Category: Japan

Alley ATP

On By rrainefioreIn JapanLeave a comment

I didn’t sleep well last night.  I was awake at 2:00am, 4:00am and gave up at 5:00am.  It’s making me question how good the expensive jet lag protocol I bought is working.  Hopefully that will set me up for some good sleep tonight.  I had emptied my suitcases last night in hopes to do a more logical packing job in the morning and getting some of the things out of my backpack that are making it so heavy.  Now I had lots of time for that. 

I found out Wendy is feeling sick and the girls asked me to find cold medicine.  I asked Google if 7-11s in Japan carried cold medicine and it said they did.  Great – there is a 7-11 two blocks from my hotel.  And I have time for that!  I found some vitamin C, but no cold medicine.  I asked the clerk and he told me, no.  He gave me the location of the nearest pharmacy.  It wasn’t open and wouldn’t be before I had to be on my way to meet the girls in Bessho Onsen. 

I re-packed and decided to check out of the hotel and make my way to the Shinkansen station.  I could find a coffee shop there and enjoy a latte while I waited.  I left the hotel around 7:15 and got a text.

I was supposed to have a session with an ATP client at 7:00am, but I forgot.  My client texted me to tell me he was on the call.  Oh no, I felt so bad.  I could have done it from my room if I hadn’t just checked out.  I jumped on the call from my phone and apologized.  I was on a busy street with a ton of loud traffic.  So, I ducked into the first alley I came to.  There was a small ledge running along one of the buildings about 1 foot tall off the ground. The ledge was clean and not quite wide enough to sit on.  I squatted down and squished my butt on the ledge and propped my phone up on my suitcase in front of me.

The alley was clean and quiet.  Everything in Japan is clean.  I can’t imagine squatting in an alley for a meeting in any other country.  A few people walked by, but the didn’t act like anything was amiss.  Just a foreigner doing a video call in the alley.

ATP is Awakening To Presence.  It is coaching how to live in presence.  Living in presence helps to let go of the stress and false stories most of us live from.

Ham Plate

On By rrainefioreIn JapanLeave a comment

I found the train office in Tokyo and tried to get my future tickets printed.  For two of the tickets they told me they couldn’t print them and I could get them in Kyoto.  I wrote “get in Kyoto” across the receipt so I wouldn’t forget later when I got to Kyoto.  For the other one, the guy kept telling me I needed the QR code, but I never received the QR code and didn’t know how I was going to pull off getting one. I stepped out of line to see if I could figure it out on my phone. 

I did!  I found the QR code on the website I had ordered from.  I got back in line to get my tickets.  Then I was told I use the QR code to get on the train.  That was lost in translation before.  My trip from Akihabara Station to Tokyo Station, therefore, was completely not necessary, but I did feel slightly more prepared for those upcoming days.

Next order of business was to find dinner.  I walked out of the train station and then did a search for restaurants.  There was a brew pub near by.  At this point I had been up for 21 hours and was out of bandwidth to walk far, make decisions or eat strange things.  A brew pub sounded good.  Maybe I could get something easy and head back to my hotel.

I turned left and walked around the corner.  Oh, I went the wrong way.  I turned around and went the other way.  Very quickly I was going the wrong way again.  How did I miss it?  How was I so turned around?  Then I looked up – there was a set of stairs and some lights on the second floor.  The brew pub was on the second floor right above where I had come out of the station.  It was a tiny place with maybe room for 15 people.  The menu was very small, mostly snack items that were cold.  I was done and decided this wasn’t real Japanese food, but it was going to be just perfect because I was there and not extremely hungry.  I ordered the ham plate.  It had four types of ham and I washed it down with a ginger ale.  The formula for this is 21 Awake Hours + 12 hour flight + 3 Train Rides + 17 Train Tickets = Ham Plate.

Winning The Airport

On By rrainefioreIn JapanLeave a comment

It’s Sunday April twenty sixth, and I am sitting at the airport waiting for my flight to take off.  I’m headed to Japan again.  The last couple times I was in Japan, I wrote in the blog, and I think I will again. I have three friends that left a few days ago and are already there.  It will be fun to meet up with them and travel with them.

I bought new travel clothes before this trip.  I’ve never had “travel clothes” before.  Usually I just wear jeans, a t-shirt and a hoodie. I think a well fitting pair of jeans are comfortable, a t-shirt is comfortable if it’s too warm and the hoodie is essential if it’s cool. But I bought a matching pair of pants, tank top and long sleeve duster.  It doesn’t hide the belly as much as I’d like, but it’s supposed to be wrinkle proof and it’s fairly comfortable. 

For this trip, I am also trying a supplement kit and a tens unit that are both supposed to combat jet lag.  The supplement kit comes with supplements to fight inflammation and to help reset your circadian rhythm.  It also comes with blue light glasses and an app that tells you when to do what.  We went to Denver last night because there was talk of possible snow and if you have a morning flight, it is often easier to go down the night before and get a hotel than to mess with getting up 5 hours early and hoping traffic or weather doesn’t mess up your plans.  The jet lag app told me to go to sleep at 11:00, but I was tired at 9:00.  I forced myself to stay up, watching tv shows I didn’t really want to watch on the hotel room tv.  I spent a large portion of the night awake as I often do when not in my own bed.  Why do hotel rooms have so many lights?  People are here to sleep. 

I got up at 7:35am as my app told me to do.  I looked at my sleep data that my watch recorded.  I got a sleep score of 72.  That seems decent, but it didn’t feel decent.  It looked like I was awake most of the night from about 2:00am to 4:30am.  How is that not a lower sleep score?  Oh well, nothing to do about it now.

I put on my orange glasses that block out the blue light. I don’t quite understand that science.  I took my morning supplements and we headed out for breakfast.  When I got my coffee, I looked at the array of sugars and was instantly disappointed that there were no yellow packets.  I mentioned this and Richard looked at me like I was dumb.  They are right there.  Oh, yea, yellow glasses made the packets look white.  Then when I got my over medium eggs, I cut into the yolks and watched this off-white liquid run out.  Something’s wrong with my eggs.  That is not the color of eggs.  It had only been about 5 minutes since I couldn’t find the yellow sugar, but I had already forgotten about the glasses.  I took off my glasses and noticed the liquid was yellow.

After breakfast, Richard dropped me at the airport.  Have I mentioned before that I have a wonderful husband?  He didn’t have to take all this time to take me to the airport.  I took up half his day yesterday and will take up half of his day today. 

I found a bag tag kiosk and tried to print my bag tags.  It told me to go to the light blue area. I didn’t know what that meant and because of the glasses everything was red.  Nothing was blue.  I saw a different kiosk area and just decided to try that.  It was the right one.  Bags tagged and put on the belt in less than 5 minutes.

The pre-check line was longer than the other lines as usual – it kind of defeats the point of pre-check.  But, the lines moved fast – never stood still once.  While in line, I got 2 compliments on my cool glasses.  Huh, didn’t know being color blind with clip on orange glasses was fashionable.  The new-ish bag scanning equipment DIA has is slick and quick.  While I was waiting for my carry-ons to come out, the woman behind me commented that she loved my look, especially my outfit.  We chatted about where I was going.  She lived in Japan for a few years and was jealous I was going there.  She had loved living there. 

I arrived at my gate at 9:30am which was my goal time to get to the airport to begin with.  I got two more comments on my glasses in that short amount of time.  There was no line at the gate attendant so I went up and checked if there were any seats I could upgrade to.  There was and I could use miles to reduce the price.  I tried that yesterday and the website would only let me use money or miles, not both.  Great!  Now I look like I’m special and I will be sitting like I am special.  I also can go wait in the United lounge.  Even though the lounge is nothing spectacular, I think I am officially winning the airport!