I'm going home!

At first, I was lead to believe that clicking my ruby red slippers together 3 times would suffice in getting me home, but I tried and I tried, and then it just got too embarrassing... standing there in the little girls section of the department store with these shoes half hanging off my size 10 feet...

So I left, barefoot, and trudged home to call the travel agent I usually use for my constant cavorting across the globe to try and get back to the Land of Oz by decidedly more mundane means... flying.

The phone conversation went much like this:

[Round 1]

[Travel Agent] Would you like the cheap option or the stupidly, ridiculously "Oh My God, Are You High!?" expensive option?
[Kallun] The cheap option, please.
[Travel Agent] When would you like to leave?
[Kallun] It depends on when I arrive. I would like to arrive on Day X, January.
[Travel Agent] But when would you like to leave?
[Kallun] Whatever time/day I need to leave in order to get there by Day X.
[Travel Agent] I can't guarantee whether you'll arrive on that day.
[Kallun] Excuse me?
[Travel Agent] I can't give you that information until you book the ticket.
[Kallun] But how can I book the ticket unless I can make a decision given the details of when it actually leaves and arrives?

(Kallun is having a "chicken or the egg" moment here.)

[Travel Agent] Well, how about this... what day would you like to leave Australia for Japan?
[Kallun] I want to return on Day Y, February.
[Travel Agent] No, no. What day do you want to leave Australia?
[Kallun] ...

(Kallun's sense of humour is being sorely tested.)

[Kallun] What airline will I be flying with?
[Travel Agent] Umm...
[Kallun] You can't tell me that either?
[Travel Agent] If you take the expensive option, I could tell you.
[Kallun] So... to recap... you can't tell me when I leave, or when I return, or what airline I'll be flying with?
[Travel Agent] Right.

(Kallun has a mini-breakdown.)

So I spin the wheel of aviation Russian roulette, and book a flight on Air Who-The-Hell-Knows to arrive at 10 minutes past God-Knows-When p.m. and return to Japan at a quarter past I've-Lost-My-Will-To-Live a.m.

[Round 2]

Having bitten the proverbial bullet, the next step is to go into the agency to recompense them for their stellar customer service. Although I had little confidence in giving them my credit card details over the phone - what, with all those digits, something was bound to go disastrously pear-shaped (why, just getting them to spell my name correctly was a feat of extreme linguistic contortionism) - such a method of payment would just be far too logical and efficient for this company to even begin contemplating, and so I was forced to front up in person and pay in cash. So I do, and the lady with whom I had been speaking the day before wasn't there... in fact, it turns out that they'd never heard of her. After a few minutes of frantic arm waving and guttural growls (I speak perfectly fine Japanese, but my ability to form words is directly inversely proportional to the degree of fury I'm experiencing at any given time), the collective brain power of the 20 or so people in the room brilliantly deduced that my booking had, in fact, been made with another branch of the same company.

Yes. As it turns out, though I had dialed the phone number for this branch, what I failed to realise, due to my complete inability to read the mind of the person on the other end of the phone, was that the switchboard had surreptitiously redirected me to another branch elsewhere in Tokyo. Upon learning this, I was not fully capable of articulating the depth of my elation... no.. wait... that's not the right word... RAGE! (there we go... that's it...)

[Kallun] Can I pay for it here, at least?
[Travel Agent] No...

(Kallun, already steeped in the traditions and quirky idiosyncrasies of Japanese bureaucracies, knew better than to argue the point.)

[Travel Agent] But you can pay for it through a bank transfer... you just need a form.
[Kallun] Fine. Can you please give me one?
[Travel Agent] No...

(Kallun is beginning to shake... maybe a 4 on the Richter scale...)

[Travel Agent] You'll need the lady from the other branch to send it to you.
[Kallun] Fine. Can you please call the lady to fax through my payment form?
[Travel Agent] No.

At which point, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had nothing on me. I went all biblical on the bastard, and then calmly went on my way to work. So, thus far, I have managed to book and pay for my ticket... all that remains is to see what special surprises await me when I go to the airport this afternoon to collect my ticket 2 hours before my flight departs.

Round 3... ding, ding.