Japan, Again

I arrived safely in Tokyo yesterday. The direct flight from Toronto takes about 13 hours, and I left at 1:30 pm, meaning I got into Japan at about 2:30 am, Toronto time, which was 3:30pm Tokyo time. I can rarely sleep on the airplane. Usually, it goes something like this: get on the plane, have a drink and snack, start watching the first in-flight movie and get drowsy and fall asleep for about an hour, then get woken up by the first meal. Then, try and fail to go back to sleep for the rest of the flight. Usually, I can't sleep because I am too uncomfortable, my back and butt start killing me, and I end up fidgeting for the entire time.

I was lucky to have gotten a really good seat this time, right up behind the bulkhead. It has extra legroom, and through some fluke of good luck, there were 3 empty seats beside me. I was tempted to lift the armrests and make a bed to lie down, but I couldn't bring myself to be that flagrantly rude. The downside of this seat was that it was near the washroom and the little room the flight attendants take their breaks in. So it was pretty much steady traffic the whole time, and people kept bumping into me. Oh well; as I said, I couldn't sleep anyway. There also always seems to be some moron at a window seat who insists on opening their window when everyone else is trying to sleep. When the interior of the plane is completely dark, the lights are turned off, 90% of people are asleep and the other 10% are watching the movie, what kind of ass opens the window? It boggles the mind. And yet, there's at least one on every plane; some sociopath who is unable or unwilling to even think about the people around them. Anyway, changing topics:

I just want to say at this point that I had a really nice visit to Canada. I saw *almost* everyone that I wanted to see, with a few notable exceptions. (You know who you are; I apologize for not being more organized and meeting up with you.) And without exception, I wished I could spend more time with everybody. There were a few people that I only met for literally a couple hours, which was really shamefully brief.

Many people commented that they read my Blog, which was news to me. But heartening news, just the same. It was nice to know that I'm not beaming these messages off into some sort of void or something. (If a Blogger blogs in the forest...) Also, if you read one of my blog posts, you don't have to comment on the blog itself, feel free to send me an email and let me know how you're doing. I do hope that this becomes more of a 2-way communication kind of thing.

I also felt, this last time around, that I experienced a lot less "reverse culture shock" when in Canada. In fact (maybe this is good news for those among you who hope I will move back to Canada soon) I felt kind of reluctant to go back to Japan this time. Part of this was a feeling that I just wasn't ready to go back to work, but part of it was a feeling that I am really missing my family and friends, even more than usual. Don't worry; once I get back to work, I will forget about you all again soon, haha.

Anyway, since I'm not working yet and have a few days free to do whatever I like, it feels good to be back in Tokyo. I am staying in a nice hotel right smack in the heart of downtown, so I think I will do a bit of sightseeing. I am at a bit of a loss as to where to go, since I have already been to most of the major attractions. I could hit the streets and see where I end up, but this is sometimes a bad idea. I'll let you know how it goes.

Bye everybody! See you in ... a while ...