Well, I made it Japan for the first time in three years. They finally opened the borders for non-Japanese travelers. Unfortunately, some of the conveniences aren’t back and I had to travel through Seattle instead of getting a direct flight from Portland. That meant I had to get up at 4AM and right now I’ve been up for 23½ hours after a restless night of sleep.

It took me a bit to get going and to find an Uber at 4:30AM (the only one available was in Vancouver), but I made it with plenty of time to spare. The weird thing is that the TSA PreCheck line only had 13 people ahead of me while the regular checkin line looked like it had at least 300 people in it. It wound around two separate rooms. When I got in, I went to the Delta SkyClub and had some breakfast.

Then it was a quick flight to Seattle and we arrived so early that we had to sit on an active taxiway for a while. I had hours to wait in Seattle, so I signed up for Clear and checked out two different lounges, Delta’s and the Priority Plus lounge. Then it was a ten hour flight on an Airbus. The movies seemed older, but I found a few I hadn’t seen yet. Spiderman: No Way Home, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, and Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The flight was pretty uneventful, but I made the mistake of drinking lots of coffee to stay awake and it kind of bothered my stomach. I felt a little queasy on landing, and then the crazy taxi ride to my hotel made me feel a little carsick. Oh, the airport post offices used to be open on the weekends but now they’re only open regular post office hours (M-F 9-5). I found that out after taking a bus between terminals and hauling my suitcase and a heavy duffel bag full of presents around. Oh even after walking what seemed like a mile, I breezed through immigrations and had to wait for a long time for my bags.

Anyway, I made it my hotel and sat around for a bit.

Then it was dinnertime. My stomach still didn’t feel great, and I didn’t feel like a 40 minute trip to my favorite brewery, so I asked the front desk where to go. They suggested Ameyoko which looked far on the map but turned out just to be around the corner.

I kind of did what I thought I’d do, which is walking around for an hour and then just eating at the cafe on the first floor of the hotel. I asked what was good and I got the katsu curry with extra rice. It wasn’t big but it was tasty. I sure missed eating Japanese food in Japan.

I wanted something fizzy to drink so I had a nice lemon squash and it was tasty as well.

In any case, I’m trying to stay up because going bed at 7PM would mean I wake up ridiculously early and who needs that?