{"id":11378,"date":"2026-04-15T15:38:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T22:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=11378"},"modified":"2026-05-28T20:07:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T03:07:36","slug":"japan-2026-day-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=11378","title":{"rendered":"Japan 2026: Day 0"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t make it to Japan in fall of 2025 because I was feeling poor. Being retired and having no job means my income is less. That’s usually fine, but covering all my medical bills was making me nuts. I didn\u2019t spend any more on medical bills than a usual year but my financial advisor wasn\u2019t trickling out enough money to cover it all. Plus, one of my doors was rotting and I had to pay for that (which was months later but that\u2019s another story). Anyway, I figured out I was OK. And now it\u2019s spring of 2026 and I\u2019m back in Japan!<\/p>\n

First day was kind of a doozy: 26 \u00bd hours from when I got up to now. Got up at 4 AM to catch a 7am flight from PDX to SEA, and then the long flight from SEA to HND. I got my flights on Expedia and my sister wondered why it was so expensive. Turns out I got the Comfort++ seats (or whatever they call the class between comfort plus and business) where the food was served with tablecloths and was better than what I usually get on an airplane. They provided headphones, not just wired earbuds, but I like to use my noise cancelling headphones. Unfortuately the plugs were all moved making things inconvenient for my usual setup so I ended up using the provided headsets. That means I carried my bulky headphones to Japan for nothing.<\/p>\n

Watched a few movies, like I usually do. First Anaconda<\/em> with Jack Black and Paul Rudd. Plenty of dumb fun. After that I watched Zootopia 2<\/em>. Then I tried watching No Other Choice<\/em> which is supposed to be a black comedy but I found no humor in it. Maybe I\u2019m not cut out for Korean movies. It was also hideously long and I could only stomach about half of it. I switched to watching Shrek<\/em> which I\u2019ve never actually seen, and after being scarred (ha) by the Korean movie I stuck to watching episodes of\u00a0High Potential<\/em> since I\u2019m not caught up on the current season.<\/p>\n

The long slog from the plane to immigration started out the same as usual.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But then there was a choke point. I didn\u2019t see any Chinese tourists but holy crap there were still a lot of tourists coming into the country.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It took a while but like the friendly guys from the plane seats next to me said, \u201cIt\u2019s way faster than Disneyland.”<\/p>\n

I had a five hour layover before my flight to Nagasaki and there was a lot to do in the airport (at least for me). First, shipping off all of the gifts for friends and family, checking in my bag for the flight from HND to NGS, and then getting dinner since I wasn\u2019t getting to my hotel near Nagasaki station until 10-ish. I went to my usual casual cafe and got my usual Napolitan spaghetti (ketchup spaghetti). I love the stuff. Probably too sweet for most Americans.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The view from the cafe isn\u2019t bad, either.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Up to that point I was feeling great. I usually start fading after eating dinner, even though it wasn\u2019t very much food. The flight started boarding about 6:30pm and they were really quick about it. The plane was mostly empty and it took a couple of hours to get to Nagasaki airport. It\u2019s a very small airport. I only saw two other planes on the field and one was a small propeller-driven commuter plane. From there the bus takes about 50 minutes to get to Nagasaki station and I checked in to the hotel before 10pm PDT, 26 hours after leaving. I hit a combini before I went to bed (had to make sure to hydrate) and also got a korokke (beef croquette) as my late-night snack. WIlkinson is fizzy water that\u2019s a tradition for me and Pocari Sweat is a sports drink.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s it for my first travel day!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t make it to Japan in fall of 2025 because I was feeling poor. Being retired and having no job means my income is less. That’s usually fine, but covering all my medical bills was making me nuts. I didn\u2019t spend any more on medical bills than a usual year but my financial advisor wasn\u2019t trickling out enough money to cover it all. Plus, one of my doors was rotting and I had to pay for that (which was months later but that\u2019s another story). Anyway, I figured out I was OK. And now it\u2019s spring of 2026 and I\u2019m back in Japan! First day was kind of a … Continue reading Japan 2026: Day 0<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11378"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11730,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11378\/revisions\/11730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}