's what I'll mention.

This toilet is very electronic, for one. It cleans itself when you first sit down. It has a control panel attached to the bowl on the right hand side. There is a sign on the wall with instructions for using the "Shower Toilet." Now you may think that this toilet has a bidet built in and you would be right. However, the instructions talk about whether you are using the bidet OR the shower function. I'm having a hard time picturing the result. I think I'll just use the available bathtub.