I had been kind of planning to blog about packing and whatever and making a post when I was on the flight to Japan this time but wow that would have been a lot of effort. I'm actually not in a super inspired mood so apologies if this post ends up being terse and unwelcoming lol

Preparations

Before I go into what I did today for real (fr fr), I might as well talk a little about my preparations. It's not like a super rigid routine or anything (but it probably should be), but I generally make sure to do all of my chores before I leave so that when I come back seeing my apartment doesn't put me in a bad mood. These aren't like normal chores like 'doing the dishes', 'laundry', 'whatever' but more like 'living room deep clean', 'dissassemble the ac for practice', 'etc.' (kidding a little) so it was a bit time consuming,

Because I was doing all of my chores in the week leading up to packing, I procrastinated on actually packing and what had been intended to be a 'finish packing on Wednesday' preamble to my trip turned into 'finish packing on Friday?'. In the end, I did manage to finish packing on time for my 11 AM flight on Saturday.

While packing I realized how much I take my desk setup for granted at home since I'm only packing my laptops and a mouse, which I probably won't end up using since my rental doesn't have a proper desk. Working without any monitors will really hone my skills though maybe.

I'll miss my code review team

I also had really been trying to remember what I even needed to pack but I don't think I've ever even mentioned in previous blogs. For my own personal use later this is the general list.

• Clothes (like 10 shirts, whatever amount of socks and underwear, 2 pairs of jogger shorts, 1 pair of jeans) - amount that fits into my packing cubes
• Shampoo & Body wash (not even generally needed but I like knowing what I'm gonna smell like and sometimes other shampoo can make me dandruff-y)
• Beard trimmer & razor
• Toiletry stuff (qtips, toothpaste, toothbrush, contacts, etc.)
• My glasses, just in case
• Goshuincho (temple seal book)
• Day backpack (I carry this everywhere, might as well be a purse)
• Handkerchiefs
• Laptops, chargers
• Extra luggage (I pack my carry on inside the big luggage since it's empty, then I fill it up with anime merch)
• Steam deck (but I never actually end up using it SMH)

I feel like tht's everything but if it causes me to forget something next year, oh well lol

Flying out

So I spent an ungodly amount of credit card miles (and more than my normal fare) to buy business class ticket to Japan (round-trip at least) so the least I can do is gloat about it to my eager audience. I was flying Delta One so that I could try out the lay-down seats and hoping I could just sleep the entire flight and be not jet-lagged at all.

The benefits to this stated almost immediatley and in an unexpected way (to me), since when I arrived at the airport on Saturday morning, it was PACKED and the line for checking a bag seemed like it was at least an hour long. But Delta One has a private check-in counter and I was the only one there. Sometimes when I do something like that I wonder if anyone is glaring at me for the longer line but I am never able to check because if I looked up and made eye contact with someone that was I might literally combust on the spot. No thanks!

The newly built Delta One lounge in Seattle was also very nice. I chose to sit out on the patio area and they come out and you order food like you are at a restaurant. I had some crab cake eggs benedict thing that was really good. No photo of that, but here is what my view looked like sans food

It was nice because I could get a light does of train spotting in before I get to the trainspotting heaven that is Tokyo (unsubstatiated, I just made that up)

Get it? Because it's the LIGHT rail??

I then made the STUPID decision to leave the top-tier lounge and check out the regular lounge for the plebs with only premium class seats. The lounge itself was nice and had a nice selection of food in the food area but it was way busier and hard to find a seat. I could have gone back to the fancy lounge but obviously I didn't because it would have been awkward to talk to the people at the entrance who I had just told goodbye.

Soon after, I made my way to the gate and got situated in my home for the next 10 hours.

I was actually taking a picture of my seat/cubicle thing but one of the flight attendants noticed and told me that I had to have them take a photo of me. Who am I to say no? So I said yes and then she bought out prop orange juice because it would look better for the photo (her opinion), even though I had just declined a drink.

I had a pretty crazy amount of leg root and the seat was comfy overall. I had the Japanese-style dinner and it was really good and I finally watched the latest Mission Impossible movie as I chowed down. Big fan of the movie.

I tried to sleep but felt like I only slept for an hour, which is less than usual for this kind of flight for me. I think part of it was because I had a crazy headache for the majority of the flight. I kept downing bottles of water hoping it would help but it only helped earn frequent bathroom platinum status.

It's pretty crazy that rich people are just laying down on airplanes like all the time

Breakfast was also really good and I thought I hated ricotta cheese but apparently I don't. So that's good to know!

Once we got into the Tokyo area, I also got a good view of Mt. Fuji. I'm pretty sure that this portends good fortune on my trip!

Haneda airport was insanely busy but luckily I did all the immigration/customs paperwork early on the VisitJapanWeb site and the whole process was only like an hour, which I honestly thought was crazy considering how many people there were. But to be fair, it seemed like over 50 customs booths was open so they were going through a lot of people. Actually when it was my turn, the agent just put the little sticker in my booklet, scanned my fingerprints, and waved me on without basically saying anything to me. It was like 15 seconds total haha

I actually was able to get through customs so much more quickly than expected that by the time I got to my rental, I actually needed to wait another 20 minutes before I could check in.

Half Day

After checking in, it was only 4 PM and I knew I needed to stay up longer than that. I decided to walk to Akihabara since I'm staying about 15 minutes away by walking. There were a few anime collab events ending today so I wanted to go early just in case.

Akihabara was doing well as usual and was as busy as you might expect.

Actually more important than that though, the weather in Tokyo right now is awful. I'd heard it's pretty bad in the summer but even now it's like 90 and pretty humid. It may have just been because I had been hauling around my luggage but I almost felt more miserable and gross walking around in Tokyo yesterday and today than I did when I last visited Texas in August. Reminder to myself to never visit Japan in the summertime (unless I move here???).

After I wrapped things up, I made it back home, showered and was pretty tuckered out by like 830. I thought I had done a good job staying up but looking at last year's blog I didn't even make it as long as I had then so maybe I should have tried harder. I woke up a few times in the night but forced myself to stay asleep until 830 this morning. A full 12 hours of sleep, good job me!

Of course it's a holiday

Today I waited until like 11 AM to leave because I didn't want to get trapped in rush hour commuter-jammed trains. However, I immediately noticed that the trains were still packed and that the mall I went (Sunshine City in Ikebukuro) was crazy packed. I felt pretty big-brained because I realized it was a national holiday before I even looked it up (the other option would have been Tokyo somehow just got busier since I visited last).

Anyway, today was Respect for the Aged Day in Japan. The only thing it really impeded for me was that I had planned to visit the aquarium while I was at Sunshine City since it was also having a collab but it's super busy on weekends and holidays so I'll have to go another day.

Either way, I was still able to enjoy the Secrets of the Silent Witch collab with Kimura Coffee. Silent Witch is kind of like "Bocchi the Witch" so it's basically an anime about a socially awkward witch. It's airing now and pretty good so I'd recommened watching it. I'm actually an episode behind right now, so maybe you could argue I'm not a big enough fan to even deserve collaboration goods.

A witch anyone can relate to

I'm not really sure why I didn't take a photo of it but I got the collaboration set which was a slice of cheesecake and a coffee for ¥1500. I think it's pretty common, but the collaboration item I got from this was a coaster and a small paper thing with the characters on it. Nothing super fancy, but realistically I'm just glad it doesn't take up that much space. Not even luggage space but my apartment itself can't handle much more anime merch at this point.

Considering that, I left to go to my next destination. Specifically to buy more anime merch LOL

The next place was near Tokyo Station (basically across town) and was actually the other half of the Silent Witch collab, a merch popup shop. I ended up just getting a clear file and a small acrylic stand of the main character, Monica.

We meet again...

For dinner, I made my way to Sushiro for Genshin Impact collab merch. I know I shouldn't be filling up my luggage so soon but I figure now that I'm getting out of my system, maybe everything will be ok?

Actually while I was wandering around I found a ton of anime pop ups and collab stores that I didn't know about (mainly in Ikebukuro and Akihabara, which makes sense). It's been nice seeing that Girls Band Cry is staying popular after a bit of a rough start (in the West) last year. I also wonder how much merchandising is making for the anime industry. Surely it's got to be more than the anime themselves but I wonder if it's also more than like light novel sales? Not so interested that I'll look it up now but maybe later.

Also OMG I literally just now realized that the Genshin collab merch changes after tomorrow so I guess if there's anything else I want for the current stuff I have to go again tomorrow and then if there's stuff I want in the second phase I have to go again. Oh no more conveyer belt sushi, the humanity! Speaking of which, I think my goal for this trip is to have one non-Sushiro, non-konbini meal per day. Doable?

One final blog thing before I go, look at this! They put tenji blocks on the manhole cover thing! I didn't even know they could do that. Wow, the modern world sure is something, huh?