Long Weekend in Tokyo

So, I’ve now finally said bye bye Camden, and hello hello Balham, only to say bye bye Balham straight away, and bye bye London, and indeed Europe for now. With my possessions now divided between Balham and Norfolk, I took the flight to Narita Airport to start a three month misadventure into the partly known and unknown.

After a reasonably successful flight, in that it landed, I made my way to Shinjuku to Hotel Sunroute Higashi with my first instinct being to sleep. But, of course, with my flight landing earlier than check-in time, I was left to bumble about in the rain until 2PM.

That out the way, I then did what I have done a lot over the past few days: sleep during the day. Jetlag has hit me badly this weekend on my arrival and my body loves waking up unnecessarily early, only to start to tire by mid-afternoon, leaving a couple of lost evenings already. Waking, the rain was still heavy, so my first day was a bit of a non-event, kept mainly indoors, mainly in bed.

The rain continued on Saturday, leaving my plans to walk around a bit scuppered, though I did buy a coat, which only cost me my soul, being that it’s a Nike SB. To celebrate, I had a couple of pints, which combined with the jetlag caused a near instant death and once again left me needing an early bed, though not before the sun finally came out.

Sunday was a better day, with the sun out and bringing with it a mild attempt at sunburn, or maybe it was just due to my going for a run that my face was so red. On a whim, I went to watch J-League Division 2 side Tokyo Verdy at the Ajinomoto Stadium in a 2-0 win over Thespa Kusastu. He crowd were lively, as ever in the J-League and a nice view of Fuji-san could be seen as the sun began to set. Jetlag was beaten for that day at least, leaving me able to go out for a meal and everything. That can’t be said of Monday, however, in which I woke early, again, and was Tokyo zombied by the afternoon.

In essence, it’s been a weekend to readjust my body clock. I was able to get quite a bit of exercise done, but jetlag kept my level of activity to a minimum.  Hopefully it will be gone when I move on to Okinawa, where I should be able to enjoy the evenings, as well as the rising sun.