A place for things I found…
It’s coming down to the wire, just about everything I can prepare for is done, now it’s just the nerves. I always get anxious about traveling like this, because so many things are out of my control, like airplane delays and weather. So far all looks good, but that doesn’t get rid of the nagging worry. It probably won’t really go away until halfway across the Pacific! 😆
Stay tuned!
Well, in 8 days I’ll be boarding my flight to Japan. This will be my longest solo venture since I drove across a big chunk of the US back in 2003 (you can see my blog entries from back then in Nerdtour 2003, if I did the pages right).
I’m a little anxious about it, as usual, but also I’m looking forward to it, I’ll be checking a lot of things off my bucket list, at least the international one. I have a lot of things left to see in the US, which I’ll start on once I get back. Well, after resting up and letting my bank account cool off for a while!
Well, here we go again, I’m getting ready to start another trip to Japan, this time it’s going to be a big one! Since I retired last year, I’m not going have the income to be a world traveler anymore, so I decided to make a final grand adventure to the Land of the Rising Sun, lasting 2 whole months! There was going to be a trip in 2023, but layoffs happened and spurred my retirement, then discovering I had 4 blocked cardiac arteries meant I had to get those re-routed. That laid me up for a bit, but I still thought I could make a trip in Spring of 2024, but again events conspired, and I didn’t feel comfortable making the trip so soon (8 months) after my major surgery, so I figured I’d better get healthier before setting off in ’25. Since then I started walking a lot, lost a lot of weight, put my diabetes into remission, and got a clean bill of health from my doctors.
Given all that, and checking my finances, I decided that this year would be my best chance to once more visit Japan during cherry blossom season. Since it may well be my last, given my financial situation, I figured I’d go all out and stay for 2 months, so that hopefully I can see enough of Japan for the rest of my life. After nearly kicking the bucket in ’23, it’s time to check things off my bucket list!
So, starting on March 22, I leave for Tokyo, where I’ll have an apartment for the duration as a base of operations for whatever trips in Japan that I can squeeze in during the time. Oh, and I promise that I will try to blog more often than I did during Nerdtour 2018, since I’ll have more time, and I don’t plan to exert myself into exhaustion like I did back then!
Getting close now, and I’m trying to get everything set up before I leave. Â Laundry, packing, re-packing due to forgetting something, re-re-packing due to everything I want to take not fitting, etc. Â At least I finished my taxes, and managed to get some pictures of this year’s cherry blossoms downtown. Â Checking the weather at Chicago where I lay over for a couple of hours, and the long-range forecast for Tokyo and vicinity for next week.
Two things I plan to do to make this trip a bit easier than the ones before, one of them I’d been planning for some time, and one came out of the blue since I had no idea they even had them. Â One, a service that nearly all hotels provide or at least cooperate with shipping companies to provide, is called “takkyubin”, which is a baggage-forwarding service. Â If you’re hotel-hopping like I plan to, it’s great because you can turn in your suitcase at the hotel or nearby convenience store or delivery office, and for a small fee they’ll send it off to your next destination, usually delivered by the next day. Â This saves having to lug the whole mess around, trying to find space on the train or subway car. Â They can send it to the airport as well, which sounds horrible to us paranoid Americans, but in Japan it’s completely safe. Â In fact, the main delivery company Yamamoto, has as their logo a mother cat carrying a kitten!
The other nice surprise I found is that there are at least a half-dozen companies in Japan that will rent 4G LTE wi-fi hotspots to tourists! Â I was worried about trying not to use too much of the hotels’ bandwith, or trying to find a public wi-fi spot that wasn’t crowded. Â This is exactly what I’m renting from T-Mobile to use here, I’ve been able to get great speeds with wide access, and according to the Japanese sites, their companies provide hi-speed hot-spots that work all over the country! Â The rates are reasonable, too, the one place I’m looking at will rent the box for about $90 total for the two weeks, which even though it’s twice what I’m paying here, it’s JAPAN!
At any rate, blogging will be sparse between now and when I land in Narita, but I’ll try to keep this blog up-to-date!
Thank you!
Enjoy!
Amazingly, they’ve been able to keep a sense of humor in the face of their troubles, but they could use some financial help with Poe’s latest hospitalization (acute renal failure from an infection). Instead of asking for donations, which would hurt his chances of getting insurance, his wife asks that people buy things from their online store. A lot of what he created goes beyond “risque” and heads into the “scatalogical” area, but if you don’t mind that, they’re selling his comics in book form, as well as t-shirts and other goods.
I bought a copy of this print, which is a character from “Errant Story.” He’s also selling the original artwork pages (on paper with ink! of all things!) from his comic, but I can’t afford to go $80+ per page, much as I’d like to. If anyone reading this (all two of you!) can help, they could sure use it, and buying their stuff is the best way to help.
If you get a chance, the documentary is on HBO now, and may be available other places. The trailer is on YouTube, below.
