Travel Journal – Thursday 16/4 – 2015

All of these posts from Thursday to Monday, will be written in retrospect since I’ve been busy settling down and getting into pace after the trip. I’ll write shorter accounts of what happens on facebook, but in Swedish and without much deeper thoughts and emotions. Here, I will write more personal and deeper to my reflections without regard to the audience since the only ones that should read this blog should be people I trust.

But since I no longer have any control to who has the adress for this blog or not, I cannot be certain. If you for some reason are reading here and have questions. Register and post a comment. That or ask the person whom gave you the adress to clarify.

The morning before the flight went almost without any problems. Everything was finished since before and I had prepared most things the night before. The only snag in the morning was that Daniel had forgotten his Rail Pass at home and had to get a Taxi to get home and get it. He managed to do this before our Taxi from Tuna got there and we went to the airport.

The second snag was that Norwegian, which I now proclaim to stop flying with and only fly with them for emergency purposes, broke my bag. They broke the handle and I got to complain and fill in a form. They unfortunately did not have any new bags for me to use so I’ll have to do this later after the trip.

Other than this no problems arose during the trip. Our flight from Stockholm was delayed but nothing that mattered much since we had 4 hours wait in Moscow that now turned into 3 hours wait instead.

During the flights I had decided, since PBs complaining of how boring a travel companion I was, to stay awake and try to activate people and do stuff. This was of varying success. We played Asencsion on one flight and that worked well, if only that Daniel is too slow in some of his desicions and apprehension of the game but it was his first time and I did my best to make it as quick and painless as possible. And still he is not even close to Ankan.

During the longest flight though it was obvious that both PB and Daniel already were exhausted and tired. The latter more so, since he is really, really bad at sleeping. According to my opinion he is focusing to much on the fact that he can’t sleep well than actually relaxing and sleeping. Plus that he is impatient.

In my opinion, if you lay in bed staring at the roof, thinking: “I cannot sleep” repeatedly then you are bound to not fall asleep until you are so exhausted that you won’t have time enough left to actually sleep. And then repeating this every day is bound to create a very bad circle of bad sleep.

Sure, I don’t sleep great most of the time but I can, if I want to, sleep whenever I want to. The reason to this is that instead of thinking of falling I sleep, I just shut down. Feeling my body relaxing, letting my mind wander and not focusing on anything other than feeling how much I can relax my muscles as I just float around in my mind.

I usually fall asleep within 3-10 minutes of me deciding to go asleep. How I now this number is mostly based on my last memory of things that happens as well as sleep clock and such.

To end this note of sleeping, my problem sleeping is mostly that my body hurts, a lot, while I sleep and now lately how deep and painful my mental sorrow and pain is from the separation with Louise. Before that, it was mostly concerns, pain and also how easy it is for me to wake up of every single sound within my own domain.

So we arrived in Japan after playing a couple of games on my iPad watching some anime on my Mac (which didn’t work great since I haven’t modified and done the settings right after the 2 years of neglect). But when we arrived we all were super exhausted. I least of all since I actually slept on the flight. Or to be fair both Daniel and PB fell asleep. But just because Daniel woke up momentarily and slept lightly he considered himself to be awake.¹

The plan had been decided to get to the hotel after picking up the SIM-cards to the phone and then go to Kita-Urawa to eat Ramen, my traditional first meal in Japan. I had been prepared to go myself and expected nobody to follow since I knew that when we arrived everyone would be exhausted and in dire need of rest. But I would go anyway and not eat anything before that.

When we got to the hotel, we found out that it was, according to my standards and the regular standard and the price in Japan, a really good hotel. Maybe not a luxury hotel but it sure felt like it was. A single room in this hotel was as big as a room for two people in normal hotels. The hotel was outfitted with a card mechanism which was not only to the doors of your room but also to enter the hotel after hours, operating the elevator and so on. The room provided many small luxeries that made it to the best hotel I’ve been to and would have the fortune to be living at in Japan for that price. And unfortunately probably the best hotel during this trip, from here on out it will only be worse.

Well, when we arrived and had settled down into the hotel PB decided not to follow, and with ample reasons, we all were not long from falling asleep where we stood and he decided not to pain himself. As soon as I got into my room I nearly fell asleep as well but I took a shower and then went to Kita-Urawa. Daniel, for some reason decided to follow but it became apperantly clear that he really, shouldn’t have. He fell asleep and seemed half-dead half gone most of the time during the 40-60 minute train-ride needed to get there.

The meal was delicious though. And it seems to me that everytime I come here (following this last standing tradition I have with my trips to Japan) it only gets better and better each time. It is really strange since I expect it to be good and it always somehow goes beyond my expectations. One of the reasons for this though might be that I’m always exhausted and starving when I get there since I refuse to eat almost anything of any kind before I get this first traditional meal.

After we had eaten we went to Shibuya. We had decided to meat up at Hachiko at 20:00 to then celibrate our arrival in Japan with Yakiniku. But me and Daniel arrived about an hour, half and hour before the others so we went shopping for pants. We bouth found a pair and bought each a pair. I would have liked to buy 2 or maybe even 3 pairs of the pants I found but unfortunately the only have the one pair.

After this we waited in Hachiko. Still a meetingplace where I wish they wouldn’t have the smokers so close since it is a meeting place, but the japanese people seem to think that smoking is not only a liberty to be had but something to reward themselves with. This I find sandly pathetic. They are very, very much encouraging this behaviour to depend upon narcotics to get through the day and the misery of life by putting smoking very close in relations to all things good in Japan. All activities Japanese people do are not only heavily smoke-focused but it is also made in such a way that it seems like they should think of the smoking as a necessary part for this. Playing games, meeting and important places and so on. Everything you do, is rewarded/sweatened up with a cigarette.

Then Mikael arrived. He came here just about 2 weeks before us and will be staying here for one year to study. THis is both lucky and unlucky for NIRKO. Lucky in such a way that we will have more money and it will get cheaper for the rest of us, but unlycky since we will be less people during the trip. STill we will do stuff with him as much as we can while we’re in Tokyo.

Eating Yakiniku was a blast but expensive. I really like the way of cooking food while you eat in the style of yakiniku, shabu shabu or fondue. These three are most likely my top favourite dishes. Something in wich you can eat much but also cook your food differently and have fun while doing it. It’s an activity and not only just food.

During the meal Daniel went home. He was falling over and needed sleep so we finished the meal without him and then we too got home about one hour afterwards. The only thing left to do then was sleep since we had had a looong day.

1. And if that is true I never sleep LoL ↩