I think it’s too late to write this entry, but I visited Portland and Boothbay Harbor, Maine, this September. I watched a musical play, Carousel, at Kokugakuin Tochigi High School, performed by its musical club, a few weeks earlier. Carousel is a musical that features a love story of a young girl and a barker in Maine, filmed in 1956. That inspired me to visit this state and, if I could, eat some lobsters and clambakes.

There were no direct flights from Tokyo to Maine, so I chose flights from Tokyo (Narita) to New York (JFK), and from LaGuardia to Portland (Maine’s largest city). All flights were with Delta Airlines.

Day 1: Tokyo to New York City and Portland, ME

The flight to JFK was noisy, with Chinese passengers constantly chatting around my seat. A middle-aged Chinese woman next to me even spoke to me in Chinese, though I didn’t understand. She was too helpful to me, lending me a neck pillow and even giving me some local sweets (I couldn’t eat them because I didn’t know what was in them).

JFK Airport was busy, and there were long lines at immigration. It took almost an hour to get through immigration. I expected free Wi-Fi in the building, but all hotspots were encrypted, and payment was required to obtain the passwords to access them. So I was IP-unreachable until I had a new SIM card activated at the Hudson News terminal. There were no AT&T pay-as-you-go smartphones in that terminal.

I had to take a shuttle bus to LaGuardia Airport. I had to wait for a long time to get on the bus because heavy traffic around JFK delayed its arrival at the terminal I was in. After I waited for more than 30 minutes, the bus finally arrived. It took me to LaGuardia Airport and let me off at terminal B, while I had to check in at terminal C, so I had to walk thousands of feet along the walkway to terminal C, dragging my suitcase.

Thank God I managed to get to the boarding gate without missing the flight to Portland because it was delayed by about one hour.

I had dinner in the food court of LaGuardia Airport. It was a combo of roasted beef sandwiches, a bowl of Manhattan clam chowder, and a glass of white wine, costing about $50, including a tip.

After dinner, I bought Barrons at a local newsstand and got to Gate C12, where the next flight was supposed to be ready. Actually, it wasn’t ready when I arrived, because the aircraft was so delayed that it hadn’t arrived yet.

When the gate was ready, the staff told us that the aircraft was too small for our carry-on baggage to get inside the cabin. He gave each of us a baggage claim tag and put the same-numbered one on the corresponding baggage. He told us to leave our baggage on the shelf in front of the ramp before getting on the plane.

It took about one hour from New York to Portland, Maine. After getting off the plane, passengers who had left their baggage were told to wait on the boarding bridge in front of the door to pick it up, rather than at the baggage claim area.

It was 50 degrees outside. I felt it was much colder than New York and Tokyo. I took a taxi to take me to the motel. It was already midnight when I got there.

Day 2: Boothbay Harbor, ME

It is the video that I recorded the next morning at the motel where I stayed. It was very refreshing for me, even, to eat breakfast at such a standard American motel.

I walked three-quarters of a mile to the rental car office by the airport to check out a car I had reserved. I wanted to go to Boothbay Harbor, about 30 miles away from Portland, where I heard that Carousel was filmed.

It was a minivan that was assigned to me as a rental car. It was Nissan’s Quest, a bit larger and more difficult for me to drive as I usually drive a small car in wrong side of the road ;-p The maneuver of the car was a bit confusing because driver’s seat was on the left, a steering wheel was on the left, a gear stick on the right of me, a rear-view mirror on the right of me, and everything but the gas pedal and the brake pedal was on the opposite side to what was in a car I drove in Japan.

Driving in the US was a bit confusing, but it wasn’t so difficult. It wasn’t as exciting as I expected, as the roads in Maine weren’t as wide as the normal country roads in Japan, and I didn’t think it was that different from Japan, except that I was driving on the opposite side of the road.

It took about an hour to drive from Portland to Boothbay Harbor on US1. Here are some pictures and videos of Boothbay Harbor.

I ate lobster rolls and steamed live lobsters at Shannon’s Unshelled and Boothbay Lobster Wharf.

That’s Carousel Marina, named after the musical film Carousel.

And this is Carousel Music Theater near downtown Boothbay Harbor, where a musical troupe performs a show along with dinner. Actors and actresses of the troupe are waiters and waitresses as well, and they serve dishes for visitors as well as sing Hello Dolly’s numbers and other oldies songs on stage.

The backyard was a footpath around Penny Lake.

Day 3: Portland, ME

The next day, I walked around downtown Portland.

A guided boat tour was available at a wharf. I paid $24 to apply for a 90-minute lighthouse tour.

That was the Berlin Wall.

There was a restaurant at the wharf.

It’s fried clams. It wasn’t so nice though….

Day 4: Portland, ME to Detroit, MI; Seattle, WA; and Tokyo

I flew back from Portland to Tokyo via Detroit, MI, and Seattle, WA.

The farther west we went, the more I felt there were Japanese and other Asian people around us. In Detroit, there were signs written in English and Japanese. I’m not sure why there were Japanese signs and no other foreign languages.

In Seattle, I saw many Japanese tourists walking in the concourse, while I saw very few foreign people in Maine (99% of the people I saw in Maine were Caucasian Americans!). I realized that the West Coast is the gateway to Japan!

I expected a Microsoft Store or something similar at Seattle-Tacoma Airport, since Seattle is home to Microsoft, but there were no such stores in the concourse. Maybe American airports were not willing to sell local products. I didn’t find any local bourbon whiskeys in duty-free shops, which only carried standard international airport alcohol.

The departure information for the flight to Tokyo didn’t appear on the display, so passengers couldn’t get any terminal information. I didn’t know why.

I managed to get to terminal S8, where the flight to Tokyo was scheduled to depart, as I had TripIt on my smartphone and the updated flight information came in.

Actually, I wasn’t so interested in cosmetics or expensive liquors sold in duty-free shops, but I wanted to get American sweets, drugs, and commodities sold in Hudson News. I bought as many things as I could because Seattle was the last stop and the last chance to get them in that country. I paid almost $100 there for candies, pain relievers, handy wet wipes, travel goods, and more. I think I spent too much money.