#97 Last day in Japan

Transcript

You know, is it possible? I've been saying how Georgia Coffee I can pretty definitively say is my least favorite of the coffee brands in Japan. But I was talking some shit on boss coffee until I found the Zelda coffee and I was like, yeah, this one's good. How weird.

I wonder why the branded Zelda one is good and the other ones aren't. But I just grabbed a little boss cafe O'Lay, standard-ass boss, trying to balance things out a little bit where I have to get up really early tomorrow to go to the airport. So I don't want to drink excessive coffee today. But I do need some or I'll die. So I just got the small can of boss and I'm drinking it and I'm like, you know, this is so reminiscent of the Zelda coffee.

I would put money on this being the Zelda coffee. I think it's exactly the same thing, just the other ones in a Zelda can, which makes the most sense. Why would they make a special coffee? And it's like, you know, wish I could say that I was above this type of thing. That my developed taste buds didn't get tricked by a Zelda can, but I'm pretty sure they did. Human taste buds too. Real shitty. I sense a smell and taste in general, I guess. But like the story that always sticks in my mind because, you know, like wine people. I mean, anyone who's way too into anything is probably a bit annoying talking about the specific nests of some stupid shit. But wine people, it's out of control. The bouquet and the blub blub blub. And then they did a test where they just put it, it says in freakingomics, I think, in that book. They put a bunch of red food coloring in some white wine and got a bunch of fancy wine people to taste it. And next thing, you know, wouldn't you know it? They're describing the fruity notes and the yaddy yadda's just because it's the different color, you know.

Human taste buds are shit. It's best to just admit it. But yeah, I'm pretty sure the Zelda coffee, which again is probably long gone by the time you hear this. But if you ever want to know what it tastes like, just get the boss cafe O.A. That's what it tastes like. That's clearly what it is. Alright, so I made it to Ome station. Definitely not a short ride. And a lot of weights, particularly at Hachioji, waiting to get to Hijima. It's a short stretch. But it's like, oh yeah, every time I was at Keita Hachioji, it was always a weight for the train. But I didn't realize that train was literally just sitting at Hachioji station. But it is. So I had to sit there. Anyway, it's 1 p.m. That's not too bad. Because this is one of those tracks that I could probably do the whole thing. You know, not the whole thing, but the four fifths thing. Stopping one stop before the end. Especially since I've done it backwards now from that station. So I totally know how to do it. But this hiking course is also split roughly in half. So I'll be doing the more developed half first and then the woods half second. So we'll see if the day slips away from me, or if I just want to bail out, I might only do half. We will see. See, I don't have all the time in the world, but enough. You know, I just got to get through this before it gets dark. And then I can just ride the train home and it's going to be a very long ride. But once I get back, there's nothing to do, but organize my stuff a bit. Pathetically try to sleep, then wake up at the crack of dawn. Because even though I'm only going to Haneda, and it's very close to Yokohama, that was part of the point of how I set this all up. It's amazing how all that stuff adds up, Blake. But the time I get up and get my stuff together, there's an hour. Getting to the airport is, it says only an hour, but why risk it? You know, I've never done it before. Some of the traffic jams on the subways. Go into the coast is so easy. The coast is always dead empty. Heading up toward Tokyo, not so much as packed in like a sardine yesterday coming home. So that could eat up more time than I think I've never been to that airport before. Basically, if I want to get there a couple hours early, which is the minimum for me to be somewhat calm, I have to get up very early for a noon flight. But basically, for my final big grand finale day in Japan, this is basically working 5:00 out, but the best laid plans of dumb Canadian fucks. Basically, I feel like last episode was the perfect finale. I was walking through my old neighborhood near Ikebu, and just feeling the love, feeling the vibe, feeling and sconce by Japan. Tired, but in a nice way, just a nice day and a nice way to end stuff. But then I came up with the plan that I would travel all the way out here to Ome and do this hiking course, because my thinking is, what will I wish I could do, you know, two weeks from now, two months from now. Hopefully by two years from now, I'll have come back to Japan. But if I don't for some reason, what will be the thing that I think about, like, you know, if I could be teleported to Japan right now and do any one thing, what would it be? And I think this would be it, I would be like, take me to Ome, I want to do that hike. So if I've got this one last day, even though this is very far away, and it's kind of a silly thing to do, it's a lot of transit. This is like one of those one way transit trips didn't seem so crazy. Doing it both ways is a little much. But fuck it, it's the last day, let's do it. And I guess it's all kind of relative, just eyeballing it on a map. It's like, all right, this is just to get the Hachiyoji is double my little trips to the coast. But it's much less than going to a Tommy, and I did that. And then if you add the whole thing up all the way to Ome, that's probably a little more than a Tommy, but it's really not, it's not crazy, right? It's just not sensible. But yesterday I was like tired, but feeling good, just like, ah, you know, it's not bad. I'm definitely a little low on energy, but I don't feel bad. Where today I got more sleep, but man, like I went to bed early-ish by like midnight, eventually fell asleep. I don't know when exactly. I mean, it never goes smooth for me, but technically I got quite a bit more sleep. But I woke up feeling so much worse, that feeling like a fucking someone hit you in the head with a sledgehammer. And it could be sleep debt, you know, it's like, yeah, maybe I got more sleep that one night, but it doesn't mean it erases the lack of sleep from the day before. It could be just like a logical, could be stress. I'm definitely a little stressed about traveling tomorrow, because it's like getting up in the morning is going to make everything so much worse. And there's no escape from that. That's just what I have to do. And there's just no, there's no way to solve that problem. It doesn't matter if I try to go to sleep early. That's just not how my body works. It ain't going to happen. I'm going to be very exhausted tomorrow no matter what. So that's going to make traveling stressful. And just traveling is stressful. Got to go to a new country. Got to go through customs. Got to do all this stuff. It always works out. I always make it through, but it doesn't mean it's pleasant. I made it into Japan. I made it through Nareda to get here, but it wasn't fun. It was stressful and awful. So I got that coming for me tomorrow. So could be that too. Could just be the role of the dice. Could just be. I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. I don't know. Whatever it is though, yeah, I was going to start recording podcasty stuff from the get go, say my goodbyes to that neighborhood, do my last little run of whatever. But it's just like, God, I'm just miserable. I just like, fuck it. So anyway, I napped on the train pretty much the whole way here. And now I'm here. I'm on the mountains. I'm going up through. I definitely feel better. But this might be, I was hoping for type A fun. Type A fun where it's fun as you do it. And maybe, I mean, I am feeling a lot better now, even just that slow pace of talking was because I was walking up a hill. But now I'm up on the ridge. Just that, just to exercise, you know, energy, big gets energy. I'm definitely feeling better. But I was afraid to like, maybe this is going to be type B fun.

Where it sucks, but you're happy you did it later. But yeah, I'm already starting to feel better. And yeah, what else was I going to do today? It's like, maybe it would make more sense 10:00 on your last day before traveling to stay more local. But realistically, there's just, there's only so much I can do. I mean, I've got everything I own fits in a book bag. That's all I got to do is put all my stuff back in the book bag. And I'm ready to go. I, you know, I've already read about custom stuff in South Korea. I got the address to my Airbnb prepared. That was good to know. So I don't have to find Wi-Fi in the airport and go into Airbnb and figure that out. I mean, maybe, maybe it would help me be unstressed. Just stay at home and be super prepped for tomorrow. But I feel like I'd really, realistically, I would just be running through the same information again. Just overdoing it. Perhaps being more stressed by just constantly reading, following map directions. How do I get to my Airbnb? Blah, blah, blah. It's like whatever, dude. Things are basically set up as much as they're going to get set up.

And I would miss out on this. I would miss out on this journey.

But yeah, what a what a shift. Where last night I realized, you know, tonight I won't really have a ton of time to go do laundry since I got to get up so early and stuff better to just go back home and go straight to bed. So I was like, all right, I should do the laundry, you know, yesterday night. So it doesn't fully optimize my laundry, but it's like I only have one set of dirty clothes, tucked away in my bag. When I go through the airport, that's fine. Just, socks underwear and shirt. Not like half of my bag would be full of dirty laundry. So it's fine.

And it rained a bit yesterday. So I was walking through the neighborhood. It took a long time to get home yesterday, hope man. I don't know if something happened with one of the trains. I was waiting for ages and then that was the Sardine train.

So yeah, I was like 830 or something and the cool little laundromat that I found that has like bookshelves and is super nice. It really only has capacity for one person to do laundry and someone was doing laundry. So I had to go to the normal laundromat, but it was still fine. Still has the nice $10 machine that does everything. And I just sat there with my laptop and edited a podcast.

And even just walking there, it was really beautiful because it had just rained, walking through the neighborhood at night and just the nice lights glistening off the wet pavement. And just that I was getting everything all done. Got my laundry done. Got a podcast done. Got all this stuff done. All set for tomorrow. I'm going to wake up tomorrow. I'm going to go to Ome. I decided on to take the super long trips at Ome. I'm going to go do the hike. I'm going to finish off Japan and style. Bigity BAM. I was thinking there's this one outlook coming up ahead of me where I've mentioned it before, but it's where you can really see the terrain changing, the small reasonable mountains on your left and then to your right, they're transforming into the gigantic mega mountains. I was thinking like that could be where I end the podcast. That could be my final Japan send-off and maybe it will be. We'll see. But yeah, I was almost like feeling manic yesterday because everything was going so well. It's like, yeah, fuck it. Lack of sleep can't stop me. I am energized. I'm motivated.

And yeah, then just to wake up this morning and just be like, BAM. Oh, fuck. Man, I am feeling a lot better right now though. Man, there is nothing like walking up hill to get your head right, just to clear things up. It's fucking remarkable. In Somniac's of the world, I have no solution for you. You have a life of misery ahead of you. But if you can get yourself near a mountain of some kind. That shit will not hurt.

Oh, at least I get to end off though. This trip officially had God-like weather the whole time. God bless you, El Nino.

See, I'm in a t-shirt now. I just had to take off all my jackets and stuff. Oh man, yeah, there's the, yeah, these mountains on the horizon. Even though it's only been a couple of weeks since I've been here. It's like, I forgot how big they are. Look how big that is. That shit's insane over there. What the hell? Fuck that. Those things are so big. Like these are fucking for real mountains, man. I can't believe I was in like Okutama thinking 15:00 I could walk up these fucking things way above my abilities. What the hell? They're fucking giant.

I was also going to end off with the traditional bag of Japanese assorted sweets, but they didn't have them at the 7-Eleven by Ome. I had to get the normal bag of assorted sweets, which I don't know, even once in there. And just a couple random dumb things. Since this is all this podcast has been about as random dumb things, it's like I'll better mention these while I can. So I was saying how there's those work stations where you pay money to just get yourself in a little cubicle, and you can do work at the subway station. And I saw them all over Yokohama, but not really in Tokyo. But at Ikibukuro yesterday, there was a bunch. And someone was using one. So surely those didn't just pop up out of nowhere. They probably have been there for years. It's just funny that I never noticed them. Not until I get to Yokohama. But it's one of those things that once you notice it, now I'm noticing them everywhere. But it just makes more sense. Why would they be in Yokohama, not anywhere else? Because they're not, because I just didn't notice. And today on the subway, I thought this was kind of cool I've never seen this before. You know, when people have to bring their cat on transit, and they just have like, well, in North America, anyway, they just have like a carrier thing for their cat, a little cat cage. Maybe they do that here too. But what I saw today, because I don't think this was like a lady taking her cat to the vet or anything. I think it was just a lady in general taking her cat, where she had a book bag with a plastic dome poking out of the of the book bag. She was wearing it on her front. And there was a cat in the book bag who could see out of the dome. It was like a dome, like a helmet, like a like a diver helmet or a space helmet. And that cat was going on an adventure. It was an adventure in the book bag. The book could see outside. It could see the world going by.

And that was so weird. I mean, I guess it works. Right? I'm just fucking looking. The cat seemed to find in there and it's separated from people. So that's fine. I suppose if the cat freaked out in there, that'd be one thing, but I don't know. It seemed pretty chill. It's just like, what the heck? I've never seen that before. That's fucking funny. Cat on an adventure. It's like a cat in a diving bell heading out into the subway, into the world. But there we go. Fucking, there are work stations all over this upways.

There's a cat fucking cat napsack. Those are my final pieces of random trivia.

A femura trivia. Trif femura. That's one thing, too, though, I guess, where while I was all manicky feeling yesterday, part of it was like, yeah, I'm doing it. I'm fucking maximizing all of my time. But also, there's definitely a weird mindset I was in yesterday because also I was walking through the neighborhood and it's all beautiful and glistening and wet and the lights were so pretty. That is one thing just because it hasn't rained that much. I didn't get to see very much, but man, Tokyo and Yokohama and any Japanese city, they look so good after rainfall. They look fucking amazing. I mean, everything looks cool in those conditions, but all the lights and stuff, it looks so good. But I was also having these thoughts of like, oh man, this neighborhood is going to disappear soon. Like, have you ever heard that, you know, wave describing death? It is not I who will die. It is the world that will disappear. You know, it's feeling kind of like that. Like, oh, it's going to disappear soon. Oh, man, and all all like weird and fucking modeling and melodramatic. It's kind of good in a way today, I guess, for the hammer of reality to just slam me in the head and just be like, hey, sleepy, what are you doing? You should just go back to bed. You shouldn't be going to Ome. You're tired, miserable. But it brings things down to reality a little, which is actually probably a better way, probably a better way to head out. It doesn't need to be all fucking mystical.

Because yeah, I was sort of the same thing last time I left Japan in 2019. Man, that was a long day, because again, had to wake up. That time I was going to Narita from Akigawa Station in Sain. So what a bad plan. That's why I wanted to get nearer to the airport this time. I was also crazy exhausted, because I couldn't sleep, of course. And then traveling all the way out. Yeah, 20:00 it was very unmagical. It was very, very standard in working, workmanly like, but that's not a bad thing. It's good to just bring it down to reality, because yeah, it's just a place. It's just a place and I'll be back. It's not that big a deal. Even the big COVID thing is weird as that was, as much as it, you know, threw me off, being able to come back to Japan. And the grand scheme of things, it was only a few years. It's not that big a deal. And that's probably fingers crossed never going to happen again. If it does happen again, the world has bigger problems, you know.

Oh, the weather just got chilly again. Okay, maybe one of these layers can go back on.

Man, I just, you know, had to swap out my coats and stuff and I was like, all right, next thing, next thing to say, just keep in a little bookmark in my brain. Next thing to say is, you know, overly idealizing Japan is not doing anybody any favors, but as I was just, you know, changing out jackets and I'm just looking out through the trees like I didn't, it wasn't very hard to walk up this far up onto this ridge, but already I'm at the point where like looking out across, I can see amazing tree-covered mountains just off, just spilling out into the distance. It's like, ah, fuck. I was just about to say like, ah, you know, it's good to keep it normal. Keep it normal. It's just a place. Don't act like it's so such a big deal. You know, you're just, it'll just make you pine. It's just a place, whatever, as I'm looking at the most beautiful god damn thing that could ever exist. Fuck. Like, god damn it. Man, I'm glad I came out here, though. It would be nice to go to the coast as well, but, but I'm glad I came here to do this because I mean, I know there is hiking and stuff in South Korea, but I really don't know how accessible it'll be from Seoul. You know, that first time visiting, I've already got some places booked for like, at least the first month and a half that are all just right in the city because I don't know how anything works. So it might be a little while before I get this kind of experience again, if I do at all out there, I don't know. I just don't know how it is. I mean, it's a two-hour flight from here. It's probably not that different, but I guess we'll see.

But yeah, then there is the idea of, you know, this is my 90 days are up, but there's the fuzzy rules about coming back, you know, that technically if you're a person who has, you know, the different little checklist things, if you can prove that you've got money in your account and you have a visa and good standing from a country people, find enjoyable. I could probably come back to Japan for another 90 days, you know, for the total of 180 out of the year, but it is kind of a weird thing where they keep the rules very fuzzy about that, so that they can turn people away if they have to. And from what I was reading, it seems unlikely that I would have any problems, but it's a little uncomfortable because, you know, booking everything in advance and setting everything up and then just not actually being sure if you can come back in a little bit weird, but even if it all went smooth and it seems like it would, then the thing at that point is then you have used up your 180 days and you really got to fuck off for a while, like that's kind of the way the person on Reddit who was explaining all this stuff to me said that doing the visitor visa double depot is probably not an issue, probably would be no big problem, but then you really do need to go away for a fairly significant amount of time to really just reset the system and make sure that you have been away long enough, because you're really going to start setting off flags, like is this person just trying to sneak into Japan, or they're trying to live here without proper stuff, like what is going on here? But yeah, I mean, I can just thread this in into my life just coming through Japan once in a while, I don't need to just really push it, and I do kind of want to do things differently next time, you know what I've learned from this trip is things are so much more accessible than I realize, train trips are so much more like numerous, there's just trains everywhere, and it's not that hard to get to any one place, particularly over the course of 90 days, you could literally cross the whole country and probably go cross the country and back if you wanted, it would just be not that hard, that seems very interesting, so I would want to play in something more like that, and I guess I do just want to keep it flexible, or if I don't know, I mean, 25:00 I got to assume South Korea at the very least will be like methodone, you know, will be similar enough that it's like that's fine, that's cool, again, it's just so, you know, I was literally the words, the next words that were just about to come out of my mouth were like, yeah, I just walk on long more mountain paths and walking along more coastlines and like whatever, as I look over through the trees, and again, I just see this incredible view, that's just amazing, it's like nothing I've ever seen in my whole fucking life, so I mean, both things can be true, it's just a place, it's not that big a deal, and it's the coolest place ever, and it's like a magical dream, and yeah, I do think, well also, I mean, I guess there's time of year stuff too, right? I don't even know when that would all time out to, kind of probably dead summer by the time if I was to come back, and I just, I just frankly don't want to do that, but if I dick around on this side of the world all the way until next fall, again, I mean, at that point, I should really go home, see some, see some family and friends, so I don't know, I don't know whatever, got to sort things out, figure things out, make a plan, next time's going to be a whole different road trip style plan, all right, here I am at the lookout, this is the one

that, if you're on the North Ome Hill's hiking course, there's only one weird little porta-potty style squat toilet on the route, so it's just to the west of that, north of Miano Hero Station, MIYANOHIRA station, because yeah, there's a path that goes down from here, I presume it goes to that station, although we're really not close, I've never taken this path, imagine it takes a while, but yeah, this is the one that I've talked about before, where to the left, to the east, still really amazing mountains, but you know, the kind of mountains, well, I mean, they're the ones that I walked through to get from Ome to Hinoe Day and then to Akiruno, no biggie, well, I mean, they're also the ones I had to slide down the other day, they're still big, but they're like reasonable, but then to the right, oh my god, not reasonable, not reasonable, huge mountains from, from like out of Lord of the Rings, like scary shit, so yeah, I was thinking like, hey, this could be a place to end and it's like, yeah, why not, dude, it's just fucking end right here, I'm gonna keep walking on this path, you know, as long as my heart should wish, until I get my fill, I'm getting the feeling I might just do the whole thing, you know, the four fifths of the way, whole thing, not the whole whole thing, because that last bit going up up the mountain and getting spit on on the highway, I don't need all that, and then just a long-ass train ride home, then bed, then getting up and going to the airport, so yeah, I'm talking about this like, it's the finale and it is the end of this trip to Japan, the scale of this podcast is definitely gonna change, I think that's just a train down there, surprisingly loud, and long, but yeah, this like daily report stuff, this was really just for this one trip, this was just because it was so cool to come back to Japan for a second time after the delay from COVID, and I just wanted to chronicle every little dumb thing, and I did, so now that this is established though, now that I've got this little travel podcast, I mean, I may as well keep it up, but just not to this degree, you know, like I'll just do an episode once in a while when I've accumulated enough things that seem interesting, so probably because, you know, I'm putting this out at a much slower pace than I'm recording it, you know, I'm saying big grand finale, but I'm sure that there will be a South Korea episode that'll come up right after this one, it's just instead of a day by day, a granular look, it'll be like, hey, I've been here for a while, here's how it's going, and then I'll just keep this up as I go places, you know, I don't know, maybe when I get back 30:00 to Canada, I don't know how much I'll have to say, you know, maybe though, I don't know, yes, definitely not a passenger train going by down there, it must be a freight train, because it is still going, goodness, mercy me, but yeah, I hope this, this, God, that's loud, come on, should I just wait for this thing, what is this?

I guess presumably freight trains go slower when they're in residential areas too. They're not zipping along. Wow, I just decided I'm in a wait. I'm in a wait for that train to pass, you know, just so we don't end off with train sounds. It just won't stop. It's insane. I don't know. Okay, whatever. It's probably appropriate to end with some noise. Japan is a surprisingly noisy place, so it seems appropriate. Yeah, why not? Why not end with some noise? All we need now is a siren to hit and everything will be just right. But I hope that this granular look at a trip to Japan, maybe it gave you some ideas for some odd places you could go, some interesting places. Maybe some places to not go. I don't know. And I mean definitely not everything worked out great, you know, just going to random places. Sometimes it's like, oh darn, there's nothing there. What the heck was that? But then sometimes, Ome. Holy balls did Ome work out. What the heck? I still cannot, I just can't get over it. This is why I wanted to end here. I can't believe how accessible this is, and I'm up on a mountain looking down at creation. It's fucking beautiful. And it's so easy to get to. I mean, man, I just, I can't recommend Ome enough. Like I was saying, I mean, yeah, this will be the place. This will be the place, you know, six, eight months from now when I'll be daydreaming or trying to fall asleep some night, and I'll just be like, ah, only I was in Japan. What would I do? And of course, there's a million things I would do. I'd go to this coastline. I'd go to here. I'd go to there. But this is for sure way high on the list. Take me to Ome station. Let me walk on that fucking mountain path, dude. That shit is the greatest thing in the world. I mean, I'm looking at it right now. And I can scarcely believe that this is not a weird painting or a postcard or something.

This is real. Dude, I mean though, the train is still going. Are you kidding? Yeah, we wouldn't want to end on two idyllic and note, right?

I don't know though. That's weird. Like I can't see it. I don't, like I don't remember seeing a lot of those types of trains. I guess I have. I guess it's some of the really big train yards. Like I would at the edge of the yard. You'll see like some kind of weird whatever who cares. Just trying to think. Is there anything else to say? But I think that's it.

I think that's it. Yeah, and of course, at some point, I'll come back to Japan and I'll chronicle that adventure. And then it'll depend, I guess. If I did this again, if I just did this same thing, I'll just go back to Fukuroka. I'll just go back to Tokyo. I don't think I would do the daily daily podcast report again because, you know, yeah, no, it's done. I did it. Whatever there is for me to squeeze out of this, I think I did it. Whatever is stupid little observations and stuff. Even toward the end of this 90-day journey, I felt like I was pushing it a little bit. It's like, wow, I'm still doing this, huh? I'm still just recording whatever I do every day, even if I'm not doing anything laundry day again. But if I do set up a journey across Japan, TM, I'd have to come up with my own title because that's the Chris Broad series. What could I call it? I don't know. Rumble, roaming, right? Yes, this is roaming holiday. The Rome, the Rome across Japan.

That might be where it's chronicling day by day. If I'm constantly getting on trains and going to new places and, you know, just figuring out how that works, I feel like that could be, because, you know, this is clearly a self-indulgent series. I'm doing this largely, you know, I hope someone will listen to it and like it, but also it's just so I can remember stuff.

Still going, still clackety, clackin' out there.

But yeah, I do hope that, you know, there is some useful stuff in this podcast, you know? 35:00 Maybe there is. I certainly do like to just go ramble around to random places. So maybe, maybe I bumped into some things that aren't commonly chronicled. So yeah, if I do a little journey, more of a journey style visit, that could probably be useful too. That could be kind of helpful, maybe. But I do find that's a good way to approach things. I was just getting louder. Wouldn't it be weird if that wasn't a train at all? What if that was a rampaging killbot down there, like some kind of giant robot that was wrecking the shit out of things? I mean, surely that and there would be sirens and screaming and whatnot.

But yeah, basically, basically, to sum it all up, 10 thumbs up, a plus, what a good visit to Japan. Everything went pretty fucking well.

So let's not belabor the point. Stay tuned for presumably some career thoughts coming up after this. And let's just end with the sound of a freight train. Endlessly, endlessly rattling its way across the Japanese countryside from Ome station. And it's sweet hiking course. I've been your host Keith McNally. Thank you for listening.