Japanese and Swedish Airports: One Small Difference

About 23 kilograms twice over

Many moons ago (I won’t say when exactly, but picture a time when Facebook and YouTube were novelties that college kids discussed over coffee and shisha rather than tech giants that politicians discussed over coffee and whatever those people smoke to make themselves believe they’re doing good), I studied in Japan. It was a privilege. It was one of the best times of my life.

Half a year later, I studied in Sweden. It was a privilege. It was one of the best times of my life.

Studying abroad tends to feel that way. Short bursts of euphoria that often have a shelf life in the background longer than you expect.

There will probably come a day when I reminiscence about those times properly (that is an outright lie, plenty of those days had come and gone before Medium even existed), but today I want to talk about one difference between the two countries that has stayed with me all these years.

Aside from all the heart-tugging moments that accompanied my final days in Japan, there were logistical issues. How was I going to get all that stuff home? Fortunately, my airline, as do most airlines when a passenger is flying across the Pacific, allowed two suitcases of 23 kilograms each. Pretty standard stuff. I also had a carry-on bag packed to the brim and a laptop bag that was far too large (I have proudly since downsized quite a bit).

I had already shipped a box of books home to California. The box never made it. One of the greatest mysteries of the past two decades of my life.

Anyway, I was still within my baggage limit. The problem was getting everything to the airport myself. I lived two and half hours from Tokyo by train, and my flight was leaving from Narita, the farther of the two airports. I did not relish the thought of lugging two suitcases, one duffel, and my laptop bag from my second-floor apartment to the local train station, spending about an hour getting to the transfer station, spending another hour getting into Tokyo proper, and then finally hitting the express that would get me to the airport.

Solution: Japanese airports offered suitcase transfer services. I arranged for a truck to pick up both my suitcases and take them to Narita, where they would be waiting for me. The price was reasonable. It wasn’t next-day service, but the timeline was also reasonable.

Whew.

Fast-forward to my final days in Sweden. I expected that Swedish airports would offer the same services. Nope.

To be accurate, I was thinking about Danish airports (I lived so far south in Sweden that Copenhagen was the closest international airport).

Fortunately, I had less stuff this time around.

This is in no way an appraisal of either country in any form, but there is something to be said about the correlation between GDP and services offered.

Dash Ip misses Japan. And Sweden. He could go back to those places, but he couldn’t go back to those times.