That one little bottle of liquid could cause so much trouble?
I was reminded of an incident at Nagoya airport on the way out of Japan, when I bought this bottle of Aqium Anti-bacterial hand gel today.
I have a handbag that is actually a carry-all for toiletries, keys, lollies, snacks, mobile phone, ipod touch, tissues, water bottle, notebook, pens, and whatever else is the flavour of the month at the time.
Toiletries include a bottle of anti-bacterial hand gel because you never know when you’re going to get something icky on your hands in a public place where there are no toilets (yes, this happens quite regularly in Aus).
Who would have thought this little bottle could cause so much angst?
So anyway, when I went to Japan, knowing I was going on a long flight via Singapore, I bought a new bottle of gel to take in my handbag. I did use it on the way, and successfully took it through Nagoya airport without any problems.
Now, here’s the funny part. On the way out of the airport, at the customs gate, they put my handbag through the x-ray machine. Yasu was ahead of me and finished, walked off and out, but I was stopped and asked to stay at the side.
The officer came over to me and said he needed to look in my handbag, so he unzipped it, and took out every item in my handbag, examined it carefully and put it back. He then asked me if he could x-ray the handbag again. I said ok, and he put it through again.
Then he brought my handbag over to me and said there was some trouble, and did I have a water bottle in my handbag? I said no, and he had just checked it, so if there was one, he surely would have seen it. He decided to check my handbag again, and this time took all items out and put them on the counter.
Meanwhile a hundred other Japanese people are going through the checkpoints with no hassles, and guess who feels like they are being targeted as a possible water-smuggling terrorist?
So at the point of taking out my anti-bacterial gel, the officer suddenly has a lightbulb moment and holding up my bottle of gel said, what is this? I didn’t know what the word was, so I had to call Yasu over and get him to explain what it was. The officer then said to me, No, you can’t take this out of Japan.
I’m sorry? I brought this into Japan, you let me pass into Japan, with my Aus-made gel, yet I can’t go out of Japan with it?? He then explained to Yasu that it was against Japanese law to take anti-bacterial gel out of Japan.
Of all the stupid laws in the world, I think this has to be the stupidest. I was quite angry, because I felt like I had been picked on just for being non-Japanese. It was obvious they wanted to find something, at first they said water bottle, but then when they found the gel, they found the thing that they could make up an on-the-spot law for.
So I argued back and forth with Yasu and the officer, because I was pretty sure that it was a fake-ass law, and I said to the guy, look I brought this in with me, you guys let me in here with this gel, now you’re saying I can’t go out with it?? What the hell??
I was getting pretty agitated and wasn’t backing down, and I could see the guy was getting flustered, and he started to just ignore me and talked to Yasu to get him to make me see sense. Don’t you just hate that??
I couldn’t win, I just couldn’t, because then all these other officers were called over saying I had to give them the gel, and if I didn’t, I would be detained. I mean I really just wanted to get the hell out of there, but I’m stubborn, I don’t like giving in, especially when I know it’s just a fake-ass law they made up on the spot.
But anyway, I gave in, and we were on our way, and I was warned that in future I was not to bring anti-bacterial gel through customs, going out of Japan.
Yasu surmised they are having an anti-bacterial gel shortage because of the public panic of swine flu, so they detain all the gaijin and confiscate their gel.
Who knows? Could be. Wonder if any other gaijin has had a similar experience?
