Many travellers get upset if it takes even an hour from exiting their aircraft to get through passport control. Chinese rights activist Feng Zhenghu has been living in the grey zone between arrival gate and immigration for nearly two weeks.
In a case that has drawn comparisons to the 2004 Tom Hanks film The Terminal, Mr Feng has been haunting the halls of Japan's Narita airport since being turned away from his own country by Shanghai police on November 4.
But while the movie featured an eastern European stuck in a terminal because of paperwork problems, Mr Feng's presence in the airport no man's land stems from his outrage at his treatment by Chinese authorities and Japanese airline All Nippon Airways.