Welcome back Tokyo

So, as predicted, sleep … kind of didn't happen. I mean, there were points where I had my eyes closed, and there were even points where I fell asleep. But considering that the unit "seconds" would be a reasonable measure for the individual naps, I'm kind of tired. The consequent result: my body appears to be fully convinced that it is still Tuesday. Sleep did not happen, which means the day has not changed, right?

Arriving at 5 in the morning has another fun side effect: Tokyo looks like a ghost town. Considering that most shops don't seem to open until at the earliest 9, and more likely 11-12, we tried to find several things to do, only to find each of them closed. So we bounced between cafés until something was finally open. But once you hit 9 o'clock, the trains are finally really busy, and getting on is a bit of a squeeze … This is not motivating to get up early tomorrow …

Since our accomodation is in Shinjuku, that's where we went with out luggage. With the exception of a brief excursion on an empty train, the realisation that what we went to have a look at doesn't open for another three hours, and a very busy train in the opposite direction, we stayed in Shinjuku for the rest of the day. We kept on bouncing between different shops, comparing things, trying things out, contemplating things that we could be testing out over the rest of the trip. Somehow this managed to clock up 20km of walking. By the time we got back to the hotel for the last time this evening, my phone decidedly reported that I had basically been up and about for 18 hours straight.

It's been a while since I've been here, and yet things come back rather quickly. Taking the train from the airport might as well have been driving home from work. My navigation skills once out of the train network could do with some polishing, but things are so easy to find that I don't even get to have the usual problem of "Where do I want to eat tonight?" Now I would just need to learn the language as opposed to having to dance and act my questions / intentsions / other communications with the locals.

Anyway … I am dead tired. All I can think about is sleepy. The horizontalness of the bed is calling to me. And if it isn't, then I should still sleep to get rid of this delirium.