Blood pumping, feet thumping, twelve brave students led by four terrified teachers through a foreign airport transformed into the track and field championships. Poor, unsuspecting travelers and airport workers leap out of the way as a group of Americans barges through the crowd in a comically frantic rush to find their gate.
From the angst-filled train ride to the rapid-fire security checks, this crazy adventure will undoubtedly be forever cemented in the minds of its undertakers as one of the most cherished memories of Westminster’s 2025 trip to Japan and South Korea.
The story began with the opening of bus doors, a final courteous “this is our stop!”, and an awkward shuffling of feet and suitcase wheels as sixteen St. Louisans made their way through the crowded aisle and out into the blazing Japanese sun, enjoying its peaceful warmth on their skin for the last time—or so they thought. When the group’s fearless leader (although he would soon find himself in quite a fear-worthy situation), Mr. Colton Albers, walked into the Tokyo Haneda airport, he couldn’t possibly have fathomed the amount of stress and chaos he had introduced into his life by even setting foot off of the bus and into the building.
12th grader Ava Fichter explains, “Tokyo Haneda airport […] was the airport we flew into, and I think everyone just kind of assumed that we would be flying back out of it.”
Upper school English teacher and tennis coach Caroline Hinrichs describes the moment when we started to get concerned: “We scan our boarding pass—beep!—‘boarding pass not found.’” The airport had these machines that scanned passports to see tell you where in the airport to go for your flight, but they were giving us nothing, so the teachers went to talk with a couple of flight attendants: “We get out our papers, and they look at us, and their faces just fall, and they look to Mr. Albers and they say, ‘Sir, how did you go to the wrong airport?’”
Suddenly, the entire mood shifted inside these poor teachers’ heads. They knew they needed to get us to the correct airport as soon as humanly possible, but they did not know exactly how to start, so they asked the flight attendants who responded with: “Get on this train at 11:45, and you will get there at like 1:15, and you’ll have to book it. […] We’ll call the other Korean Air people and tell them to hold the plane.” Korean Air is of course the name of the airline that we were traveling with, and they would turn out to be immensely helpful to us very soon.
Mrs. Hinrichs was doubtful about whether or not we could somehow perform the miracle of making it our flight and was starting to feel the panic set in during the crammed, hour-and-a-half train ride. She goes on to say, “We all get on this train; we’re shoved in there like a can of sardines, and I’m keeping a straight face, but I’m also pretty stressed.”
Everyone was. It truly was an action-packed emotional roller coaster. Luckily, to ease everyone’s load, the teachers prepared passports and boarding passes and checked us in virtually, while sitting in the Tokyo subway and waiting for our stop. As it approached, everyone prepared for takeoff, readjusting the grip on their suitcase handle and mapping their easiest path out of the giant sardine can on wheels. And as soon as the train doors opened, as Ava vividly recalls: “The doors opened and we took off sprinting.”
