Everything in here (on the plane, not Japan) is boring, so I guess it’s time to finally get back to this. We are now five hours in on the flight to Osaka; I’ve finished watching a couple of episodes of The Big Bang Theory as well as the 90s movie classic The Mask. With the entertainment system running seriously low on comedy shows, I set my eyes on a Chinese movie called Lost in Thailand, which is currently on pause.
The leg space is horrendous, as is to be expected, and despite a couple attempts at airplane quasi-sleep, the land of dreams keeps eluding me. I could have made good use of an ostrich pillow. Due to these unfortunate circumstances, an all-nighter is in order. It will get me back in the habit of writing down notes about my oh-so-exciting life and prepare for the morrow.
In other news, the needless stress I’ve caused myself by taking a 24-day vacation in Japan outside of the regular, or generally accepted Finnish holiday season of July will not end once I land. Due to another holiday season.
Only a an overly optimistic moron would land in Japan during Golden week without preparing a place to stay well in advance. I started browsing hotels around 24 hours ago just to add that label to my résumé. Ban-fucking-zai!
No shirt, no brain, no hotel. The two options left to me were either booking a king deluxe suite from the Hilton Osaka – half my entire budget for the trip – or jumping straight on the shinkansen and riding to Tokyo for the night.
Unlike my previous visits to the land of the rising sun, this time I’m a full-fledged tourist, which means I have access to the much coveted 21-day JR Rail Pass. It will allow me to abuse any and all JR trains for 3 weeks while also helping me travel light: with an empty wallet.
The plan for the first insomniac day is to get to Sabae in Fukui prefecture, go for lunch with Shingo, an old friend I haven’t seen in four years, and continue straight to Tokyo before the sun sets. The exact itinerary for spending my rail pass is yet to be decided, but rest assured it will be in shreds by the end. And so will I.
North Japan has been intriguing me since I began planning a vacation to Japan back in 2003, so Aomori-Hakodate-Sapporo and back is something I’m currently envisioning. Then I could finally lay that matter to rest.
-Antti
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