Traveling Internationally? Enroll in the Global Entry Program

World travel is possible once again now that all countries have dropped their COVID visitor prohibitions, testing, and quarantine requirements in favor of pre-travel submission of vaccination status in order to enter the country. Many countries are moving further forward by eliminating the need for pre-travel COVID vaccination status submission, and ask visitors to postpone their visit if tested positive for COVID.

Japan and South Korea took advantage of the COVID travel prohibition period to eliminate the immigration and customs paper forms in favor of pre-departure electronic approvals. While the immigration and customs paper forms are still available at check-in and in-flight, there are very few takers since most passengers have already taken advantage of the electronic forms before departure. The electronic pre-departure approvals can greatly speed up the time needed to clear immigration and customs and enter the country.

Unfortunately, this is not universally true for entry to the USA at airports. There has been no change for non-citizens; the immigration and customs lines and wait times remain long since great scrutiny is placed on these visitors. USA citizens and permanent residents use the same long immigration and customs queues as non-citizens entering the country, making for the same long entry and wait times.

So how was I able to enter the USA after my recent trip overseas, passing through immigration, collecting my luggage, and customs in less than 15 minutes? My quick entry was possible since I am enrolled in the Global Entry program. The Global Entry program, run by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) service, allows pre-approved, low-risk travelers to receive expedited clearance upon arrival into the United States through automated kiosks at select airports, land borders, and ports [1]. If you plan to travel internationally, you should seriously consider enrolling in this program.

Please continue reading the rest of the article to find out more about my experience with the Global Entry program. Note that this article focuses on the airport entry aspect of the program and the CBP's Global Entry website should be your definitive source for information (listed later in the article).

Tuna Auction, Tsukiji Market (築地市場, Tsukiji Shijō), Tokyo, Japan

Tuna Auction, Tsukiji Market (築地市場, Tsukiji Shijō), 2005

Tokyo's Tsukiji Market (築地市場, Tsukiji Shijō) was well known for the tuna auction at its Inner Market before being closed and moved to Toyosu Market (豊洲市場, Toyosu Shijō) in 2018. Tsukiji Market actually consisted of two markets: the inner and outer. The Outer Market, still in operation, has many restaurants and retail shops selling fresh fish, produce, and all sorts of wares. The Inner Market, now closed, was the wholesale area for seafood, (including the famous tuna auction), produce, restaurants, and shops.

I first visited the Tsukiji tuna auction on 17 Feb 2005 when visitors had unfettered access to the Inner Market's outdoor-exposed tuna auction and seafood wholesale areas, could mingle with the the tuna buyers before, during, and after the auction on the auction floor, and then watch the tuna specialty vendors prepare the tuna for restaurants and other wholesale buyers. Unfortunately problems with tourists interfering with the auction, touching the fish, and generally disrupting business at Tsukiji Inner Market led to tuna auction and wholesale area visitor restrictions. This meant that tourists were banned from the tuna auction floor and made to apply for a limited number of time slots to stand in a restricted area to witness the auction. While still being allowed to watch the tuna auction in the restricted area, visitors could not enter nor walk the tuna auction floor. Today at the modern, totally enclosed, and temperature controlled Toyosu Market buildings, tourists are totally prohibited from the tuna auction and wholesale floors, so the experience and photographs in this article cannot be reproduced today. You now have to witness the Toyosu tuna auction from an enclosed second story gallery overlooking the auction floor and wholesale vendors after applying for a limited number of morning viewing windows online.

Please continue reading the rest of the article to see more photographs and to find out more about this never to be repeated experience on the Tsukiji tuna auction floor and Inner Market.

Gyūtan Tsukasa (牛タン店 司) Restaurant, Sendai, Japan

Wagyu, Kobe, and Matsusaka beef is usually on the minds of visitors to Japan. These well known brands of Japanese beef are on their must try list of foods to eat. While not a brand of beef, but rather a cut of beef, rarely does the word, gyūtan (牛タン) come to mind. While gyūtan is available throughout Japan at yakiniku restaurants, where meat is grilled over a Japanese style barbeque, Sendai is the original home of gyūtan and where the dish is the most well known and popular. In Sendai you can still eat at the restaurant, where in 1948, the dish was developed. [1] Sendai is also the home to many restaurants that only serve gyūtan. While this article is not about the original restaurant where the dish originated, Gyūtan Tsukasa (牛タン店 司) is a typical Sendai gyūtan restaurant serving this dish.

The dish, consisting of pieces of thinly sliced beef tongue cooked over a charcoal grill, is one of least known of Japan's signature foods that visitors must try. The standard serving consists of grilled tongue and pickled vegetables, but is more commonly ordered as part of a set menu (ていしょく, teishoku), which also includes oxtail soup and mugi gohan (麦御飯, steamed white rice with barley). Variations on the set meal include increasing the amount of grilled tongue by 1.5- to 2 times.

Please continue reading the article on my 2018 and 2019 visits to Gyūtan Tsukasa to read about my grilled tongue meals and to see more photographs.

Meiji Shrine (明治神宮, Meiji Jingū), Tokyo, Japan

This will be my last article for 2021. Thanks to all who have taken the time to read the travel articles and I appreciate the comments that I have received. This article on the Meiji Shrine is longer than most  of the articles I have written since I have regularly visited and photographed the shrine since I first traveled to Tokyo over 17 years ago. I hope that the pandemic abates so that international travel becomes possible and practical again, but until then I will keep digging into my travel photographs for new articles in 2022. I wish you the best for the holiday season and will see you next year. Stay healthy and happy!

The Meiji Shrine (明治神宮, Meiji Jingū) is a Shinto shrine dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji and his consort, Empress Shoken. Emperor Meiji presided over the Meiji era, and instigated the Meiji Restoration, a series of rapid changes that witnessed Japan's transformation from an isolationist, feudal state to an industrialized world power [4]. The Japanese government officially started the construction of Meiji Jingū to commemorate their deified spirits after he (1912) and his wife (1914) passed away. The construction took about five years to complete the entire shrine before it was formally dedicated in 1920. Most of the shrine complex was destroyed during the air raids of the Second World War, but thanks to a number of donations from around Japan, the current buildings were restored in 1958 [5].

Located just beside the busy Japan Rail (JR) Harajuku Station, Meiji Shrine and the adjacent Yoyogi Park make up a large forested area within the densely built-up city of Tokyo, Japan. Meiji Jingū is one of Japan's most popular shrines. In the first days of the New Year, the shrine regularly welcomes more than three million visitors for the year's first prayers (初詣, hatsumōde), more than any other shrine or temple in the country. During the rest of the year, traditional Shinto weddings can often be seen taking place there [2], as well as other rituals, processions, and festivals.

I first traveled to Japan on business in 2004 and visited the Meiji Shrine for the first time in the morning on my last day in Tokyo. Since it was a short train ride from the hotel, the group I was traveling with made a brief visit to the shrine before flying back in the afternoon to the USA. On my many subsequent trips to Tokyo, while I have visited the shrine at other times, I have always maintained the ritual of visiting in the morning on my last day in Tokyo before flying home to this day. So the photographs in the article are from a span of visits to the shrine over 15 years. My last visit was 2019, just before Japan closed to tourists because of COVID-19.

Please continue reading the rest of the article to learn more about the Meiji Shrine and see the photographs from my many visits over the years.

Midtown BBQ Nagoya Restaurant, Nagoya, Japan

Whenever I travel overseas, I want to eat at restaurants that serve food that is local to the area, region, or country. Often this means eating at places where menus are only available in the local language and English is definitely a second language, if spoken at all. In some cases, I would have been able to research ahead of time what the restaurant's specialty is or the signature dishes are, sometimes not. In those cases, I rely on the translator app on my phone, point to a dish that someone else has ordered, or point to a picture of the dish on the menu (this is hard when the menu has no pictures). In Japan, where realistic plastic models of the menu items are displayed outside of restaurants, I have asked one of the staff more than once to come outside, where I point to the model of the dish I want to order. Sometimes I'm surprised at what I ordered, but that's part of the fun of traveling.

I tend to avoid restaurants serving American food unless there is some unique preparation or ingredient in a dish that can only be obtained locally. I originally saw an internet video about Midtown BBQ Nagoya that attracted my attention. The reason I went to visit this restaurant is their use of Japanese Binchōtan charcoal and Japanese Oak to make a 20-hour smoked, 40-pound (18-kg) authentic Japanese A5 Wagyu beef brisket seasoned with a Japanese inspired spice rub.

Please continue reading the rest of the article to see a video on how Midtown BBQ Nagoya makes their Japanese A5 Wagyu beef brisket and to see more photographs of my visit on 26 Oct 2018.

Chūsonji (中尊寺) Temple, Hiraizumi, Japan

Chūsonji (中尊寺) Temple in Hiraizumi, Iwate Prefecture, Japan was established in 850 as a temple of the Tendai sect of Buddhism. The temple came to prominence when the northern branch of the Fujiwara clan moved their base to Hiraizumi. At its peak, the temple consisted of a large network of dozens of buildings. [1]

With the fall of the Fujiwara at the end of the 12th century, Chūsonji suffered likewise so that now only two buildings from that era remain intact. Luckily, among these is the most spectacular, the Konjikidō (金色堂). Similar to Kyoto's famous Kinkakuji (金閣寺, literally "Temple of the Golden Pavilion"), Konjikidō is a building completely covered in gold. It dates back to 1124 and stands inside another concrete building for protection. [1]

The opening photograph is the concrete building constructed to protect the Konjikidō and is the typical photograph that all visitors are allowed to make of the "Konjikidō". Once you enter the protective building, any video or photography is strictly prohibited of the spectacular Konjikidō itself.

Please continue reading the rest of the article to see a video of the golden Konjikidō and see more photographs of Chūsonji when I visited on 25 Nov 2017.

The Railway Museum (鉄道博物館, Tetsudō Hakubutsukan), Saitama, Japan

Japan has a rich railway history that continues to this day. From the futuristic Maglev (Magnetic Levitation) trains and the new dedicated rail line currently under construction from Tokyo to Nagoya, to the current pioneering and continual evolving Shinkansen train and rail network that sets the worldwide standard for high speed rail travel, and finally to the everyday electric and diesel passenger and freight trains that form the backbone of the Japanese rail transportation system, it should be no surprise that a strong culture revolving around trains has developed in Japan. Train spotting, where rail fans (or fanatics) make an effort to photograph and record train lines, rolling stock, and/or train stations, is an active and accepted practice whenever a new train line is opened, new train engines or cars are introduced, or a train station opens or closes.

The Railway Museum (鉄道博物館, Tetsudō Hakubutsukan), run by the non-profit affiliate of the East Japan Railway Company (JR East), one of the regional successor companies formed after the break-up the Japan National Railway (JNR), recounts the history of railways in Japan, exhibits many previously used train cars, teaches train operation using interesting simulators, and explains railway technology as it evolved over the years. The museum's big collection of formerly used train cars includes steam and diesel locomotives, and retired shinkansen, passenger, and freight cars. Many of the historical rail cars can be entered and the undercarriage of some can even be viewed from below. The museum further showcases one of Japan's largest (model train) dioramas. In another section, railway concepts, science, and systems are explained through models and hands-on activities. [1]

Please continue reading the rest of the article to find out more about my visit to The Railway Museum on 02 Nov 2018 and to see more photographs. I went to The Railway Museum after visiting the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum (大宮盆栽美術館), which is nearby. You can read about my visit to the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum by clicking here.