Tag: life in Japan

I Forgot How Much Jetlag Sucks! (or, `some super-tired half-thoughts on the complexity of being human`)

I had an idea for a blog post on my flight over to Japan. I made notes about it during the train journey across to the guest house I`m staying in. I figured I`d type them up into a proper little article Sunday evening or sometime Monday. But my laptop battery had died and I`d forgotten to bring an adaptor for the plug.

I bought an adaptor today so my laptop is ready to go. My brain is not. Just . . . nope.

This is exactly how I feel!
Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

I`ve made this journey from UK to Japan and back a number of times now (genuinely too tired to count them up), but I always forget what the jetlag is like. And for some reason I decide to make up what it will be like: my body clock being off by eight hours so that I feel awake in the evening and sleepy in the morning. But its not like that at all.

I drift in and out of being tired and awake, seemingly at random. And the same with hunger. Im going from zero appetite to, “Is it illegal to grab and eat crows?” with no warning at all. Luckily crows are nearly impossible to catch, so I`ve avoided legal recourse so far.

But you didn’t come here to just read about my misery (or if you did, you can stop now because it`s all serious chat` from here on in). The problem is, though, that when my body doesn’t get enough sleep and/or food at the right time, my head stops working so well, and tasks like drawing spiritual lessons out of life experiences really, really . . . yeah, cant do it!

And that`s frustrating for someone like me, who works with words for a living (as much as missionaries work for their living). In the culture of Japan where (it feels like) the solution to most difficulties is to `ganbaru` – “dig deep,” “work hard,” “do you best!” And with a heritage of reliance on prayer to take tasks from `impossible` to `difficult` to `done.`

Because as people we are connected beings. And that means that sometimes the solution to a problem, like being able to turn rough notes into a clear and engaging blog post, is not better writing strategies, or just to dig deep and plough through, or even not to turn to prayer. But actually to rest, eat, sleep, drink plenty of water, and wait for the jetlag to pass.

“If you want to watch the sunrise, you`ve got . . . nah, just kidding, go take a nap.”
Photo by Arthur Brognoli on Pexels.com

So that`s what I`m going to do. Come back next week for the blog post that is still currently a pile of mush in the back of my brain (but don`t get your hopes up too much!).

Compared to Japan, UK Train Journeys are Decidedly ‘Tekitou’ and I Think I’m Going to Miss That

Grafitti covered wall by train tracks

I’ve been back in the UK for almost a year now, and have lost track of the number of train journeys I’ve taken in that time. But I know for sure it is a lot. And one thing that has been apparent to me over that time is that train journeys here are quite a bit different to ones in Japan. Most of my initial reverse culture-shock I experienced on train journeys.

Trains in Japan are fast, efficient, clean, on-time, reliable.

Trains in the UK are . . . well, I think the best word to describe them is ‘tekitou.’

適当 (pronounced “techy tour” – ish) is a great Japanese word that has two totally opposite meanings. Positively it means ‘suitable, appropriate, fitting.’ Negatively it means ‘careless, half-hearted, lazy, noncommittal, irresponsible.’ But I’ve also heard it often used in a fairly neutral way, somewhere between the two meanings. I think the closest English word we have is ‘random,’ in that sense that it gets used to mean something that actually isn’t random at all but more unexpected (and which makes the old Computer Science student part of me bristle with quiet rage).

See, as much as I love Japanese trains – and I really do! – when you travel by train in Japan, you know what you’re going to see: beautiful Japanese countryside. There’ll be a gentle slope down to a road, across the road there’ll be a stretch of rice fields with the occasional house dotted around, and beyond that there’ll be forest-covered mountains. It’s lovely, even breath-taking, but . . . well, it’s quite predictable.

But on a train journey across the UK you never know what you’re going to see. Sure sometimes it`s just houses, but you also get church steeples, bowling greens, allotments, ponds, parks, canal boats, dry-stone walls snaking across fields dotted with sheep, cows, and horses. On a recent train journey I watched from my window for about ten minutes, and in that time we travelled past football and rugby pitches, a line of abandoned caravans, fields with sheep and horses, a windfarm, factories, and a racetrack. And my personal favourite spot was a large country home with – and I swear this is true – a helicopter parked in their back garden.

allotment next to a railway line

And this scenery flies right past your face! In Japan I always feel a bit distant from the passing scenery. It does allow you to take in the view in a leisurely manner. But I feel like in Japan I`m travelling past the countryside. Whereas in the UK, you rattle through it.

As I type this we`re going through a patch of wetlands and I mean through. If we broke down and had to exit the train, we`d literally be stepping into a bog. I`ve seen horses so close you could toss a carrot to them, and I`m sure once I looked up from a book to discover my train was going through a car park. You just can`t guess what you`re going to see when you go cross-country on a train here. It`s so random, so unpredictable, and yet somehow so very fitting. I wonder if you could even call it quaint. But as I`m not sure, I`ll stick with tekitou.

So whilst I do wish that UK trains were a bit less rickety and lot more reliable, I am going to miss these ridiculously tekitou journeys when I`m back in Japan.

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