#10 The flight to Japan

Transcript

Alright, I'm recording this episode the same day as the previous episode, so I was at that cool park with the squat toilets and the walk down the Kenda River. So it turns out there were a whole bunch of subways all over the place. Plenty of options I could have taken to get home. But every time I would see a train go by, they were extremely packed with people. And it's not that late.

But it's night now. Basically right at 5 o'clock at this time of year at the end of October. The sun just goes down. I've noticed too. It gets real cold as the sun is going down. Like I put on a second layer. I put on like a thermal shirt briefly. But then once the sun set, all the wind stopped. And it's not cold anymore. Now it's very nice.

Tiny little breeze on my bare t-shirt at arms feels good. And I've also noticed, although this is nothing to do with Japan. This is just me in general. But I kind of forgot about this. That when the sun's going down, it triggers my brain to feel tired. It's like that. Sun's going down. Day's over. And I feel so sluggish. Like it's just dragging me down. This used to always happen to me in Toronto and stuff. I think like, oh man, I can't go meet people tonight. I am dying. But then once the sun goes down, it's like a new day. It's like I'm in a second day. I don't feel tired at all. It's like, oh, it's nighttime now. New zone in the day. New time in the day.

Let's do it. But yeah, I kind of wanted to avoid those trains. Because as I'll tell now, just my journey from Nareda, just such a super packed train disaster. It's like, that's not what I came to Japan for. I don't want to do busy trains.

Oh man, here's the stairway in the middle of nowhere. Flashbacks to Montreal. Except here, there's a drink machine at the top. And I'm at the point where I'm trying to dehydrate a little bit. So I don't have to wake up in the middle of the night and wake up all my people at my Airbnb. So I can go pee. But I do need a bottle of water. Just to make sure I don't have sticky mouth while I'm doing this podcast.

It's exactly the same situation as before where there's Polkari sweat in this thing and various other random stuff. Oh yeah, the drinks with the little, uh, what is that stuff? Like little, they're little squares of jelly in the drink. Yeah, this is got Polkari sweat. It's got Evian thankfully. So that's what I got with Snoopy on it. But just says like, okay, no for sure. That one's water. Because in the next one next to it, tons on from a Sahi Wilkinson tons on. It's got bubbles. So it's probably at the very least sparkling water, but it might not be water at all. And yeah, my little Google translate thing has been so fantastically useless. It never says anything legible or sensible. And it's tough to use it through the screen of a vending machine as well. I have been noticing the soups too. This one just has corn soup. But what was the other one? I saw another one that had some other kind of soup. And I don't remember what it was. But yeah, during the day, it's so super warm still that the idea of the hot soup. It's like not yet. But I like that this row is here. All the hot drinks are here, ready to go.

Hot coffee, hot tea, soup. One of these like vitamin C drinks. As it gets colder, I'm very excited for that row. Because when I was here in the dead of summer, they just weren't even here. They were not an option. But not yet. Not nearly cold enough yet.

Oh, sweet. I was just looking at this great big street. And I'm like, how the hell? What am I supposed to do here?

But there's a walking bridge. There are my favorite.

It's seldom used by the locals. Always used by me. Because I don't want to deal with traffic. It's confusing and frightening.

Oh man, I just walked past a really awesome shopping street. It looks awesome. But it's busy. I can't walk down that and talk to myself. You know what? Okay, I'm going to podcast break. I've got to walk down this street. This thing looks amazing.

Okay, false alarm. That intersection was all busy and bustling, but it was actually a pretty short area. So yeah, I'm feeling reenergized because it's nighttime now. It's the second half of the day, two days in every day. But I'm not near home at all. I got a long ways to go. So let's finally do the story about how I got here. So when last I left you with my traveling, I was in the Calgary Airport and I had to stay overnight.

I went for a Montreal to Calgary, then I had a 20-hour layover and then the 10-hour flight. And I was really dreading this. I mean, that just sounds awful on paper, right? But that was like, you know, the more direct flights were like $1,400 Canadian, where this one was, I don't remember exactly, but I think in the 800s, 800s something.

So I was saving four or 500 bucks and all it took was a horrifying layover. But as I recounted on that episode, I couldn't believe how well it went. I would go so far as to say I had fun sleeping overnight in the Calgary Airport. I slept way easier than I expected. I didn't get a full night sleep, but I did just fine.

And airport, so yeah, look at that train. Got so many people. So many people. No thank you. No thank you. Again, I'm in no hurry, right? So I can just take all, I can take all evening, walk him back. Same thing with the trip in general. I was not in a big hurry. Didn't really matter when I arrived in Japan.

But yeah, I guess why I was so concerned, I mean, beyond the obvious of this ridiculous, like, you know, when you look at your travel thing and it says 34 hours, that's concerning. You know, what are you doing, circle in the earth? Like, what takes 34 hours, but it's because you're stuck overnight in an airport. And also, the first time I went to Japan, I mean, on the way there, as I talked about in the very first episode of this podcast, I was sick, so that was miserable. But on the way back, I was fine. I was just tired. I didn't sleep very much the night before. And I just remember that whole flight.

I was just, I was just kind of in a state of living death. I was not very awake.

Okay, so that is a kid. I heard that screeching earlier and I was like, is that a cat being killed? No, it's just a child.

But yeah, I can never really sleep on flights. I slept way better in the airport than I ever would on a flight. So I just remember that flight back from Japan. I was sort of awake, sort of asleep. Just the only way I got through it was to just kind of keep my eyes closed. And I was like awake for most of the 10 hours, but I would just do little like meditation stuff or whatever just to try to make the time pass and just to try to make the time pass. And it was quite, quite miserable. So I figured like, oh, well, this is going to be like that, but even worse. But it wasn't because even though I only got, I don't know, probably five and a half hours of solid sleep at the airport, that's a pretty good chunk. That's plenty. I felt good going into this flight and I was like, amazing, dude, holy crap. I just never expected that ever.

Oh, man, it's a good thing I got this map on my phone. I mean, this is how I, if you listen to last episode, I didn't use the map at all for the first batch of today.

And that's how I went and wandered, I've got lost somewhere in a different city. But now that it's dark and, uh, I mean, I got my energy back, but my shoulders have not acclimated yet to me carrying around a book bag all day. My shoulder blades are barking. It's another reason I want to do this podcast. It'll get my mind off of it while I walk. But I took one little turn and it's like, geez, I'm like, almost going. Not fully the wrong way, but almost. I gotta get this map.

Yeah, it's nice how quiet this is, but I need to get on a street that's a little bit more major than this to get where I'm going. But yeah, I got on this flight, feeling pretty good, and I actually paid for the seat. It's the only leg of my flight that I paid the, it's like quite a lot. It's like $40 to pick, which seat you're going to sit in. 10:00 But I have the dual problems of when I'm sitting in a sitting position, I have this cyst, unfortunately, non-dangerous cyst, but it fills with fluid when I sit for too long and it hurts. I remember as one of those things, I just assumed they would be like a surgery or something, which I was obviously nervous about. So when the doctor told me like, hey, it's not dangerous, we're not going to do a surgery. You just have to limit how much you sit. That's another just sign of getting old. What a disturbing thing to be told. It's like, on the one hand, I'm glad it's not dangerous. I'm glad we're not doing a surgery because you never know, that can always, you know, things can go wrong.

But I asked him about stuff like traveling. And he said, you know, it's fine, just take a bunch of painkillers, tough it out. You know, put up with this, and it really, as it builds up, it really hurts. It stings like a lot.

But he said, just take a bunch of painkillers and then shake it off when you get to the other end. It's like yeek. Like on the one hand, I'm very glad that it was okay, because especially before I knew about the cyst, it was just this pain. I didn't even know it was sitting that caused it. I couldn't figure out what was going on. And when it's in your abdomen area, it's like, do I just have cancer? Am I going to die? So compared to that, this wasn't so bad, but still disturbing news. Not something else I can forward to. And the previous four, four and a half hour flight from Montreal to Calgary was very, maybe not very. I mean, it was painful, I don't know. One to ten, it was like two or three. But for four hours, just like, I hate this. Where I have to sit kind of slumped. So I don't have a bend in my leg because that makes the cyst pain happen. But I'm a tall-ass man, and there's no space for my knees. So my knees were crammed into the seat, and I just have one bad knee already. So that was painful. My lower back started to hurt, my hips started to hurt. It's like, Jesus, how am I going to do this for ten hours? This is the worst.

But then a miracle happened. So I got this seat where I was sitting by the aisle, which is nice because you can just get up and go to the washroom without having to bother people, which that's almost worth it alone. That's a big bonus. Especially on a ten-hour flight. I mean, it's a little bit annoying to have to ask people, hey, can you please get out of the way for me? Thank you. It's a little annoying, even normally. But on a ten-hour flight when people are asleep, it's like, I just, everything in my body, every fiber of me does not want to wake this person up just so I can go to the washroom. But I am dying. I had never wanted to be in that situation again. So I'm not willing to spend $2,000 for a first-class seat with leg room. It would be nice, but I will spend $40 on a seat, so I don't have to be in the middle. But my idea of stretching out and possibly keeping my legs straight in the aisle is what I was hoping for maybe. That would never have worked because they're going up and down the aisle constantly. It just never stops. If my leg was in the aisle, I would once again be the most annoying man in the world. But then a miracle happened. This flight was full as fuck.

But there was me on one aisle. There was a girl on the other aisle to my right. And there was a space in between us. And the plane got more and more full and more and more full and more and more full. And that person never showed up if there ever was a person.

I think there might have been one other seat that I could see on the plane that wasn't full. Because yeah, not only was this also the sort of cheaper WestJet there, the cheaper than Air Canada alternative in Canada. So the cheaper flight, but also one of the very last flights they were doing before they shut down for the winter. They don't come to Japan in the winter. So it's amazing that every single seat wasn't full. And the stewardess as she went by even said that. She's like, hey, look where you guys scored. And I was like, yeah, no, nice, right? And that literally was how the conversation went. Classic Canadian conversation. I know, eh? Pretty fucking sweet, eh, bud?

So once it was definitely clear that we had a free seat, I pitched this idea to the other girl. I was like, hey, look at my long ass legs. I got to stretch my legs out. So how about I'll take the bottom. I'll sit diagonally and stretch my feet out into this middle seat area. So I'll take the bottom. You can have the top. You can use the seat part and the tray for whatever you want. She's like, sounds good to me. That's a deal. And we got to a point. 15:00 As we got halfway through this flight, you know where you're that deep in. You just kind of become plain friends with people because you've just been on this flight for so long. Where I had my feet stretched into the middle, which was great. You know, it was just like, kept my cyst pain from building up it. I almost didn't feel that at all. I kept my knee pain from building up. I was incredibly pain-free for this flight. I was like, this is amazing. So I was like that. But since this girl was extremely short, she's probably under five feet. So she turned sideways and she was sitting in her seat and just with her feet in the middle seat. And her knee's bent, you know. So since she got to have her double seat situation, I got to have mine. It was some jacksprat shit. It was perfect. It was adorbs. If I do say so myself. Come to think of it, though, that horrible zombie flight that I took back from Japan last time. There was an empty seat in that one, too, between me and the girl on the other side. Although, even though that was only four years ago, I was a less of a medical wreck. So I didn't really notice the space that much. But I remember a similar thing of just the, it's like you go through a war when you're in a 10 hour flight with somebody. Similar thing, both times, where the person sitting there just gets a friendlier and friendlier as the time goes by. Because you just, you just know this person now, right? I mean, I don't know any other names. They didn't know my name. But we've just been sitting here for so long. So I remember she was pretty the earlier flight. That girl was pretty, pretty taciturn at first. And then by the time we arrived in Vancouver, she was just beaming. Of just like, we made it. We're here. Similar thing with this girl from Calgary. At first, she was just kind of keeping to herself, but by the end, it's like, hey, enjoy Japan. All that. And it's like, yeah, we did it. We made it through the flight. But yeah, that middle seat made all the difference. And I just couldn't believe how easy that flight was. I was awake and aware through the whole dang thing. Oh, incidentally, one of the things I did. I should have probably tried to nap on the flight, even though it never goes that well. Because by the time I got into Tokyo, that's when I started to get tired. So in hindsight, I should have tried harder to get some sleep on the plane instead of just being up an atom through the whole thing. But I just felt good on that plane. I was like, yeah, I'm good. Let's go.

Although it was slightly disturbing, you know, even once everything was arranged and I realized how well the middle seat thing was working. And how well I was mitigating all my pain and how clear it was that I was going to get through this without without hurting. I was like, amazing. Awesome. But then I checked a little flight thing and it's like, oh, eight and a half hours to go though. It really was long. And I switched on my clocks to Japan time. So, you know, I arrived in Tokyo at like 5.30 or 6 in the evening and I tried to think of it that way. But this really was a double day because every once in a while I would accidentally see on the little flight log thing. The time at source, time in Calgary and it was like 2 a.m. And I'm like, don't tell me that. I don't want to know that because then you take that to Montreal and it's even worse. I don't want to know that it's the middle of the night. Do not remind me and I'm trying to pretend that it's not. One of the things incidentally that I did on that flight is, you know, this podcast is called Roaming Holiday. It was an idea my friend Brad had, you know, just a play on Roman Holiday. But I never actually saw the movie Roman Holiday. I'm just like, oh, that's just a funny name though. I like it. Has nothing to do with an Aubrey Hepburn movie from the 50s, but just a good little twist on the term. But I thought I should watch that movie, right? If I'm going to call my thing, Roaming Holiday. I got to watch Roman Holiday just so if anybody ever asked, I don't want to say like, yeah, never saw it. Even though the truth is, I never saw it. But I finished watching it. I caught up on it on that flight. And it's a good movie. I like it. It's definitely a style of movie that they just wouldn't make anymore. I mean, I guess it's a romance movie.

What is up with this street? This is like just as narrow as all the other streets. But for some reason, this one is busy. It's all kinds of traffic going down the street.

But yeah, the actual, like, full-on romance, like, we're going to do a kissy kissy. 20:00 In this two-hour movie, it doesn't happen for like a hundred minutes. Probably more than that. And there's only a little bit. And it's got this sort of ambiguous ending. It's a little bit, it's not quite sad, but it's not happy. It's way more, I guess. I was going to say, it's like a slice of life ending, but it's not a slice of life movie. Whatever, you never saw it. I'll just give you the quick pitch, the elevator pitch. Is Aubrey Hepburn is the princess of an unnamed country in Europe. She's visiting Rome on a press tour. And I didn't quite get this at first. Is that she's kind of getting a little hysterical about her pressure-filled life and all of her, you know, she has to be so proper all the time to not bring shame upon her royal position.

So they give her, like, a sedative to help her sleep, but then she wanders out to go see Rome. After that, she sneaks out and then she's just high. And I somehow missed that at first. I was like, what is going on? She's acting so weird. But this American journalist takes her in as no idea who she is. Just thinks she's a drunk girl out on the street, gives her somewhere to sleep it off. But then he realizes who she is the next day. She thinks she's still anonymous, but he's like, oh man, that's the princess. If I can sneakily get a bunch of photos of her, doing stuff around town, me and my photographer friend, talk about a story. I can make a bunch of money. And then it goes on from there. And it's, it's good. It's a good movie. I'm going to watch it again. It's one of those things that after I get to the end of it on my phone, I didn't delete it. I'm just like, well, because I just kind of watch things, you know, in bits and pieces. So I'm just going to start watching it again in bits and pieces.

So at this point, if I believed in higher powers of spirits of any kind, you know, if there was a spirit of travel, I would think he was smiling on me. That this thing that I thought was going to be so miserable, I can't believe how well it went. Sleeping over at the airport was like, downright fun, you know, like, that's on my docket now. Now I won't even hesitate. If I can get a deal on a flight and stay overnight at the airport, it's almost a bonus. The airport's got so much stuff in it. It's great. I had preferred sleeping in that airport considerably to this fucking Airbnb. I mean, now I'd sleep in the airport every night rather than this goddamn place, but I guess I'll get into that. And then yeah, that I was well rested and that I had the spare seat and that the 10 hours went by so easily as like, this is amazing. I guess it's like that thing of like, you know, you just put your trust in the world. There was a saying, what was that saying that, uh, Evan Dando of the lemon heads used to say it was like, surely the universe is unfolding as it should. You know, something like that. I've like, just don't overthink it. The universe is unfolding as it should. Everything's happening as it's supposed to happen. Diobool. Everything is okay. I probably use that word wrong. All right, here's a more major street. So it is going to have some more traffic, but yeah, this looks right. I believe, yeah, and you just stick on this for a while to get just in the remote vicinity at least of where I'm trying to go. This is a rare, relatively long street, assuming I take the right turn off after this subway station that I will not take.

But yeah, the one thing I thought was a little bit funny on this flight because I don't often take long flights like that. I just take short, cheap ones. It's cheap as I can manage. So there might be a little snack or something here. I have a throw pretzel in your face and that's that's fine. Oh yeah, also it's a head easy bathroom access. I got a coffee every time they came by and offered drinks. Usually I get no drinks because I just don't want to have to pee and, you know, make people get out of my way. Get out my way. Get out my road. I got to pee. I try to avoid that. But this time I got a coffee at every opportunity. So I guess that's also why I was wired through the flight and probably why I felt very fucked up when I got to Tokyo and it all started wearing off. But I was surprised the amount of food they fed us. There was like two different meals. And it's like, I mean, 10 hours a long time, I guess. But I feel like I could go 10 hours without chowing down. You know, I had some little snacks, some little granola bars and stuff that I still have because I never had a chance to eat them. But I don't know. I figure like maybe part of it is just 25:00 so there'll be a routine so there'll be something to do. Just so people don't get antsy on the flight. There's always like, okay, here's a meal. Okay, here's a drink. Okay, here's the snack. Okay, here's the this, here's the that. Well, it was an excessive amount of food. I thought I didn't need any of it. It's a little weird. I like it though. I like I like airline food. But the reason I'm bringing this up is the one thing that was extra funny to me have just like the decadent present that we live in. Like I just can't believe. I don't know if the world does. Hopefully everything's just, you know, to infinity and beyond. But if the world really does regress and we can't just fly everywhere and be so crazy wasteful and burn fuel like we do now. I mean, there's so much stuff that it's like, yeah, this could go. And the thing that could really go on that flight is they already had pictures of water that again just kind of filled the space when there's nothing else going on. They just kind of go up and down the aisles offering glasses of water. But in our second little meal, one of the things it came with was a little plastic cup with a foil top that you peel back and it's just spring water. And it's like two gulps of spring water. It's like I've already there's already pictures of water all over this flight. It's just water. You really have to mass produce this little cup with water in it. That one to me was like, that's ridiculous. Like, come on. That doesn't need to be there. This actually, hmm. This actually, I mean, scale is a little hard for me to tell. I'm relatively new to having Google maps at my side. But here's the little turn off I need to take is coming up soon. Maybe I'm not that far from my little Airbnb, which probably means two freaking hours, but it doesn't look that bad on this. But anyway, everything went so good. So much better. I mean, I just couldn't ask for more. Totally amazing. This trip was off to a fly and start, but I did have some apprehension about getting to Japan just because of having to go through customs and tourist visas and stuff. And it was nothing about Japan. Everything went really smooth. The first time I visited it, it was no problem. I've had far worse times dealing with American customs. And I've heard many bad stories about Canadian customs from Americans. Apparently, we're real dickheads when it comes to the border. Japan wasn't like that, but still just just being in that situation. I mean, if I don't even necessarily want to go into McDonald's here because I'm afraid it's not going to go well, I don't want to be embarrassed by my total inability to communicate or whatever.

I mean, at the airport, it's not that problem. Obviously, everyone speaks English. It's just being put in a position where someone could say no. They're not gonna, but just that they could. And, you know, I'm trying to reverse engineer it. I'd be looking around the plane and like, look at all these people. Look at all these people. And this is one plane. Another plane is probably showing up 10 minutes after this one. All these people are going to be put through. It's going to be no problem. And when you reverse engineer it, it's like, it would be more of a problem for them to not let me in. They'd have to explain why. It would have to come a whole big thing. It's easier to just let me in, you know.

But I was running little drills in my head of like, if they do ask where I'm going, you know, what my plans are. Going to Tokyo, going to Fukuoka. I don't actually have a job, you know. Do I say I'm unemployed? Do I say I'm self-employed? I definitely don't say I'm unemployed. Do I say I'm self-employed? Do I say I'm a writer? If I need to prove that I have enough money to make it through a 90 day thing, I could do that, but even just scoop a crap like I've got my bank apps on my bank account. My phone and my fingerprints just weren't working. And I was like, what's going on with the fingerprint scanner? Because I need that to get into the bank app. Is it something with the altitude? Is it because I'm dehydrated? Has it messed up the grooves on my fingers? Like, what is going on? Turns out I think it was just that my little scanners were just filthy. They still are a little iffy, but they are working again. I think I just needed to clean them up. But I just, just nonsense. You know, it's none of it really makes sense. It's just impossible. Not to think about it. It would potentially, I think, be weirder to just be fully confident that everything is just going to go fine and to not consider it at all. Well, we landed, we left the airplane, and then we're in the airport. And, you know, it's just an airport. The airport didn't seem noticeably different from any of these other airports at that stage. But on the way to going to talk to the visa guy, I stopped in the washroom. And that's when it first started. 30:00 Hit me. Because again, I'm such a low-brow man. The washroom will do it for me. But I got in there. And I went in one of the little stalls with the little toilet. And it's like, it's got like the uphatted seat. And it's got all the mechanisms on the side for the, the bidet and all that stuff. And it's just like, that's just hit with that first little wave of like, holy shit. After four years of just like COVID locking me down and just like, just idly daydreaming of like, like, yeah, I remember how fun it was to go to Japan some day. I'm going to go back to Japan. Like, that was it. I was in it. I was in Japan. And there was like, I mean, it's a stupid example. But it's so indelible. It's so clear. It's like, there is very few things that are so remarkably different between North America and Japan as the washrooms. You know, it really is a great example that you're somewhere else now.

Oh, sweet. Oh, yeah, I think this is the same one. That little walking path I was on a couple episodes back with the little fish in the stream. And it's like a little green line on the map. Oh, that's fucking awesome. I just stumbled upon it. Yeah, it doesn't go like directly to my Airbnb. I'll have to go aways and then jump ship on this thing. But I can walk like half the way on this little walking route. Ah, traffic free noise free. Taking me where I want to go. That's fucking sweet. I did not expect this. God, though, my shoulders are hurting. I would put down the bag and switch it to wheel mode. But it's so loud. It would ruin the podcast. But I don't even like doing it just for the neighborhoods when they're this quiet. I mean, sure, I'm talking to myself. But, but the constant, this is so much more obnoxious. I don't want to do that. I suppose I could just stop for a second. Yeah, let's just put this bag down for a moment. Take a seat. My legs are fine. But my shoulders are hurting. So that's another thing. Now I'll try to talk quietly because at least when I'm walking, even if I'm being slightly obnoxiously loud, at least I'm moving. So I like if I'm moving past someone's house, you know, they can hear me through their window. At least I'm on my way past. So they won't have to hear me for too long. But if I'm sitting here for a few minutes, I definitely don't want to disturb anyone.

But yeah, before, because this is where I guess I'm going to start. This is where the journey, where, you know, everything was going so perfect. This is where it felt like things were going less good, although in hindsight. None of it's really that bad. It's all been pretty decent, but it felt, it felt crazy at the time. So this is the more, oh no, everything is going nuts and the trips falling apart. It's not out of whatever. This is the more downbeat side of the story. So before we get into that, one last for just going to give thanks to the wonders of the travel God is, man, I am so pleased with how well my feet have been holding up. I mentioned this a little bit in an earlier episode, but I was very concerned about this. It just started, I don't know where, about three weeks before this trip where my big toes was worse on one of my feet on my left one, but on both. We're just hurting like a lot. And obviously I walk stupid amounts like today. I walked all the way to that park, which was eight kilometers, which I don't know. Again, I'm not good with distances. I don't really know what that means. All I know is it took me all day. And now I'm walking back and it's taken me all night. And this is what I just do every day all the time. I just walk around.

So it was very disturbing to me how much my toes were hurting and trying different stretches and stuff. I had no idea why this all of a sudden started happening and nothing I was doing was helping. But as I was researching stuff, it seems like bunions were the problem, which is one of those terms I had heard. I thought they were just like bumps on your feet, which they kind of are, but it turns out it's because it just happens naturally with some people. And I have a long history of feet problems. I had to wear these weird devices on my feet when I was a kid to try to ameliorate my flat feet. Didn't work though, so I have flat feet. And I always had to wear special inserts in my shoes. But I guess bunions, it's because your feet are supposed to, your toes are supposed to split out, although if your feet split out too much, because you never wear shoes, apparently that's bad too. 35:00 But they're supposed to split out to a certain degree just to give you balance. Your big toes are supposed to point toward each other basically so that you have more area, because so much of the pressure of your body goes on your big toes. But modern shoes for some reason have very narrow fronts a lot of the time. So there's no areas and it makes your toes get pushed away from each other. And because they're bent in that weird direction, it does cause a bump, but the bump is like the bone of your foot, poking out. And like once it happens, it's quite irreversible without surgery. It seems awful. So in my case, it was a bit from shoes, possibly, but my shoes actually backs. They didn't have quite a wide toe box. Although after this, the next pair of shoes I buy, I'm going to deliberately go by the biggest ones I can find, the most toe room. So I think it's mostly just a natural phenomenon with me, but maybe a bit of both. But once I found out that that was it, the way I tested it is I balled up socks and I put the socks between my big toe and my next toe over at night. Because I would be like, that's the thing. It wasn't even just walking that would make my toes hurt. I'd wake up in the morning with them hurting. Something I was doing at night was making them hurt. So I balled the socks up between my toes and sometimes they fell out, they didn't always stay in. But I did notice, noticeably, the next day my toes hurt less. I'm like, all right, I'm on to something here. So I got two different devices. For the daytime, the ones I'm wearing right now are just these little rubber toe rings. It's like a ring you put around your big toe that has a spacer between the big toe and the next toe over. So, you know, they're a little awkward, and as I got them a new rhythm around a bit, they get in weird positions and can cause some pain in and of themselves sometimes. But overall, they fantastically help because they just keep the toes separate. They keep the big toe aligned more or less like it's supposed to be instead of getting pushed inward. And then at night, I've got more elaborate ones that I put on that are like a whole weird brace that I put on each foot. That when I was just stomping around my apartment back in Canada, it's like, so what, I'm wearing these weird toe things. It's a little weirder now, like this Airbnb or the one in Montreal where it's more communal and I see other people. But I think like they say in Shawshank, how often do you look at a man's shoes and they kind of just look like weird slippers if you don't look too close. And I'm just like, whatever, I'm just wearing these things. They make a little weird clippity clop when I walk. I'm like, like, cell from portal, those weird things she's got on her feet or a protest from Starcraft. That's what I think of. I've got these weird feet, but they also hold my toes apart at night, hold my big toe away from my next toe over. Just to help sort of train your body to trend that way. And I have a feeling I'll have to wear both of these things forever, but I don't mind. I like the fact that I've been walking around for all the time in Montreal and all the time here and probably a week back in Canada, it's been over a month now. And just, yeah, it's like amazing. The toe pain is so incredibly reduced, 98% reduced. And it's just so rare for one of these medical problems to have such a clean solution. Lord knows I don't have that for my bad knee or my bad shoulder or my bad cyst buried in my abdomen. So, yeah, holy shit, right? Because that would have just, man, this would have been such a bummer if I couldn't walk around because my feet were just hurting all the time. And my toes were in pain. I guess I would have to do a lot more subway stuff. And a lot more of what I'm doing right now, a lot more sitting and contemplating Japan rather than actually moving through it. I'm sure that's common. Every once in a while, I see like a really old person here walking along like bent over with canes. And I feel very deep sympathy for those people because, man, I mean, I don't know, my grandmother's both lived to be fairly old, but one of them really old, my grandmother on my dad's side was 101. And in both cases, I was shocked how spry they were for such old people, but some old people yikes, like that is not the case. Something went terribly wrong. And I was going to say, hopefully that doesn't happen to me, but both my grandfather's died quite young. My dad was only 70 when he died. I'm probably just going to die, so I guess that solves that problem.

Alright, let's get moving again. Oh yeah, feels better on the old shoulders, maybe I just got to take more breaks. I didn't get to take as much of a break at that park as I wanted to because I've never really noticed that much mosquito activity in Japan, but I know they do have them. 40:00 I mean, where I'm from, the east coast of Canada, the mosquitoes are fucking insane, so compared to that, nothing seems so bad around here, but that park in particular. A lot of mosquitoes, so I didn't stay very long. I've just been walking, walking like a fool because I do just need to take breaks a little more often.

So yeah, thanks to the travel guide, things have gone better than I could even ask for, really no complaints. So that being said, let me complain. So the flight was already a bit late because Calgary is a frozen death pit, you know, it was below freezing. They had to de-ice the plane, there was snow everywhere, so that delayed us.

But basically, I mean, I think I still got there like 5.30 and the check-in thing for this hostel wasn't until 10. And I mean, ultimately, that didn't matter at all what time, but it was just that the guy trying to be helpful. A lot of the problems with this hostel are weird because the guy is really trying. He's really trying. And it's just a weird example of how you can put all the effort in the world into things, but sometimes it just doesn't work out. It just is a problem anyway. But this is one example of that, as I got a message from the guy at the airport.

Basically just saying, like, not that I had to be there by 10 o'clock, but he could only help me until 10 o'clock. And I saw in the reviews for this place some people that said they did have problems getting in initially.

And this guy would be around to help out till 10. After 10, it's cut off and no more. And I'll tell you why. Normally it'd be like whatever. You know, I kind of felt that way in Montreal, too, of like the shore, a lot of door codes. I sure hope this goes okay, but it all went okay. But the thing here is, is God is so elaborate. Again, especially once I got to this place and I realized how just this little tiny, rinky, dink house, just packed full of stuff. But you have to go on to this website. It's all fancy fans that looks like a four-star hotel website, feeling all your info and do all your stuff, because you do need Airbnb and Japan are treated a bit like hotels in the sense that you're supposed to get all the info of people that are staying, their passport numbers, where they're from, where they were just at, where they're going next, get you out of here.

So you did all that. And then you got a check-in code with offers as well for all the amenities. Do you want a towel? Do you want this? Do you want that? There's only $2 for this or $1 for that, which is just, that's a little annoying. When places do that, it's like just give me a towel. Don't charge me $2 for a towel. I won't pay it. I will never pay you $2 for a towel. You can give me a towel. I'm very self-sufficient. I would like a towel, but if you don't give me one, it'll be a cold day in hell. Pay you for a towel that you should just give me. But from there, once you're filling all the stuff, you get your little code, a number and a QR code. And then also, sticking with the idea of helpful but not at the same time. This guy had sent a YouTube video a couple of days earlier of how to get to the hostel from the station. So it was just kind of a sped up, a little walk, starting here, here's where you go. And I mean, that is very handy. I did, in fact, use it when the time came. That was nice. But then the second part of the video was, now here's what's going to happen when you get here. Even though again, this is just, this guy, I don't know, is just trying so hard to make it seem legit and fancy. So there's a panel you open outside as a front door, and it has a tablet on it. And you use the tablet with your code or with the QR thing. But that's not what gets you in. That gives you a second QR code that you have to scan with your phone. And you need to have this app called Sesame, this some kind of a lock app. And you got to make sure you've got the Wi-Fi password and everything ahead of time if you don't have data so that you can interface with the Sesame app. And once you scan that QR thing, then you can use the app and you just open the app and press unlock, and that unlocks the front door. And then inside the front door, you use the code you got at some point during this process to open a lock box that has the key to get into the room. And it's like, yeah, no fucking wonder this guy had reports that people were having trouble getting in. 45:00 What is this? Why are there so many steps that's insane? But it between that and his message of like, hey, I'm only going to be around till 10. And, you know, after that, if you aren't able to get in, just want to warn you, you know, like that could happen. I was motivated to get there before 10, you know what I'm saying now. Like I was pretty sure I followed all of his steps pretty well and I understood what was going to go on, but especially after the long journey and how exhausted I was and how by my old clock it was three or four in the morning, I was running on fumes and like the reason I picked this place was I remember when I booked it, I don't totally remember what was going through my mind because I really should have booked somewhere else even just like, why would I start off? Oh, I guess I know why. I guess I kind of expected that I would just get a lot of communal places because they were somewhat cheaper. So I knew this was like a communal thing, but I just really quickly as we go through this vacation all this roaming holiday, I'll describe all my Airbnb's as we go, but I pivoted quite quickly to realizing it's only a little bit more to get like private accommodations, sometimes whole like little mini apartments. I didn't necessarily need to do the communal thing, but I guess because this was the first one. And that's what I did by Naka Itabashi. That place was communal and it was great. I loved it.