Letters from Japan, pt. 1

October… either 15th, or 16th, depending on what time zone we’re talking about. It’s probably… well, we left around 11:30, and then we just kept flying with the Sun, so it’s kind of just staying around noon, and it will be a bit after noon when we arrive. Trippy. I guess whenever we pass the international date line… Right now we’re up around the arctic.

It’s been a crazy week! Crazy in a good way, but a flurry of activity, preparing for this very trip that we are now on. The Japanese airplane is amazing. It’s spacious, there is a large screen for each passenger, and a lot of legroom, and the bathrooms are spacious and clean and have a slow close toilet so it doesn’t slam down with a loud noise when you shut it, and if I read the signs correctly it actually has a bidet installed, which Suzannah confirmed. And often when I go, someone has re-folded the toilet paper ends into chevrons to look tidy. And it has a no-touch flush button, as does the sink. Also, the meal was delicious, though a bit light, and all the plane staff are super friendly and courteous.

I’ve been a fan of much of the Japanese culture that’s been imported to America, but so far it seems that the actual Japanese culture is even more appealing to me than I at first thought. There is a little bit of a down side, in that from what I heard they are sticklers for rules, so you’re unlikely to be able to talk to someone at a service counter or something into making an exception for you. It seems kind of intense. But the rest of it seems quite lovely. I suppose I should not start making proclamations about it on the plane ride over. But so far, just the plane ride has been great.

Aside from the headache and nausea. But I get a headache pretty much every time I get on a plane. Especially when it’s a longer flight. I wish I knew what caused it. The mild nausea is new, I wonder if it’s related to the headache, the airport food I had before getting on the plane, or something else. Just another symptom of too much flying.

I watched Spiderman far from home which was great, and Dr. Strange and the multiverses of madness, which was awful. It was fairly well done, but there was just so much murder. Someone just wanted to kill all our favorite heroes and wrote a multiverse script to make it happen. It had kind of a horror movie vibe. So much less interesting character interactions than the spider man movie, so much more about spectacle. It was good spectacle, interesting ideas, fun to see super heroes that get less time, but not fun to see them gruesomely killed.

I’m not really a fan of smash boom spectacle even when it’s not gruesome. I suspect the headache and nausea didn’t help its case.

OK, that’s probably enough for one week, I think I owe two at this point though. So I’ll write the next one as well.