Living & Moving — MovingRather Than Pay AirAsia 14,000 Yen, I Threw the Suitcase Away and Flew Home
Monday, March 9, 2026. The taxi pulled up at Terminal 2 of Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12:50 p.m. I was carrying two things, a duffel bag and a backpack. The suitcase I was supposed to check was gone.
01A black platform is set under a silver frame, and the weight of whatever bag goes on it is decided right there. On the column, the numbers 7 and 14 are stacked one above the other, and printed below them is a notice about buying more allowance to cover what is missing.
Just before leaving for the airport, I was going through AirAsia's rules on my phone in the hotel room. At the point I bought the ticket, the checked baggage allowance had been set at 0 kg. Adding the suitcase now, I found, would cost 14,000 yen.
Normally it is an amount I would pay without thinking twice. Going out to dinner with someone in Japan ran about that much every time. The fare for this flight was 38,000 yen, and checking a single bag would pile nearly 40 percent of that on top of it.
Water on board is 300 yen, and checking luggage turns into an add-on in the tens of thousands. I was pulled in by how cheap it was, and end up being made to pay a high price after all. That mechanism irritated me. If I paid here, I thought, I lose.
The carry-on limit is 7 kg. Go over by even a gram and the same amount is taken at the counter, on the spot. Pay, or cram it all into 7 kg. By the time I reached the airport, there was no time left.
Morning at a five-star hotel
That morning I woke at 9:45 a.m. in my hotel in Kuala Lumpur. I had been in bed by 10:30 p.m. the night before, but I had half surfaced once during the night, and the core of my head still felt heavy. My feet got caught in the swamp of going back to sleep, and by the time I noticed, it was this late. “What am I even doing.” I typed how I was feeling into Gemini on my phone, and what came back was some throwaway advice about good-quality sleep.
At breakfast, the staff walked me to my usual table without even asking my room number. Over these few days, my face had apparently been learned. Back in the room, one email I had to send by 11:30 a.m. was still sitting there. I lifted the hotel coffee to my mouth. That one cup was the only switch that started me up.
02(Image) In the morning, the first thing I reached for after getting back to the room was usually this cup.
Only the flight home was booked on a separate ticket
For those few days I had been living in this hotel, with a wide living room and a kitchen and a doorman's nod. Every trip was a Grab taxi, carried door to door. I had come to Kuala Lumpur on JAL, a full-service carrier, and it had cost close to 70,000 yen. Only the flight home was booked separately on AirAsia, a 38,000-yen ticket, close to half the outbound.
At the point I bought this flight, the checked baggage allowance was 0 kg. Checking luggage meant buying the fee separately on the spot, and adding nothing kept the payment at 0 yen. I had bought the ticket more than a month earlier, and how much luggage that version of me was planning to bring home, I no longer remember. Until the moment I left for the airport, I had not once looked at how it worked.
The limit was 7 kg
What AirAsia allows as carry-on came to 7 kg in total. In front of me were five dresses I loved, a swimsuit, gym clothes, the MacBook I work on, four phones that were somehow in my hands, and five chargers. There was more luggage than when I arrived.
The laptop and the phones alone come to nearly 2 kg. That leaves 5 kg. Pay 14,000 yen, or push all of it into those 5 kg. It was one or the other.
They sell cheap fares and make their money by pricing the options high. The way the money is made is exactly the same as an izakaya where only the beer is cheap and the food is expensive.
I typed “tips for staying under 7 kg” into Gemini on my phone. What came back was to roll my clothes up, advice that again was not much use. What I wanted to know was not that kind of small trick.
“I might wear it someday.” “It would be a waste.” Feelings like that were not worth a single gram anymore. If anything, their weight was slowing down how I moved in this place. Looking back and forth between the luggage in front of me and my own body, I hit on the ultimate way around it.
I chose the side that lets go of the suitcase itself. Instead of looking for a way to carry less, I would make the checked luggage itself disappear. The 7 kg limit stayed exactly where it was, and the suitcase was the thing that vanished.
I threw the suitcase into the hotel trash
Before leaving the hotel in Kuala Lumpur, I dropped the clothes I loved into the room's trash can, one after another. The foot massager went too, right there. The suitcase itself I decided to leave in the room. Maybe because it was a five-star hotel, the concierge took it off my hands without a hint of reluctance.
- Threw the clothes I loved into the hotel trash, one after another
- Got rid of the foot massager
- Left the suitcase itself at the hotel
- Layered on two hoodies, a cashmere jacket, a coat, and a down coat
- Stuffed four phones, five chargers, a selfie stick, and a Pocket3 into my pockets
What was left was two bags, a duffel and a backpack, and the one thing there was no option of leaving behind was the MacBook. Holding pockets swollen to bursting and carrying the heavy Mac, I headed for the gate with nothing but myself.
What is in my pockets is not luggage
That day, not one thing I had on my body was weighed. What was in my pockets was not luggage but a part of me.
The airport restaurant had no customers
I took a taxi and reached Terminal 2 of Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12:50 p.m. This terminal, built for low-cost carriers, has walkways crowded to an absurd degree. The first thing I did was go into a restaurant, where I paid 2,000 yen for chicken and coffee. As if the crush in the walkway were a lie, there was not a customer inside.
03On a blue-rimmed plate, one piece of fried chicken, white rice, a cracked egg, and a thin cracker are set together. Black soup is poured into a bowl with an orange handle, placed beside the plate on the wood grain of the table. Price 2,000 yen
Why is there no one in the restaurant when there are that many in the walkway? I asked Gemini on my phone, and back came the answer that people who fly low-cost are people who want to cut every last yen, and people who can pay usually take a full-service flight. Over those few days in Kuala Lumpur, I had been hooked on Middle Eastern food. No strange spices, and not greasy either. The chicken that day was a different thing, chicken that was nothing but an airport price.
When I looked up, the people in the walkway were looking over at me. In a Southeast Asian airport in midsummer, I am eating chicken in a down coat. Have they not seen chicken before? I finished the plate thinking that. For about an hour, in a cafe with no other customers, I wrote about that day on note.
Just before boarding, I layered up one more time in the restroom. Two hoodies, a cashmere jacket, a coat, a down coat. Six pieces in all. Inside the down coat, the heat had already gone abnormal.
I'm exhausted. This is too stupid. Along with a sigh, the truth leaks out.
On the scale, it came to 14.6 pounds
Going over the limit and having thrown it all away for nothing did not happen. On the scale it came to 14.6 pounds, about 6.6 kg, with 400 grams still left before the limit. I did not pay the 14,000 yen.
In exchange, what the clothes and the massager I threw away had cost, I can no longer bring to mind. My JAL status, the platinum status I had spent two years stacking up, was of no use whatsoever in front of this scale. That day, the only thing that produced a number was the scale.
At 2:50 p.m. we lifted off from Kuala Lumpur. Once we climbed to 10,000 meters, in a cabin that held nothing but a narrow seat and 300-yen water, I took off the layers one at a time. The lightness of being released from owning things came back, little by little.
04Outside the window it is dark, and a single red circle floats on the tail of a white aircraft. Because the near side of the glass is bright, the lights outside and the ceiling in front look as though they overlap on one plane.
I reached Haneda at 10:40 p.m. The way out had taken 8 hours, and the way back landed in about 6 hours and 40 minutes. With work waiting in Japan, it was a convenient tailwind.
The prices of the dresses and the massager I threw away can stay forgotten. The 7 kg limit was weighing not only how heavy the luggage was, but whether I could let go of it.
Ahead of me were work on March 13 and a move the day after. The luggage was smaller, and I got out of paying 14,000 yen. My steps toward the next thing on the schedule were far lighter than when I arrived.
