Day 0 - From London with Love

As with any other day, it starts with a 5am wake-up, brewing some Japanese tea, and dressing in your final pair of London pants. It's still cold outside, typical London weather.

Complete your final mental checks, put the last cables in, and attach the GoPro on top. Double-check the path, ensuring buses, trains, and planes are still operating, and there are no strikes, marathons, or environmental activists around Heathrow.

Bid your final goodbyes, and off you go. Listen to some great music, catch a bus to the Crossrail, then take the Crossrail to the airport. Observe a few squirrels fighting over tree space; it seems even these creatures have to compete for affordable accommodation.

Pass through airport security without any issues, and celebrate the small victories with a croissant and bad coffee, which you ultimately leave behind.

Google seems to know the gate numbers before the airport does, so you head towards whatever gate is labeled C. Turns out, Google was slightly off, so you have to backtrack.

As you're accustomed to the finest Ryanair experience, you try to act normal and not be completely dumbfounded when they actually have organised boarding procedures, refreshments and socks.

Onboard entertainment isn't the best, but you come prepared with a fully charged iPad and laptop. However, as soon as the plane takes off, the announcement instructs you to turn on your Wi-Fi and welcome the future.

Flying over the entire world with 5Mbps speed is probably one of the best descriptions of heaven; you're not sure which religions include these terms, but you're happy to follow.

As for meals, you have lunch at 10am UK time and breakfast at 10pm UK time. You enjoy a good chicken sukiyaki for lunch and an even better English full breakfast, as any food tastes great after a 10-hour fast.

You keep checking the time, and the map as you're closer and closer to Japan, 3..2..1 hours left, and eventually you land, it's 7am, in Tokyo... this is going to be a long day, you know check-in is only at 3pm at the hotel, so no rush...

Put on the mask, show your Covid certificates, stay for an hour at least in the passport control, then a few more minutes through customs.

Follow the signs, Exit, Exit, Exit, Train Station, Exit, Exit, towards Tokyo, Ueno, Exit, exit... grab the cutest monorail train, that has it's own advertising in Makoto Shinkai colours, towards central Tokyo, where every canal shines bright, every building is geometrically engineered on some reclaimed land, and the mega residential structures feel like they could house all the daily passangers of Waterloo Station.

A few changes, all easy to follow, nothing too extreme and you arrive to the hotel.. at 9:35AM , only 6 hours to go til checkin. This is going to be a long day.

You decide to drop all the luggage, grab just the phone, and head to the nearest soba place you can find, unfortunately they don't open until 11Am so you settle for a coffee and a Japanese croissant.

To order a croissant and a coffee, no matter how much japanese you might try to mumble, it's still croissant and coffee, universal dialect of pastry.

You think it's time to wander around, maybe towards some specific lunch place, but you don't feel like lunching as the jet-lag belly is fine for now... you still put a general direction, and head into the sun...

As you have a lot of time to waste, you notice every temple, be it tiny or not, happy to explore and plan maybe to come back later with a proper camera, first one that had a huge gate, and about 5 centuries worth of history, was this Hie Shinto Shrine, something about tree deities, hard to read wikipedia in the open sun, you still find an amazing staircase with red gates on one of the sides, that should be a great photo for later.

You're a tiny bit off trail, but with every supermarket around, time for a drink. It's still only 11Am, 4 hours to go til you can take a shower. Well, it's a long day.

General direction set, time to see the main attraction of Tokyo. The branded carps near a tower or something.

To be honest, as there's no camera on me, I didn't care to take much of pictures right now, so I sat down, under one of the London buses they have, and after a few minutes of just breathing the Tokyo air through a mask, a japanese man approached me, dressed in white shirt, striped tie. Mentioning he is an English teacher and he likes to interview/practice... I don't mind, if he wants to practice, let it be, at first i thought he was mormon or something... no, just a japanese person.

He asked a few generic questions, when did you arrive, which prompted the response... a few hours ago, and how long are you staying, and why Japan...

Yes, a good question indeed, Kouta-san, why Japan...

It's indescribable, but to be honest I did not want to ruin his interview/english practice going into the existential rabbit hole of what is inspiration, how I feel about all the things I do in London and how I just want to restart, even for a bit in Japan... so I say politely, I enjoy taking pictures, japan is just the best country to photograph every possible street.

He asks a few more questions, says thank you, and runs off somewhere, I guess it was good practice for him, no MLM or business cards exchanged...

You go towards a shrine, but it seems busy, you look for a toilet, and notice a queue, apparently an Instagram spot... the toilet, no queues.

As the day drags on, you finally feel the jet lag, it should be around 5am in UK, you decide time to head back, maybe the hotel will take pity on you and let you in... I'm sure they would, but you still have time to ramble around.

You also wonder what's around for lunch, apparently not much as some things close at 13:30 until 3 or 5pm.

You go towards the next path, new paths, new architecture, new shrines, and random shops.
Randomly wandering into the shrine, you notice a few wooden plaques mentioning Sailor Scouts, and after a google search, you're in one of the sailor moon characters shrines... you notice the obvious characters straight away.

You keep walking towards the hotel, near Roppongi Hills, you notice a lot more open restaurants.

You settle on Kobe wagyu cheeseburger, about 20 Gbp worth of kobe meat.

Worth it, I would say definitely yes. As you finish it, you realize you're in one of the more touristy areas, Roppongi Hills.

Another 20 minutes and you're home. But still, another park ahead, sit down and relax, see the surroundings, feel a bit of that inner tokyo peace... and you're off for the last leg.

The day isn't over yet, as you have to catchup with London friends and collegues, but you decide to hit snooze for 2 hours.

And after the sun has set, it's finally time to grab the camera, and head into the neon lights, although not far, and see if you can grab another snack before fully adjusting to the new timezones...