More sakura and I'm not sorry

This week, KM-san suggested we go out for tempura. It's been eighteen months since we last went, so I was glad to go with her (via a quick trip to a certain otaku shop to buy a nerdy present for a delightfully nerdy friend).

We went to Hirao tempura near Tenjin. The way this works is that there's a vending machine-style order system. You insert money, choose a meal option and buy a voucher. You then go inside and work your way through the (seated) queue. When you get a seat at the bar (and they're bar seats, so I tend to find them a bit less reassuring than something firmly on ground level) you hand over your voucher. The staff are in the middle of the restaurant, with people seated all around them.

An outing to Hita for Hinamatsuri

Following my trip to the Sakuramatsuri, on Sunday I got up early for a 9am outing with KT-san to the town of Hita, in Ōita prefecture (next door to Fukuoka). It's about thirty miles away, so we had to take two trains. We could have opted for the shinkansen, but that would have roughly quintupled the cost!

Plans developed a slight hitch when we were too deeply engrossed in conversation to notice we'd reached and then left the city of Kurume (remember that one?) where we should have changed train.

About half an hour later, we realised what was up, hopped off the train, managed to catch a return train by the skin of our teeth, and eventually made our way successfully to Hita.

Sakuramatsuri begins

With the cherry blossom season opening, the Fukuoka Sakura Festival began at the weekend.

I met up with J-san to stroll around the festival a bit. The blossom wasn't really out at this point, so it's not quite the best day for it, but it was relatively peaceful and the place was pretty lively.

Kyushu Olle, the tourism board (or one fo them?) for Kyushu, which is naturally represented by an anthropomorphic sheep thing with a banana on its head. Or something.

Okonomiyaki II: revenge of Okonomiyaki

So I've been wanting to eat okonomiyaki again for about eighteen months, in fact, and KM-san kindly offered to go with me.

My schedule this year is much more consistent; I start at 9.30am and have classes until either 3pm or 4pm, with an hour for lunch and brief breaks between classes. There's more hours because this year (not being a long-term student) I'm on the conversation course track, not the generic track.

Unexpected Cuisine

We met fairly early, so we had time for a coffee and a walk before we went for food. I needed them too, as I'd inadvertantly eaten too much lunch and was very full!

I'm staying in Hakata, so we wandered north a bit in search of Higashi Park (東公園).

Akizuki bank holiday excursion

So after arriving in Japan on Sunday night, buying a small amount of food and heading to bed, I slept pretty well and woke up in good time for the first day of school. Except it wasn't school, due to a bank holiday; instead, there was an excursion arranged with some locals.

We were going to Akizuki, a castle town about 25 miles (by road, less as the crow flies) from Fukuoka.

A Shimmin Returns

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

The Manchester flight was fine; I sat next to a very pleasant bloke heading to Bali, and we chatted about spending time in Asia (he used to work in China), our mutual interest in other cultures, and various other things. Hope he's having a nice time at his daughter's wedding.

I reached Schiphol, and was immediately confused. My plan was to find out what I'd need to do and make sure I was in roughly the right part of a huge airport, then try to nap for a while. It was about 3pm, which made it midnight in Japan. Getting at least some sleep during the core sleeping hours for a new timezone is apparently important for adjusting quickly.

There were two problems facing me. One was that I had no idea where I should be going, specifically - direct to departures? Presumably, in which case... where was it?

Off to Japan!

So, Saturday. Today I fly to Japan, via Amsterdam and Seoul.

The sleep-adjusting thing doesn't seem to have worked. I was more or less back on track for being 4 hours ahead. Unfortunately, on Friday night I carefully wound down, had a shower, turned off screens, avoided bright light all evening, went to bed... and was as completely and utterly unable to sleep as I've ever been.

I've had long-term insomnia before, so it's possible that I'm just not able to cope with fluctuations in my sleep schedule. The fact that I tend to go to bed late probably doesn't help; if I normally went to bed early it would at least give me a headstart on Japan.

As it is, sticking to my normal about-midnight bedtime would leave me wanting to sleep in Japan just when I should be getting to school. Not ideal.

Time travelling III

So my efforts to pre-adjust towards Japan time crashed and burned last night. Although I'd been up since 4.30am and had eaten several hours early, and was really quite tired by the evening, it didn't quite work out somehow.

One issue is that I almost feel like I was too tired; the combination of lack of sleep and waking early maybe meant that my rhythms were way off. Another is that, I suspect mostly because of lack of sleep, I was unusually anxious all day and struggling with mood. This, coupled with the feeling that it was important to get to sleep (partly because of adjusting time, partly simply because I really wanted to shake off the damned anxiety) meant I was quite stressed as I tried to get to sleep.

It also doesn't help that I live on a main road, in an area apparently full of boy racers, in a set of flats with iron steps that resonate gongishly whenever anyone walks up and down outside, with interior and exterior walls apparently made of tissue paper. At the best of times I can hear my neighbours snoring when I go to bed. When most people aren't even thinking of going to sleep, well... that's a lot of background noise. And I'm not good with background noise, even with my white noise on in the background.

So what happened was, I lay in bed for two hours, drifting repeatedly towards sleep and then bouncing back again. Eventually I got up, read for half an hour, had some water and went back to bed. I eventually got to sleep around midnight and slept until 6am. Not an absolutely and total loss, but it wiped out my gains for the week. Getting up one hour early I can do any time!

I'm sticking to early mealtimes, and trying to stay in low light from the earliest point in the evening. Unfortunately that's about 6pm rather than about 2pm, which would be better. And I'll try to gently drift towards bedtime.

We'll see if things go any better tonight. So far this plan isn't looking so great.

More Time Travelling

My attempt to adjust to Japan Time continues, this time by getting up at 4.30am. Unfortunately I stayed up until nearly midnight, which means very little sleep, but apparently (according to SleepCycle, anyway) I woke from shallow sleep. Whatever happened, I've been pretty much completely functional all day, just rather tired.

However, I have found myself being quite negative and really quite anxious. I'm sure some of this comes just from the effort of preparing for a one-month holiday abroad and all the stuff that needs doing. On the other hand, there's good evidence that lack of sleep genuinely triggers anxiety, and that "naturally anxious" people (which would tend to include me and my stress/depression issues) are worse affected. So I'm really, really hoping that an early night tonight will beat off the worst of that.

One problem with this strategy is that it plays havoc with mealtimes. The working day is really not set up for people to want two meals during working hours, but unfortunately that's kind of what I need. Today I took half an hour for lunch at 10.30 and another half at 4pm for tea. The big problem here is really that you don't get a midday break, which means the day is extremely long and tiring. Tomorrow I'm aiming to have lunch just before work starts, and then have my tea as a late lunchbreak.

I basically have no idea whether this is a sensible plan. It's somewhat inconvenient, it makes mealtimes complicated, all my colleagues think I'm loony, and I don't know whether it'll make any difference to the jetlag. We can but try. I suppose I'll know for next time...

On the plus side, I've now done almost all my packing - just need to tuck that computer and phone away before I go.

Time Travelling

So I'm due to fly out to Fukuoka on Saturday. Annoyingly this will involve stopping in both the Netherlands and Korea, which adds about eight hours to the whole journey, since I'm supposed to spend at least five in Schiphol. I've heard it's one of the better airports to wait around in, which presumably means it is merely a soulless corporate void of pointless duty-free chocolates and watches aimed at the sort of people who should probably be in prison, where people with enormous amounts of money can occupy themselves buying things they don't need to stave off boredom, rather than actively hostile to your existence.

Also I heard they offer half an hour of free wi-fi, which in a situation like this is equivalent to offering half an hour of free seating. Apparently they have upgraded to offer unlimited free low-fi internet, which should be fine.

Annoyingly my stopover is just less than the length everyone agrees is the minimum needed to go into town and explore, so I get to spend the maximum possible time stuck in an airport.

Anyway! In preparation, I've started adjusting my body clock to Japan time, which means losing nine hours. In principle, this is much harder than the alternative - staying up late and sleeping in every day is way easier. In practice, I have a job and am obliged to start work at 9am, so actually getting up increasingly early is easier in the sense that it's actually physically possible.

Today wasn't so bad; I was up at 5am and am now enjoying the soft light of just after dawn. It'll get increasingly difficult over the week as I wait until the equivalent of noon for the sun to rise.

I'm also looking forward to confusing my colleagues as I start having lunch mid-morning and then switch to instead having a break for tea in mid-afternoon (only one meal break, after all).