My Japan Diary: Narita campgrounds...

Wanted to share these photos with you quickly before I try to get some sleep. Been a long day, feels so surreal now that we're home and back to our routine (even my two aloof cats have been unusually cuddly tonight).

As crazy as the line was going through Canadian customs tonight, I think the lines at Narita are the biggest I've ever seen at an airport, and I've spent a lot of time in busy airports flying during peak seasons (spring break, march break, Christmas holidays). The stark differences between Pearson and Narita are incredible though. For one, although Narita had thousands of people crowded in there, it was organized madness. There was no pushing, shoving or yelling. There was airport personnel everywhere, and wherever there wasn't an airline employee there was a policeman answering questions. People stood patiently in lines of well over 100, some of whom I overheard saying they had been there for hours already. Even while aftershocks rattled the building, everybody stayed calm and collected and the general feeling seemed to be that of relief - maybe relief to be going home, or relief that the buildings were still standing... whatever it was, I felt a great sense of security being there knowing that the last leg of our journey was almost over.

Here are some photos from Narita, it's hard to tell just how many people were there but the lines went from one end of the terminal to the other. Some were lines to check in for flights, but most seemed to be lined up to buy tickets, which were hard to come by as you can imagine. There were people camped out in the hallways with their sleeping bags laid out and their cell phone chargers plugged into the walls (of course!), entire families of grandparents and small children, all of them seemingly just hanging out, "just in case" they need to get out of Japan in an hurry. The airport itself seemed to be operating normally, the only evidence of the earthquake were the pylons blocking off areas under skylights, air vents, and other loose panels that could fall out of the ceiling and injure someone should the building shake too violently. We did notice that the duty free shops all closed early, 6:30pm, I think because of the power restrictions but I'm not entirely sure. We saw lots of signs in store windows in Tokyo reducing their business hours from 8:30am-11pm to 10am-6pm, even McDonalds had a sign up that they were closing early.