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The last few days have been filled with nothing but chaos and more chaos. Due to a national holiday in Japan, I had trouble booking a nice inn, which in its own right destroyed the subtle feeling of calm that I had felt just a few hours before. It did however give me a chance to practice plenty of Japanese, and to hear people tell me that they have no rooms over 30 times.
In the end, I found a nice place not far from Shinjuku. Initially I wanted to stay in the Ueno/Asakusa area, since that is a very nice downtown area, but nothing there was available, so I decided to settle for this.

It was cheap, only 3800 yen per night, and the Innkeeper and I am guessing his Wife, are both really nice people. They faxed me a hand-drawn map with directions!
I shall make a more detailed report on it when I have actually lived there.

My plan for now consists of being in Tokyo for 2 nights, and then I am setting off further south, perhaps to Nagoya, Osaka, Matsuyama, or directly to Kuyshu. We’ll see.
Now I just hope that I won’t forget my passport or something.

Packing and acquiring equipment for said packing has not been easy. Having really no clue about what to expect, you can imagine that I had found plenty of stress over what backpack to choose or whether it’s size is enough.
This stress was and is fueled by the fact that Macoteket wants to do their launch during my absence, and I need to finish up a few things still before the new guy takes over. I wonder what will happen. Luckily for me, I shall have no phone with me! Although I might buy one in Tokyo.

Following the crazy hotel booking drive, I only got 4 hours of sleep. I woke up with a monster pulse and a nagging wish for a sedative Hypospray, but none was available.

I guess this all comes from my need to make this an interesting trip. I guess I don’t wanna waste the tickets, so in the end its economical. I hate that. I am a perfectionist with an undefined twist, and it drives me nuts most of the time. I guess having never really travelled alone (except back when I was 13 and came from Russia to a boarding school in Sweden), or having never backpacked or having never been to Japan, and not having a mastery of the language adds to my trepidation.

At this point however it seems that I have finalized my choice of equipment, packed down most of the my stuff and booked a hotel at least for the first two nights. Now I should go to bed. This I should have done a few hours ago, in order to start getting used to the Japan time, which is totally not my style. I have to go to bed at 4pm and get up at midnight. Being a night owl, I might have trouble with that at first.

Tomorrow I plan on looking into interesting destinations in Japan, and maybe I’ll even book a train ticket to such a destination, so I don’t have to worry about seating, since it is a holiday season after all. Tomorrow I shall also wonder why I had not done all that stuff weeks ago.
I guess planning things in advance is just not my thing. I am too irrational and unpredictable, even to myself, so such things would just never work for me.
I hope I can just go with the flow, at least for the most part. Time shall tell.

Look on flickr tomorrow for pics of my packing

Tags: japan, travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 16th, 2005 at 23:19 and is filed under Diary, Japan Trip 2005, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.