Categories
Uncategorized

Somedays I Did Not Make the Most out of Living in Tokyo (and getting a year older)

One day I woke up in what, to me, is one of the greatest and most exciting cities in the world. I walked Lindsay to the train station and saw her off on a week long vacation to Thailand. At that point from around 7:15AM onwards I had complete freedom to do almost anything I could imagine in Tokyo. Practically speaking I had no constraints on my time or money, plus I was healthy and energetic.

But, I chose to spend the day sitting in the same room I sit every day, working on an electronics hobby project and trying to figure out how to make two little LEDs blink. I worked at this until lunch time, at which point I did not go out and explore some new neighborhood in Tokyo nor did I eat ramen or sushi at a delicious lately restaurant. I ate the same thing I eat (most) every day, a bowl of oatmeal with homemade yogurt. Then I worked on the blinking lights the rest of the day until the evening, at which point I went out to Matsuya, a chain beef and rice bowl place a 10 minute walk away, had the cheese beef rice bowl.

After dinner I spent another few hours working on the two blinking lights until 8 or 9PM. Then I went and watched an episode of Star Trek and eventually went to sleep.

There is a reason I’m mentioning this particular day (and there have been many such days!): The once seemingly endless time I had to live in Japan has become a countable number of days. Before long I’ll be willing to give anything to go back to living here. I won’t be able to imagine “wasting” an entire day like I described above. And yet I did waste such a day, with eyes open, knowing I’d eventually find it unfathomable.

I thought hard about spending the day at DisneySea, or walking the Yamanote line, or taking the Shinkansen to Nikko. In the end I decided what I really wanted to do was work on my silly little hobby project. The point is, there are lots of things that I love that give me fulfillment and make me happy and I think it’s helpful for me to remember that.

Lindsay and I will be leaving Japan at the end of June. A bit less than a month and a half. It’s still far enough away that it’s not a constant thought, there is still time to enjoy just living here. That said, most days I give some thought to the fact that our time here isn’t endless. I try to remember that I won’t be able to fit in “enough” to be satisfied and prevent the sadness I’ll feel when I leave. The best I can do I think is remember days like I described above, and remember there are many things in life that are important and that make me happy and content.

Another year older

I have a big birthday this year. As I’ve reflected on my 30s, it’s a bit crazy just how much moving and traveling we’ve done. In the last 10 years, we’ve

This might sound a bit “obvious”, but as I really think about this list I realize how much this type of lifestyle must impact me and how I feel / who I am. I mention this because it’s not something I really notice or even know to be certainly true… But I think it in the same way I think about working from home. I’ve worked from home for over 10 years at this point and I’ve noticed that my personality has changed in subtle ways because of my isolation and solitary life. I suppose change is inevitable and this isn’t to say, for example, working in a busy office with lots of co-workers around every day wouldn’t also have changed who I am. For some reason it’s just strange for me to realize that something I just sort of thought of as a nice work arrangement has over the course of years changed my personality.

Anyway I don’t really have a point here, I just think 10 years is a large chunk of time to look at, and I wonder what sort of impact 10 years of fairly consistent moving has had on me. Unfortunately I feel a bit of a constant internal struggle, never home, never satisfied, never really settled. That part sucks, and of course it’s my own fault, I just haven’t been able to overcome some of these thoughts and feelings.

I sometimes look back at even the last few years living in Japan and think, “wow, this is really exceptional” – I grew up with amazing supportive parents who made me excited about travel and interested in culture and food and I really thank them, but even with such great support and inspiration growing up, I’ve stilled managed to fit in quite a few great experiences and I take a fair amount of pride in that. Lindsay has played a HUGE part in this, without her taking the first steps a lot of the things we’ve done the past 10 years likely wouldn’t have happened.

Bottom line: I feel extremely lucky, but also perhaps more unsettled and unsure of what to do with my life than I ever have before.

A few practical things on life here in Tokyo today

Lindsay and I have taken photos of all of the stuff we have to sell, and are at least trying to start to take steps to get rid of stuff. We have a lot to sell / throw away, and it’s something I think about almost every day and brings some amount of stress every time I think about it.

Our travel plans from the day we fly out of Tokyo until we are back in Michigan mid August are almost completely set. We’ll be on the road for just about a month and a half.

I really liked Season 2 of Andor.

That’s about it.

Categories
Japan Tokyo

Walking Across Tokyo Metro South to North and West to East

I completed a Tokyo bucket list item that I feel was a mild accomplishment and wanted to post a few details about it.

When we were moving to Tokyo, before we left Michigan, I thought it could be cool to walk across the entire breath and width of Tokyo’s Metropolitan area as a way to get a feel for what Tokyo was in terms of size. “What do the edges of the Tokyo metro area feel like?” I thought. It just felt like a nice thing to do.

Continue reading “Walking Across Tokyo Metro South to North and West to East”
Categories
Bali Indonesia Travel

Bali, Indonesia (and some great airport food in Kuala Lumpur)

Me reading at Potato Head

I’ve read a lot about Bali on reddit in the “digital nomad” community the past few years. Especially since COVID and the explosion of work from home one of the prevailing themes of discussion is the country has been overrun with wannabe influencers and scammy startups. The cynic in me assumed that this was going to be the case, but that turned out to only be part of my experience.

It turns out a lot of popular destinations do indeed feel overrun with people specifically there to take selfies, but the island is so incredibly beautiful that it largely made up for that.

Continue reading “Bali, Indonesia (and some great airport food in Kuala Lumpur)”
Categories
Cebu China Philippines Travel

A real vacation in Cebu, Philippines, (briefly) visiting mainland China, and what’s the point of it all?

I occasionally wonder what sort of value traveling has to me at this point in my life. I’m not sure the best way to word this because it’s not really a concrete thought and it’s not even a serious question, but essentially when I look at the limited resources in my life (primarily: money and time) I wonder if one day in the future I’ll look back and say, “you know, I really should have skipped some of the trips and spent more time <investing in friendships / developing hobbies / doing an intensive language course / watching TV / etc>.” When I’m old and decrepit will the memories I make bring me warm feelings and a smile, a feeling of contentment with a life (reasonably) well lived?

Continue reading “A real vacation in Cebu, Philippines, (briefly) visiting mainland China, and what’s the point of it all?”
Categories
Hong Kong Travel

Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macau… except not Shanghai

Tickets back home to Michigan over Xmas were too expensive this year which meant Lindsay and I had to figure out what to do to maximize our time together over the holiday break.

To be honest I would have probably stayed in Japan and spent our modest budget visiting a new region or city or something, but Lindsay really wanted to go somewhere totally new and tickets were reasonably cheap to Shanghai, China – unfortunately the tourist visa was something like $185 USD and took a long time to process… BUT you can get a transit visa for 144 hours as long as you are flying through China somewhere else. In other words, you can’t book a trip Tokyo -> China -> Tokyo and qualify for a transit visa but you CAN book a trip Tokyo -> China -> Hong Kong -> Tokyo. So this is what we booked.

Unfortunately the flight to China was out of Narita which is not the most convenient place to fly out of. It’s a solid hour and a half from our house (sorry Corie who is flying into Narita to visit in a few days!). Double unfortunately our flight to China was a red eye. Triple unfortunately, after we got on the flight around 11:30, literally minutes before we took off three people came to our seat and told us that our flight from Shanghai -> HK was cancelled… so the flight is ready to go and we had to decide if we were going to stay on the flight and very likely not be able to stay in China OR get off the flight. We had to make a decision right then with everybody on the plane watching and the cabin lights dimmed for takeoff. Anyway, we got off the flight because I was a bit concerned we’d end up being forced to buy a super expensive last minute flight once we arrived in China to HK.

Anyway we got off the flight but we were stuck on the other side of immigration – immigration was closed. So we couldn’t just walk back into Japan, we had to sit for probably 30 minutes while the airport staff got some office staff to come out and figure out what to do with us. Eventually we got let back into Japan and made out way back home, a good 2 hours later (having spent a solid USD$100 on the last night bus). We were felling pretty bummed about our plans being completely ruined, not to mention the fact we had to eat a bunch of reservations (hotels, flights, etc), but in the end the next day with fresh eyes we booked a cheap flight to Hong Kong so we could at least use our return flight HK -> Tokyo.

Here we are trapped in immigration after it was closed. Nobody at any of the lanes, everybody went home. We sat like this for a good 30 minutes.

Hong Kong

Anyway, that thrilling story out of the way, Hong Kong. What an absolutely amazing city.

Continue reading “Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macau… except not Shanghai”
Categories
Food

Tokyogurt: Part One – New Beginnings

Yogurt making tools and ingredients including different Japanese milks and yogurts and an electric yogurt maker

This is, obviously, a bit of a different topic than my normal travel related updates, but I wanted to write in this blog a bit more often. My primary motivation is simply that I think I should write more than I do in general – too much consumption, not enough generation.

Most of my early yogurt making memories come from my Mom. She used (maybe still uses?) quart jars filled with milk and put under a towel with a heating pad (the type you use for a sore back) underneath the jars. From what I remember this always worked really well. I actually wonder now why we didn’t do this all the time, I feel like it was a “few times a year” thing.

I actually can’t remember the first time I made yogurt myself. It was probably either in college in my first apartment living with Nick and Kevin, or it might have been in Wisconsin Rapids in my first real solo-apartment. Or maybe even in Lindsay and my first apartment in Grand Rapids post-college. Honestly I don’t remember. What I do remember for sure though is maybe 6 or 7 years ago living in Chicago I got slightly more serious about making yogurt and testing out different techniques. I tried different starter cultures, different incubation methods (e.g. sous vide vs crock pot), scalded vs unscaled, different milks. Strained vs unstrained. Etc. Unfortunately I remember very little about these techniques besides I remember that there was somewhat of a fine line between straining yogurt to the point of greek yogurt vs spreadable paste.

Here is a random video I found from Chicago in which I am showing how thick this yogurt is. It’s not important.

(VERY slightly interesting aside it turns out I have a fork from this same set of silverware here in Japan:

which sort of hit me a second ago because it’s a very unexpected through-line between my life 8ish years ago and my life here in Japan. I should probably throw these forks away before they develop some sort of meaning to me or are a physical representation of my 30s or something.)

OK, back to yogurt.

I like yogurt, and I like making things. I don’t have much space at home here in Japan but I do have space to make yogurt. I think the main reason I’ve decided to experiment with yogurt making here is because in general I really like the milk in Japan. Hokkaido is known for their milk and dairy in general and there are a surprising number of options for milk and yogurt at most grocery stores.

Kotatsu

I decided to start the yogurt journey here by attempting to ferment the yogurt under our cheap ニトリ kotatsu.

I used the entire liter of milk and about a quarter of the yogurt container (which is quite a lot), and I fermented for around 12 hours (a long time)

Continue reading “Tokyogurt: Part One – New Beginnings”
Categories
Japan Tokyo

The first 4ish months living in Tokyo: A shorter post, probably, or at least fewer photos

People fishing near ocean with sunset

We have officially been in Tokyo for four and a half months now. I wanted to record a bit about how the move went and how things are going on in this still relatively early stage of our life here – last time we moved to Japan I didn’t actually post anything until we were fairly close to leaving and I think it’s possible I missed some of the details from early on.

When we landed in Japan this time around I felt quite a bit different than last. I’ve developed a sort of constant (perceived) life-GPS or “grounded-ness” that made it impossible for me to feel that my life had totally changed when we stepped out of the airport. I still feel like me, just in Japan. That might not make sense but in the not-so-distant past I remember arriving to a new place and having an out-of-body feeling that took a LONG time to go away. This was disorienting but on the plus side, very exciting and in ways intoxicating. That said I felt (and still feel four+ months on) very very happy, you might say “joyful” when we got out of the airport.

Our flight was uneventful. We brought quite a bit of luggage with us, arguably more than we needed, but a lot of the stuff we packed was books and clothing for Lindsay’s job. We also brought some particularly heavy stuff, e.g. silverware because I hate spoons/forks that bend easily. When I think about it now I’m honestly not sure how we had so much stuff.

One of the first photos I have out of the airport
IMG_0367
All of our bags. Roughly 300 pounds worth of luggage.

Edit from later me: I’m finishing this post in the main Hong Kong library, we just flew back out of Haneda to HK yesterday and it was strange coming back through the airport the other direction, especially after spending so much time in Tokyo over the last months. Somehow the airport felt “small”, despite being a major international airport.

We decided to be lazy and take an Uber to our temporary AirBnB. It was relatively cheap (maybe USD$40ish?) but taking the train would have been a huge pain with our luggage (almost always we’d deal with the pain to save 30 bucks or whatever, but it was just too much to carry on a packed train).

Continue reading “The first 4ish months living in Tokyo: A shorter post, probably, or at least fewer photos”
Categories
Camping Japan

We’re (probably not) moving to Tokyo (edit: ok, actually we are)

Kevin setting up a tent on the beach

Warning: This will be more of a high school emo style blog post without a lot of photos, so set your expectations accordingly!

Note: if you’re reading this, either we’ve decided to move to Tokyo, or it’s been weeks or months since this discussion came up and we’ve decided not to and the thought has been well put to bed. I’m writing this for myself, to process my thoughts / feelings and document them for the next time this type of life changing issue comes up.

Two weeks ago Lindsay got a “cold call” from a quality international school in Tokyo, Japan asking her to interview for a middle school position that starts in August of this year (roughly three months time). They had found her resume in a hiring pool from a job she had applied to a long time ago and reached out randomly and without prompting. This was totally out of the blue, and unexpected, and pretty “world rocking” to be honest. To be clear, we had absolutely zero plans on moving to Japan, or even visiting Japan this year, BUT… Tokyo! One of the worlds great cities! Japan! Curry! Onsen! Sento! Beautiful mountains and streams and Hokkaido in the fall! Easy access to Korea and Vietnam! Etc.

Continue reading “We’re (probably not) moving to Tokyo (edit: ok, actually we are)”
Categories
Mexico Mexico City Travel

A Longer Stay in CDMX – Mexico City (plus Tolantongo and Cozumel)

Lindsay and I spent a bit of time in Mexico City a few years ago – roughly a week I think. We went there a few days after the Christmas holiday and were there for New Years Eve. It was a really wonderful trip, and I think Lindsay and I both were pleasantly surprised by the “ease” we felt there. We decided at the time to add a longer return trip (if the opportunity should present itself!) to Mexico City (henceforth CDMX) onto our travel TODO list.

Last year when we were planing our 2023 travel plans we decided it would be a good time to head back, this time, for a bit over a month and a half. The timing was almost exactly the same as before except we found a cheaper flight New Years Eve so arrived in CDMX on the 1st of January.

Arriving in CDMX is easy and uneventful. One of the great things (or terrible, not sure on the moral issues) about the city is that Uber is incredibly affordable, and convenient. I think the Uber from the airport, 45 minutes maybe, was only 14 or so dollars. In general Uber was our chosen method of transportation while in the city. Most trips to places we would visit would cost (with a healthy tip) between 5 and 8 dollars.

Anyway, the apartment we rented for the time in Mexico City was in a neighborhood called La Condesa. It’s one of the “hipper” and more touristic neighborhoods, lots of cute little coffee shops and restaurants. We were near-ish the border of two hip / cool / touristic neighborhood called Roma Nortre and Hipodromo. Overall this is one of the “obvious” neighborhoods to stay in, and I’d certainly recommend our exact area to anybody thinking about visiting CDMX.

Continue reading “A Longer Stay in CDMX – Mexico City (plus Tolantongo and Cozumel)”
Categories
Argentina Brazil

How to remove your appendix in Argentina (via Brazil) for only $4,403.23

Our first “big” international trip after moving to Michigan was a two parter: a week in Rio de Janeiro with our mates Kevin and Sabrina, followed by roughly 5 weeks in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It had been roughly 2 years since Lindsay and I had left the UK (between then of course moving to California, then back to Michigan) and we’d done zero international travel during that period. This was largely due to COVID, but also just all of the general life stuff happening. It was honestly a bit weird taking an international flight after that stretch and arriving at an airport in Rio.

Fresh off the plane in sunny Rio!

The thing that sort of hit me is both how out of place I felt arriving in a new country, but also how comfortable and “normal” it felt. Unfortunately the “normal” part I don’t mean in a “I’m so cool and used to travel” sort of way, but more in a “I am sadly slightly less excitable when it comes to arriving in airports in new places.” I’d say I felt somewhat “shocked” actually, like “wow, I’m in this amazing new country, but I don’t feel that much different.” Again, this isn’t exactly a good thing, it’s just how I felt.

Continue reading “How to remove your appendix in Argentina (via Brazil) for only ,403.23”