By my estimate, I traveled far enough to circumnavigate the globe and then some since my last post. At the end of December, my wife and I flew to Okinawa to visit with family for a week, about 7500 miles each way.
That was an adventure in many ways! We flew via Taipei on EVA, a Taiwanese airline. The fare was about half of what it would have cost to go via Tokyo, and EVA, although not many people have heard of it, is a nice and highly regarded airline. Our main issue was layovers. On the way there, we had less than an hour to make our connecting flight to Naha in Okinawa, and on the way back we had a twelve-hour layover!
Of course, our flight was twenty or thirty minutes late leaving Houston, so that really put the squeeze on in Taipei. We got to the gate and started deplaning only a few minutes before our schedule departure time. We didn’t think there’d be another flight that day, so we were stressed, to put it mildly.
However, when we got to the end of the jetway, there was a nice EVA employee there pulling aside the four or five of us who were supposed to be on the Okinawa flight. The fact that he had a laminated sign with the flight number and destination told us that this was a regular occurrence, and one of our fellow travelers confirmed that he’d done this a few months earlier when his plane was over an hour late and they held the flight for him.
We dashed through the airport, went through secondary security in a jetlagged fog, and ran to our gate, where we boarded a bus that took us to the Okinawa plane. Mission accomplished, and we were grateful to EVA for the extra measures they took to keep us from losing a day of vacation with family.
We rented a car in Okinawa. My wife was the only one with an international driver’s license, a prerequisite for renting a car there, so she drove (on the other side of the road) and I navigated. Google maps was another helping hand–not sure we could have survived without it.
The hotel we stayed in was on the beach and our room faced the East China Sea, so that was nice. We stayed for eight days and we’re pretty sure we were the only westerners in the hotel. The other guests were all either Japanese or Chinese tourists. There was a Radisson up the road that was probably the preferred destination for American tourists, but we quite liked being in the minority for a change.
We saw two local demonstrations at the hotel. First we saw them making mochi, which is a pounded rice paste. They are quite enthusiastic (and loud) about the way they slam the wooden poles into the big vats of rice, and the kids who lined up to take part seemed to enjoy it. On our last night, we got back in time to see the Okinawan drum demonstration, which was also fun.
Mostly, though, we visited with our daughter, son-in-law and 2-1/2 year old granddaughter, who was endlessly entertaining. We ate out a few times and made meals at home the rest of the time. There was a New Years Eve party for 2- and 3-year-olds on the afternoon of the 31st, though none of us stayed up to usher in the new year in at midnight. Instead, we celebrated the following day when it was midnight in Houston, at a respectable 3 pm in Japan!
The only down side to the trip was that both my wife and I came down with bad colds and/or flu. My wife bore the brunt of it, and it took her a while to bounce back after we returned to Houston. The twelve hour layover in Taipei wasn’t as much fun as it sounds, either. We had scheduled to take the free four-hour tour the airport offers, but we were miserable enough that we decided to give that a miss. The ensuing jetlag made things worse. We had half-heartedly toyed with the idea of trying out this “dry January” concept this year, and we ended up doing it, mostly because we wanted to get better and not do anything that might cause a setback. We’re looking forward to having our first glass of wine in a month with dinner on Friday!
Two weeks to the day after I got back, I had to return to Japan on business, another 6500 miles each way, for a grand total of about 28,000 miles. This was a briefer trip — I left on Monday and got back on Saturday — and it was in Tokyo this time. Mostly in the Shinjuku, Sendagai, Roppongi area, although there was one trip to the west side, to Haijima, which is where I normally go on these trips.
I had three hectic days of meetings and presentations, plus some late nights eating out with coworkers. It was fairly cold when I was there, in the thirties and forties mostly. After I boarded the plane on Saturday afternoon, I saw precipitation outside the window. Rain, I thought at first, but it was actually snow flurries, and the snow was wet so it built up on the plane fast. Which meant they had to de-ice the wings, which meant an hour delay in departing.
I did something right on this trip, though. I slept a few hours early in the return journey, off and on, in one-hour bursts. Arriving in Houston in the late afternoon, I soldiered through the rest of the day and my jetlag has been minimal. I’ve been sleeping when I should be and awake when I should, too. I wish I knew a reproducible formula for that!
During the first trip, I watched several movies. On the outbound flight I saw Antman and the Wasp and Searching. While in Okinawa, we watched My Neighbor Tortoro with our granddaughter, and on the return flight I watched Bad Night at the El Royale and Life Itself. After we got back, I finally got around to Bird Box.
I watched the final four episodes of the Netflix series You on the way to Tokyo last week and the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery on the way back. (It’s available on Netflix outside of the US, so I was able to download it to my iPad.) Since getting back, I’ve watched the first four episodes of the new season of True Detective. I really hope they stick the landing on this one, as I’m enjoying it so far. The pacing is leisurely and they’re holding their cards close to the vest, but I like it.
I have a new book project in the early stages of development, so most of my reading has been research for that. I won’t be able to say more about it for some time, as it’s still in the hypothetical stage, but it’s going to be a lot of fun if it works out.
