Heading halfway home

Hmm, my favorite, waking up before 7am so that I can drive to the airport, return the rental car, be able to check in my luggage, and have enough spare time such that if something unexpected happens, I won't fall under time pressure. Except it all went smoothly, and instead of being caught in a traffic jam or the rental return being complicated, I got to wait for 45 minutes for the baggage drop to finally open.

Oh and did I mention the fact that it was still raining? The European summer weather certainly seemed keen to send me off as quickly as possible ...

And so we slowly start undoing the same set of silly flights that I took to get here in the first place. i.e. incredibly long and I couldn't wait to arrive at my destination. I did not any empty seats next to me this time around, which made sleep ... impossible. The jet lag when flying against the sun is always more painful than the other way around so I basically tried to close my eyes as much as I possibly could in the desperate hope that some sleep might accidentally happen and I wouldn't arrive completely trashed.

Flying against the sun, I also knew that there should be a rather short night in the middle of the flight, and yet that ... failed to appear. Everytime I gave up on checking my eyelids for holes, I'd check the window note that the sun had basically not moved. For hours. And definitely seemed to have no intention of ever setting. Till I finally remembered that our route was taking us basically over the northpole, and that we were as a result pretty solidly within the northern article circle. I ... don't think that this made sleep any easier.

As we were nearing the halfway point of my return, I found out that the neighor that was robbing me of my much needed sleeping space, was a Japanese university student returning after a year of doing exchange in the Netherlands. Now I like to think that I know a thing or two about Japan, given how often I've gone there to visit and have studied up on things, but this is probably the first time that I've had a conversation with a native Japanese where I could hear about both Japan from a native perspective as well as Europe. I ... should do that more often. It was really interesting being able to ask a ton of questions as well as just comparing so many different experiences that we've had, coloured by our own expectations.

And what do you do if you have a flight via Japan and haven't visited in 5 years? You use it as an excuse to break up the ridiculously long trip that it took me to get to Europe. Actually, that's not quite truthful. The reason that my flights were soooo long was because I booked them via a Japan. I'm back! And oh boy, it has been faaaaar too long.

And the first impression after getting off the plane: Japan appears to be keen on providing me with the summer that I was missing out on in Europe. And then some. It was immediately over 30 degrees with about 80% relative humidity. And guess who still needed to carry their winter coat to the hotel.

The second impression: I'm tired. Upon checking in I was basically ready to just curl up. But after a shower, I dragged myself back out and started looking for familiar landmarks. While I was quite proud of having managed to find my hotel with relative ease, finding others required a lot of walking around the worlds busiest train station in the hope that thing start looking familiar and mostly being rewarded with success, eventually.

But after a few hours outside, the lack of sleep was seriously catching up with me. Not even the Cicadas that were registering at 90dB on my watch, completely drowing out the low flying jets on approach to Haneda, were enough to stop me from almost falling asleep in the park. So I decided to head home early, finally catch up on writing my blog, and get a good long nights sleep to battle the lack of sleep on the plane, the short night I had before the plane, and the general sleepiness that still appears to be following me.

And well, I feel asleep before I could edit my first picture for the blog. But instead, my body decided that 3:30 was awake time! Which was not even 8 hours of sleep. And has nothing to do with my previous time zone given that it was becoming evening there ... maybe my body's timezone has decided to take the long way around the planet or something? Either way, as a result you can have a rather rare picture from me: a picture taken during sunrise.