#1 My first trip to Japan

Transcript

Hey there, my name is Keith and this is my new travel podcast. Right now I'm just walking through the woods in eastern Canada, but my plan is to hopefully start traveling again soon and documenting the experience. So until then this is kind of a placeholder podcast just to get this thing up and running. But also I thought I could just kind of explain what this is. So presumably this podcast is going to mostly be about Japan. I visited Japan for three months and I also do a podcast called How to Write a Novel. So if you're interested in writing, I've been chronically my incredibly slow progress toward writing a novel. But I was doing that podcast while I was traveling. So inadvertently I just kind of had these recordings of the places that I went and people mentioned like, man I love those traveling episodes. You know it's a shame about the COVID world because it was fun to hear you travel around. And I agree, I mean listening back is just neat to have these little audio logs of stuff that happened to me. Like for example, there was this one period in Japan where it was actually kind of tough because I lost my passport and I was having trouble with my banking stuff. Things were getting kind of stressful. So I wanted to sort of wear myself out, you know, try to work past my anxiety a little just to help me get to sleep that day. I decided to go on an epic walk. I was near Ikabukuro and I saw in the distance the Skytree which at the time I didn't even know what the Skytree was. I just saw this tower in the distance. I didn't realize at the time that it's one of the tallest towers in the world. So I was like, yeah, I mean sure that looks far away. But how far could it be? I'm going to try to walk there. So anyone who knows Tokyo at all walking from Ikabukuro to the Skytree is not a short walk. That's going to take hours. But I did it. And because I was doing this writing podcast, I just that particular episode had very little to do with writing. I would just kind of stop in during the journey and like, oh, here's what's happening now. Here's what's happening now. And it ended up being one of my favorite episodes of that podcast.

So that's kind of my idea here is why don't I just do a podcast like that? Just wherever I happen to be walking that day. Just do a little audio journal of it. Because you know, these days it's not too hard to take video. You know, you get a gimbal for your phone and things look all professional. There's lots of video of people just walking around different cities. So I mean, it wouldn't be that tough for me to do that. But I feel like this podcast is going to be very random. Like I'm just going to stop in and sort of present little different moments. So if there was a video, I feel like it might be, it would just be sort of disjointed and kind of weird. And I'm just really not a video guy. I really like audio. And I think this is a bit of a unique project maybe.

Because I don't know how many other podcasts there are that are going to be like this.

Where you can just listen to a guy talk about walking around in this other country.

And I think the Japan thing is an extremely important part of this recipe. Because I was thinking how like, oh, there's like cool places I found in Montreal or in Vancouver that, you know, I could do a little podcast about. But it would be weird because I'd just be describing like, so I'm down on the beach and there's rocks and there's sky and there's clouds and trees. You know, it maybe would seem a little pointless where there's just something about Japan that even though that's exactly what I'll be doing in Japan, it won't be any different. But I'll be describing rocks and trees and sky and clouds in Japan. And I'm just going to admit straight up that I'm one of those guys who just thinks Japan is cool. All this kind of normal stuff just seems more exciting because it's Japan. You know, like when I grew up, obviously video games are really heavily weighted toward Japan. I read manga, I watched anime. I always had a lot of Japanese pop culture in my life. So I was like, you know, Japan seems pretty cool. I wouldn't mind going. But I only eventually went because one of my friends was there. And I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. 5:00 If anything, I think a side piece to this podcast might be that as much as I like traveling and as exciting as it is, it's also very hard. You know, if anyone tells you traveling is easy and fun, they're just lying to you. It's not true. There's a lot of very tough things about traveling. And I've had plenty of very anxiety-filled, difficult experiences. Not everywhere I visited has been my favorite place ever.

But in Japan, I clicked in a lot easier than I expected. I think it is just kind of that I've been passively absorbing all this Japanese pop culture my whole life. Definitely helped. And by the time I left, I remember I flew from Japan to Vancouver.

And when I woke up the next day in my Vancouver AirBnB, at first I thought I was still in Japan. And then when I realized I wasn't, I was a little disappointed. And then it took a few days for that feeling to go away. And that's really never happened to me before. Usually the balance of traveling is, you know, it's exciting, but it's also stressful in equal enough measures that I'm happy to be home. You know, I'm glad I did it, but I'm happy to be back in Canada. Japan was the first time that I was like, oh, I wish I was still there. And then very soon after that, the COVID pandemic happened. And that's it. At that point was my hometown in eastern Canada and I've been there ever since. And it's been a good place to hunker down because it's a pretty obscure part of the world that not a lot of people pass through. It's been a pretty easy time waiting for things to open up again. But, you know, during these COVID times, it's like, oh jeez, I definitely would have been back to Japan by now. And then like, oh, I would have been back to Japan twice by now. And then I just had to stop thinking about it that way, because it was just bumming me out. So I'm sure this podcast will inadvertently cover some other things, but it's very much going to be about Japan. So that's the plan in case you're trying to determine whether you're in or you're out with this project is the idea of hearing somebody just talk about their random travels as to be interesting. And I think you really got to be a bit of a Japan file to give a shit. I'm really kind of lost in these woods. I thought I was just going to cut through.

But now I'm at this kind of open marshland.

And I don't think I can progress any further. I think I need to go back into the woods and find a different way out of here.

But yeah, my plan is I want to get out of Eastern Canada before it snows again. You know, my plans are pretty vague, but I thought this would be a good way to direct things. Try to avoid the snow. Start making my way west across Canada.

But then Christmas is generally a weirdly downbeat time of year to be traveling by yourself. So I really don't want to spend Christmas in some random Canadian city. I've done that plenty of times, but since I just, you know, will have just left my hometown, it's too soon to come back. So the next goal is get to Japan before Christmas. When I visited Japan last time, it was the height of summer. So this time will be the opposite end of the calendar year. And I think that'll be cool because even just, you know, like I really do like just doing Monday and stuff when I travel. Like I don't go see stuff in particular. I just kind of wander around and see what happens. See what the place feels like. And one of the things about Japan was the drink machines. I love it. I love that there's just drink machines everywhere and public washrooms everywhere. So you just buy little cans of coffee and walk through the endlessness of Tokyo. You can do that all day and you'll never have to worry that you can't find a drink machine. And then when you got to drain that coffee, you'll never have to worry that you won't find a washroom. It's perfectly laid out to just walk forever. But I would see the parts of the drink machine that in the winter time have warm drinks. And I was like, oh, that would be so great. You imagine how awesome that would be to get a little hot tea or a hot can of corn soup or something from the vending machine. 10:00 You know, like it's just a tiny little thing, but I'm really looking forward to that. That's going to be great.

So walking around Japan in the winter time is my plan. But it'll be a little while before this plan kicks off. So like I said, this is just an introductory episode. So I thought to introduce myself a little. First, I guess I'll say the way that I'm able to do this, that I'm just able to travel around and wander is I have some inheritance money. So I'll just say that up front. It would be super cool if I figured out some way to work remotely so that I was making money while I travel, but I'm not. I got inheritance money, but I also really try to be frugal when I travel. Everything I own fits in a book bag. It's been that way for many years. It makes it easy to travel and you just really can't spend money. Because anytime I want to buy something, it's like, well, is that going to fit in the book bag? If that goes in something else, it's got to come out. So I really only have the essentials, but in this modern internet world, it hasn't been a big problem. And I really like just finding cheap flights and cheap Airbnb's. Because sometimes you really just have some neat, unexpected experiences that can be really great for a lot less money than you might expect. And I mean, if I didn't travel frugally, if I wasn't careful with this money, I would just feel bad. You know, I would feel guilty. My forebearers who worked and worked much harder than I had to work to make that money. I would feel really bad if I just wasted it on stuff. So I am going to spend it traveling the world, but I'm going to try to do it in an inexpensive way. So I'll chronicle that as I go as well.

But I thought what I might do for this first episode. You know, I did think during COVID, during lockdown, I kind of thought like maybe I should kick this podcast off and just recount things that I did. Let's just talk about stuff that I did previously on other trips. Because you know, that's what I spent a lot of this COVID time doing is just daydreaming and remembering like, oh yeah, remember when I went to this place and I went to that place and I saw this and I saw that.

But you know, it's a very abstract thing like I was saying. It's like, I don't know how valuable it is to describe this stuff at all. But it'll surely be more compelling if I'm actually there, if you're actually hearing the sounds of the place around me. Just trying to describe stuff that I did three years ago. I was like, I don't think so. I think that's a little too abstract. So we'll hold off. We'll hold off till I'm actually traveling again. But as I was saying, traveling is not nearly as easy as travel programs or even a lot of travel YouTubers might make it seem.

It's pretty tough. It's a lot of difficult things that can happen, but I think that's interesting too. I think I'm also going to chronicle the traveling part a little. Just knowing that somebody is going to hear the story in the future on both ends. I think the fun parts of walking around Japan will just be neat to capture those in a slightly more concrete way than just capturing them in my memory, but also the crappy parts. It feels like you're doing it for more of a reason. You know, if I got to go through some horrible flight, but I get a little story out of it, a neat little podcast that people will later be able to listen to. It makes it a million times easier.

It almost makes you feel like glad that you're doing it. I was like, yeah, this is crap, but it's going to be a cool podcast. So along those lines, I thought I would just tell the story a little of my first arrival in Japan because it was so weird. I feel like it's the kind of travel story you just never hear, but it's a good example of how traveling is not as cut and dried as you might hope it will be. As what I did, I got a relatively inexpensive flight from Montreal to Amsterdam because that's one thing I've learned about flying is if you can manage to sort of piggyback on another flight, it can really help with prices. So in this case, they had daily flights going for Montreal to Reykjavik that, you know, the tourism board of Iceland is just like we need to have this. This needs to be available. And also daily flights from Reykjavik to Amsterdam, but the purpose of these flights is to get people to Iceland, you know. 15:00 They've got these planes that go every day that are not full.

So my flight from Montreal to Amsterdam through Iceland was way cheaper than a direct flight because I'm just filling in a spot that otherwise would have been an empty seat. And it did plant the idea in my head of like, you know, I could just stop in Iceland and maybe one of these days I will. I didn't on this trip though. So I was in Amsterdam for about three weeks and I couldn't find any cheap way to stay in Amsterdam. I say Amsterdam, but I was really in the oat sorn, which is like two cities away.

And it still was not a particularly cheap Airbnb, but right at the end of my time in Amsterdam, I got sick. Really super sick, like very sick, but that's where, you know, if I was Joe Richie pants, it sure would make things easier because the last thing I wanted to do was travel. It really wasn't even socially responsible of me to travel because I didn't want to make anybody else sick, but I had everything booked way, way, way in advance so that I could get good prices. So if I was just super rich, I would have just got some kind of hotel in Amsterdam, waited for another week, booked a flight to Japan, move on from there. But everything was already laid out. I had a flight from Amsterdam to Tokyo through Russia because the Russian flight was the cheapest one. But due to recent events involving Russia, you know, I won't be doing that anymore. I cannot in good conscience by the Russian flight anymore.

So I had this Russia flight to an Airbnb in Tokyo, and if I didn't take it, like then what? Then what would happen? As long as I follow that exact prescribed path, I've got somewhere to go. Show up to the airport, sit in this flight for a million years, show up at Tokyo, go to this place where you can sleep. If I miss that trip, it's an incredible disaster, like everything falls apart. I lose everything that's already been paid for, and I guess I would just pay horrifying prices for a hotel or a last second Airbnb in Amsterdam. And then what? Then I'm still stranded and stuck, and like it would just, I just didn't have a choice. It's like I have to take this flight.

So those last few days in Amsterdam, I just basically stayed in my little Airbnb room that was just like a spare room in some dude's house.

And I just didn't do anything or go anywhere, and I just hunkered down. Let's just hope this passes, and it's definitely where, you know, everything had been going pretty well up to that point. But when you're just like really, really sick, sure does change the complexion of stuff. Like I remember being in that little room, and instead of any kind of excitingness to this adventure, you know, day three of being deathly ill, you really feel the distance of like, where am I? Like you started imagining on a little map of like, here is my hometown in eastern Canada. Go across a freaking ocean, go to the Netherlands, and then not even Amsterdam, but go to Amsterdam, and then go even further across a big empty field. Get to Oatthorn, get to this random house, and some random little street, go upstairs to the spare room, and there's me. Just cold sweats, shivering, incredibly sick, and it's just like, why? Why am I here? What am I doing? And it's where, you know, just being a grown-ass man, it starts to, that all starts to disappear, that evaporates. So I do remember being in that bed with a big, heavy blanket on, but still freezing, and shivering, just wishing that my mom was there. That's how bad it was. I was like, I hate everything about this. If I could just snap my fingers and make this whole journey rewind so that it never happened, I would have done it.

But like I said, that wasn't a choice, everything was already laid out. So luckily, by the time the day came to take this flight, I was feeling quite a bit better, like the fever kind of broke.

I woke up crazy early when I was leaving. You know, I must have left that house at like 5.30 in the morning, because I love getting to the airport as early as possible. Airports are super stressful if you have to try to rush through them, but as long as you give yourself tons of time, and I mean tons. Like as much time as you think seems like a reasonable amount of time to get through an airport, if you can, my recommendation is give yourself three more hours than that, because you will be shocked how fast that time gets eaten up. And then worst case scenario, you just sit in a lounge somewhere, read a magazine or something for a while, you know. I actually really love hanging out at airports, like once everything is sorted out and you're just waiting for your flight, it's like the most exclusive coffee shop in the world. It's a coffee shop that costs tons of money to get into, so nobody there is going to give you any trouble. Nobody's going to hassle you. It's the most premium. Sit there and have a coffee that you could ever do.

So I got up super early, took the regional bus from Outthorn through Amstelvin to the edge of Amsterdam. I was at the Amsterdam version of the World Trade Centers. They have two of them there, just like they used to have in New York. And I always like that place because the Netherlands has a weird washroom culture, like just finding open washrooms is surprisingly hard. I think it's going away a lot these days, but they still have a certain like pay for the bathroom mentality going on. So I really liked these World Trade Centers because they just had a washroom you could go to.

And sorry to get slightly graphic, but again this is just a part of what makes traveling a weird difficult thing to do.

I stopped into this washroom and I just had incredible amounts of diarrhea. Like I think that was the next step in my sickness is I wasn't coughing. My nose wasn't really running. I wasn't visibly like sick anymore, but the next step was diarrhea. And it was to a degree that it's like this is not good. This cannot be a good thing. This doesn't feel at all normal, even by just having diarrhea standards. And basically I stopped at every possible washroom, at every stage I could on the way to the airport. And from the time that I woke up until I finally got on that plane, I had to go to the washroom about seven times. Like yet again, there's nothing I wanted more than to call this journey off.

Can we please not do this today? I am not ready to do this, but I had no choice.

But I remember, I don't know, just small, small miracles, I guess, when I finally got to the very last step before we got on this plane, like I still didn't feel good. I really felt like trying not to make any sudden movements, trying not to do anything to make my stomach rumble, just trying to take everything as carefully as possible. But everything finally slowed down to the point where I didn't go to the washroom anymore. But while I was waiting for the final boarding, I started, I helped on the airport Wi-Fi. And I don't know, because there's this thing that's just, again, I'm sorry about getting graphic again, but this just made me think of this. There's this period in life where things kind of tip over where when you're younger, you have a lot of close calls of like, oh man, I got to get home sooner. It's going to be trouble. But you just always do. You know, you're like, wow, that was a close one, but I got home in time. I didn't like poop myself. And then they hit a point when I was like in my mid-30s, where there's that time where maybe you were like out drinking the day before, and you're real sick, or just some enough things are going wrong, that you don't, you don't make it home. And it just seems so crazy, because it's like that never happens. It feels like there should be some magical thing in the world that just makes sure that that never quite happens. And then it does happen. And then as soon as you get home, you just got to go straight in the shower. And it's just like, I can't believe it. I can't fucking believe it. How did that happen? But that had happened to me, I think twice in my life up to that point. Enough times that that magical feeling of like, oh, I'll just be fine on this flight. Surely this will be fine. I didn't have that faith anymore. Now it's like, during takeoff and landing in particular when you are just in the seat and you're not allowed to get out, what happens? 25:00 What happens if I get hit with diarrhea again? What's going to happen? And when you look up those stories and find Reddit threads and stuff, I mean, it's exactly what you think. It just happens. People are not allowed to go to the washroom. They're not allowed to leave their seat. They're buckled in and they just poop themselves in the plane. And it's like a horrifying mega embarrassing nightmare.

So I guess just taking whatever small gifts from the universe it was willing to give me. Just that the things that calm down enough that I felt like, okay, I don't think I need to go to the washroom anymore. That's fine. I'll take it. That's all I can ask for.

So I got on this plane and sitting next to a nice Dutchman talked about Oaksorn. I was like, oh, I've never been there. Of course you've never been there. No one's ever been there. It's only there because I wanted the cheapest Airbnb I could find. But this Russian flight, it was a lot different from, I don't know, Canadian flights are quite bare bones. Even, you know, I got upgraded to first class one time. And even that, it still, it didn't feel like especially fancy to me. Not like when you watch an old movie where the Russian airline, I absolutely felt like I was in an old movie.

All the stewards and stewardesses are dressed up in super fancy uniforms with big shoulder pads and stuff and inflite meals in Canada. It's, if there even is one, it's nothing. You know, it's just whatever crammed this in your face. Where this was like the full on, whoo, so fancy and so cool. And I actually really like airline food. I think it's really good. But I was just this whole flight. I was just like every little time I'd feel my stomach and gurgle. I just tried to sit still as possible just to not move at all and just not do anything to exacerbate the situation. So it was such a bummer when they came around and asked like what, what inflite meal I wanted and I just had to say nothing, nothing please. I just didn't want to risk it.

So I'm going to skirt past this next part of the story a little because it really is its own separate story for another time. But I learned that if you're getting connecting flights similar to what I was saying about just getting to the airport early, try not to get connecting flights that give you very little time to connect. The more time the merrier, because we got to the airport in Moscow, the big major one. It's the name I am not remembering right now.

And can you hear that? Like, I can hear traffic in the distance, but it seems like it's coming from all directions. So I still don't know how to get out of these woods. But anyway, just keep wondering. I'll get there eventually. So I got to the Russian Airport and I feel like that's the diarrhea part of this sickness. Seemed to have passed. Everything was still okay, but I still was like eating nothing. Like, just let's be on the safe side here. But that airport is enormous. It's so fucking big and crowded and crazy and I've never been there before. And just the way this flight was lined up, there was no hope ever of me making this connection. Oh yeah, we were a bit late leaving Amsterdam as well. So at least on the plus side, it wasn't at all my fault that I didn't make the connection. But long story short, I was stuck in the Russian Airport overnight.

And then I would get a replacement flight the next day. And I was actually really happy about that because I was like, again, just really not feeling confident in my physical state. I was like, yeah, I don't want to get on this really long flight to Tokyo right now. If I can take another day off, chill in some Russian airport hotel. That is perfect. That sounds amazing. But I did not expect the Russian bureaucracy to be so insanely inefficient. Everything in triplicate, everything as slow as possible. It was hours, hours and hours and hours. I got there, you know, early afternoon. Things didn't get sorted out for my little group of people. There was a bunch of us too. Things didn't get sorted out for us to get to this crazy Russian airport hotel that was locked down. Like you were not allowed to leave till like 1 a.m. So again, I was just like thankful that like, hey, you know, very few washrooms during that time. 30:00 And even the ones that were just anything, just imagine the stereotype of what you imagine it might be like to be stuck in a Russian airport for 24 hours. And that's what it was. It was like the cartoon version of every stereotype you might have ever heard about how Russian people are and how the environment feels. Like you go into, it was quite a modern, nice airport, but then you go into the washroom and everything smells like cigarettes. You know, and it's all fucked up. I mean there, that just that alone, that dichotomy, I feel like kind of explains how it was. Super nice and super expensive and also just shit. Literal like like like an empty liquor bottle like you might find under an underpass, but that's like just in the airport. Where did that come from? What the fuck? But in its own way, that was actually great because I was starting to feel quite a bit better and ended up staying up with some people. We stayed up until five in the morning until the sun was coming up, just drinking and talking about our travel experiences and not hope I didn't make any of those people sick. Because they were super cool, but like I said, that's a separate story that I will maybe tell sometime. It's definitely a tale in and of itself, the Russian airport story.

So by the time I got on this flight the next day for Moscow to Tokyo, you know, I started off in terrible shape. I had almost no sleep. I'd been drinking all night, so I was also half drunk slash half hung over on this super long flight. And I'm not a good sleeper at the best of times, so I really couldn't sleep that well on this flight. Oh, and also in my efforts to not put anything in my stomach, besides booze apparently, but I also hadn't had any coffee and I'm a pretty definite caffeine addict. I drink coffee every day. So I think I was feeling extra bad because I also hadn't had coffee in a while.

So I was in this limbo during this flight. You know, I kind of just sit there. My eyes kind of closed. Couldn't really fall asleep.

Definitely fell asleep. Definitely felt quite, quite bad. And the whole thing just kind of feels a bit like a stress dream or something. You know, you're just in this weird, weird constrained situation and there's nothing you can do about it.

And I don't know how long is that flight? I don't know, Moscow to Tokyo. It's not a short flight. Let's just put it that way. I'm going to guess seven hours, but I'm really not sure anymore.

So my arrival in Japan was under some pretty weird circumstances, but I remember when they finally announced to like, okay, we got something like half an hour until we're going to make you strap in and prepare for landing in Tokyo. So that's the point where I was like, okay, I seem to have gotten away with this. You know, I certainly don't feel good, but the diarrhea part has definitely passed and had any other issues with that. And this was where kind of the magical power, you know, there's kind of a good thing in a way to having a low level dependence on something like caffeine. Because at that point, I was like, okay, we're getting close to touchdown. When the stewardess lady comes by, I'm going to ask for a coffee.

So I got that coffee, I drank that thing down, and it's just like, it was incredible how much everything changed, how my feelings just turned 180. Because instead of just trying to tolerate this journey, like I was like, you know, I felt like I had been clinging on to the edge of a capsized ship, you know. I'm just floating through the sea and I'm just hoping I get to safety on the other end, knowing that I was almost at the other end. And having that caffeine hit my system, having that coffee on an empty stomach, and you know, I hadn't had any coffee in a couple of days. Having that hit my bloodstream, man, I felt better. I just was like, boom, I'm awake now. And then I remember I was in the washroom just to take a beer, whatever, just looking in the mirror, and I was like, yeah, yeah, I made it. Man, I feel so much better. All of that crazy shit that just happened, like we made it through that. So in a weird way, my actual descent into Tokyo was way more exciting than it normally would have been because I just felt so relatively bad. 35:00 And I was like, I'm on the way there. And then yeah, that coffee boom, and I was just like, oh yeah, oh yeah, this is going to be so good.

And then I'll tell you the story of landing in Tokyo, but I think I'm going to save that because I've been wandering around these woods for way too long. I need to figure out what's actually happening, where I actually am. I got to get out of here.

So the podcast will continue right now, but I'm going to take a little break.

I'm not quite sure how I'm going to handle that in the podcast proper, because this will probably happen a bunch once I do the episodes from actual Japan. As you know, it'll be like a little, I'll stitch together a bunch of little moments of like, oh here's what happened today. But I'm not sure how I should delineate that time has passed.

Maybe I just won't. I'll just have this ambient sound fade into the ambient sound of the next recording session. And I'll just say, hey, now it's later. All right, I'll see you right now.

Okay, time warp to the future. It's now a rainy day, walking through some different woods with my little umbrella, get some ASMR rain sounds.

So in the interim period between these recordings, I still haven't got my travel stuff set up for sure. I've been poking around and I think next episode, I'll do an episode about Airbnb and COVID and just how I've noticed things have changed, because basically my plans, my plans were, I was like, okay, I can just go back to traveling like I used to. But things are different, the landscape has changed. Basically the cheap options that used to exist for Airbnb and being around are pretty much all God. Which now that I know that, it's not really surprising. Of course, COVID would have a huge effect on things. So it's changed my travel plans a bit.

But I'll get into that next episode. For now, let's finish this slightly odd tale of the time I visited Japan for my first time in 2019 and how I was sick when I arrived. Which is like, I guess the idea is, I kind of, I mean, I don't have a specific agenda with this podcast. I just kind of want to chronicle traveling. But I think a big part of that will be that traveling is not always fun. There's a lot of things about it that are tough and stressful. And it's obviously worth it in the end, more than worth it. But it's a little disingenuous to just pretend everything's great. But at the same time, there's always that rose colored glasses thing. When you look back on stuff, it just seems so great. Like the whole reason I want to do a travel podcast specifically focused on Japan is because during this whole COVID lockdown that I've just been stuck in my hometown, I just had so many nice daydreams about Japan. Like, ah man, remember all that cool stuff I did in Japan. But in reality, a lot of tough stuff happened in Japan. I lost my passport. It was a whole to do.

But you just have these fond memories. And this is a good example of that. The fact that I arrived in Japan with quite a bad flu was kind of miserable at the time. But in my memory, it's weirdly, it's a weirdly good memory. Or so I thought, but right after I finished recording that last segment, I went to the passport office to get a new passport. And it all went really smooth until literally the last minute. As I was leaving, as I was exiting the office, somebody was there with their kid. And the kid was sick and just coughing. But not only, you know, kids never cover their goddamn mouth when they're coughing. This kid was literally running in a circle coughing. It was like a sprinkler system that was spraying germs everywhere. And as like, un-fucking believable first off, it's a shame that North America learned nothing about masks during COVID. 40:00 Because in 2019, I do admit I found the masks a little odd in Japan because that's just not something we were doing at the time. It's like it seemed strange to me. It's like if you're sick, maybe you should probably just stay home, right? But obviously the Japanese work culture staying home is not so much an option. And it's just normalized for them to wear a mask. You know, like they would wear masks just for whatever reason. Maybe you're just shy. Maybe you got a lot of pimples that day. Maybe you just want to wear a mask. It's just not weird. Where for us it was until all of a sudden in 2020, COVID was everywhere. And suddenly wearing a mask was very normal in North America. So I kind of hoped we would maintain some of that, right? Like it would be nice if North America held on just to mask culture a little. So that if you were sick, put on a mask. Or for example, if you've got some kid and you just absolutely have to go to the fucking passport office that day with your sick kid, you just somehow have no other option. Man, whip a fucking mask on that kid. You know, if that kid's just going to run around being a germ bomb, put a mask on him. But no, I'm afraid not. North America as soon as it was decreed that okay, now it's okay to stop wearing masks again. We went back to 100% never wearing masks again. It's all in or all out with us unfortunately. But anyway, I was like, there's no way, right? There's no way I'm going to get sick from that from that just walking across the room on my way out of the passport office. And then I did. It was real sick for two weeks. And it's like, God damn, it's just funny that I'm in the middle of doing a podcast about this bizarre nostalgic sort of weirdly comforting memory I have of how sick I was when I got to Japan. But it's purely because of the nostalgic goggles, the rose colored glasses. The reality of being sick is that it sucks. It's fucking awful. It's fucking dumb to pretend that it's anything but that. However, that's the conceit of this episode. That's what we're talking about. So let us continue.

When we last left this story, I'd spent the night overnight trapped in Russia, didn't get very much sleep, stayed up all night drinking with people. So I was hungover, I was exhausted, I was still sick. But my diarrhea had passed. So again, you know, you just got to take what the good Lord above gives you, I guess. No, could have been a lot worse. If there was one part of being really sick that I would have wanted to not have to deal with, it's definitely diarrhea. So hey, at least that part had passed, could have been worse. So I drank the coffee with all the sugar in it. And the caffeine is hitting me, the sugars hitting me, and just the excitement of like we're finally almost there after all this crazy shit. After this miserable traveling and being sick and getting stuck in extra day in Russia and all this weird crap, we're almost there. And I just remember feeling so good, like I bounced from a two out of ten to a fucking nine out of ten. I was just like this is so exciting, this feels so good. And I mean, I knew it wouldn't necessarily last, but man, I just felt so great in that moment. I just remember so clearly staring at myself in that mirror and just being like, fuck yeah, man, fuck yeah.

All of my misery washed away. And then landing in Japan, I guess the first thing I noticed is it's surprising how much you can kind of gauge about a culture, even just from the airport. Russia, it's just like, you know, you could just tell from the airport everyone. Everyone was, I mean, it's just like... It's a whole separate story, but everybody was mean, unhappy, completely like no one had any personal efficacy. Everyone was just waiting for someone else to tell them what to do. Everything needed to be checked, triplicated. It just felt like an entire airport full of, of like children that are in a bad mood that are running the place. Russia, Russia. Fucking suck. Where is? Japan. Immediately, I was just surprised by how friendly and how nice the customs agent was. And this is where I do feel like maybe... I don't know if Japanese people would feel any kinship whatsoever with Canadians. Maybe we're not polite enough. 45:00 You know, maybe to them Canadians are a little too much like Americans, but from my perspective, I mean, the cliche about Canadians is that we're friendly and we're nice. And we're polite. And it's generally true. And it's not easy to do it. Really is one of those things that it kind of needs to be culturally ingrained in you because it's the, you know, everyone has bad days. Everyone gets frustrated. Everyone has stress in social situations. The Canadian superpower that's kind of drilled into the vast majority of us is that the first time somebody offends you, you take the hit. You just pretend you didn't notice. And the second time, you take the hit and you pretend you didn't notice. And as you're feeling frustrated and overwhelmed by the stresses of your day, you just push forward and you still try to be nice to people. And eventually, it reaches a point where forget all of that, it's over. But in my, I lived in New York for a year and a half and that's definitely a difference. I can't say about all of America. It's a big place. I'm sure it's different in different places. But the New York style is as soon as somebody pushes one of your buttons. You tell them to fucking get out of your face, you know, and it's just annoying. It's like, I don't respect that. No offense. New Yorkers. But I really don't. That's the easy option. That's the, you know, the only way for society to get along with each other for things to run smoothly is you got to absorb those first few hits. You got to take the insult. You got to take the stress. You got to take the fact that someone else is stepping on your toes and you just got to pretend it didn't happen. At least at first.

That's the Canadian way. And I felt that in Japan so much more clearly. Then again, it's not like I'm extremely well traveled. I've been to New York.

I've been to Amsterdam. I've been all over Canada. That's really it. But I recognized that extra effort to be polite in Japan and I greatly appreciated it, especially given the state I was in.

You know, that I was just running on fumes on this long ass trip. It was so nice too. It was a lady who was my customs lady. There was a guy and a lady. I'm not sure what the difference between them was. But just when I explained, you know, I would like to stay for the 90 days. And that was no problem. And they asked what my plans were and I was like, oh, I'm going to be in Tokyo, but then I'm going to Fukuoka to visit my friend. And yeah, when I said I was going to Fukuoka. The lady seemed very genuinely like enthused. Like, oh, man, you don't hear that all the time. Like, Fukuoka, great. I hope you like it. I really got the feeling that she was glad that I wasn't just going to go to Tokyo, go to Kyoto. You know, like I was going to go see more of the country. And really did seem like the vibe I got was like, yeah, cool. Japan's awesome and it's beautiful. And I'm glad you're seeing some more of it. Which we'll get into as this podcast goes on. But I was glad also I never would have except that my friend was already there, you know. It all worked out pretty well. But yeah, that was very nice. I was already feeling very, a lot more comfortable in Japan within minutes of being there. Then I felt certainly in Russia, but even even in Amsterdam where I just sort of never quite felt like I fit in despite being a tall white guy.