Dearest Rachel –
Well, we made it home. In fact, we landed at O’Hare only about an hour after we took off from Narita – all that time change, stuff you know. That, in fact, was one of the reasons why I’d decided to stay home today from the ‘office’: it was basically assumed by all and sundry that I would need at least the day to reacclimatized myself.
That, and you can probably imagine how much laundry I have to deal with that Daniel and I created over the course of this trip. And that’s to say nothing of the bills; much as I tried to take care of what I could online, there are some things that still just come in the mail, and I can’t deal with them any other way (because I’m not aware of them), and at least one of my credit card bill payment sites outright refused to be accessed from the opposite side of the world. I get not trusting them when they’re being used in some remote corner of the world (although given other expenditures and where they originate from, that should be ascertained by such a company – and in any event, apart from trying to use a Discover card anywhere but the U.S., I had had no such issues), but not allowing me to pay my bill? Seems strange to me, but it is what it is. I will have to figure out a workaround by this time next year, though.
But it’s become clear that there is another reason to stay home from ‘work’ today, and not just because I have more work at home to deal with than I would at the ‘office.’ Namely, the fact that, to quote Harvey Danger, “I’m not sick, but I’m not well.” I woke up at four this morning and checked my temperature: 99.3°F. It’s a level that would juuust get me past checkpoints in various places in Japan, since their threshold for determining who has Covid and should not be out in public is 37.5°C; I’m literally one-tenth of a degree short of that boundary. So I could make my way around… but I probably shouldn’t.
I tell you all of this, because we had the option to do so, and I very nearly considered doing so. When I went online to check in for our flight back, we were told that our flight was full, and were offered the option to sell our ticket at a premium – at least I hope that’s what was meant. The prices we were suggested that we could sell our tickets for – $300, $500 and $700 – seemed rather low in terms of being able to replace our original tickets, to say nothing of hotel and transportation accommodations for any days between original flight and when we could get the next one. Considering that we were, of all people, the least urgent to need to get home, this would seem like an ideal way to squeeze in an extra day or two, and do a few more things we hadn’t gotten the chance to, especially there in Tokyo. But my confusion between whether these numbers were a price or a premium contributed heavily to my decision to forgo the opportunity.
And, to be fair, as we were flying back, Daniel was expressing a certain palpable relief to be getting home. He might not have been getting tired of Japan as such, but he was getting tired of traveling, which is more than fair. Two and a half weeks is a long time, especially since, apart from the first day in Tokyo and the first day aboard ship, we’d been running non-stop from one place to the next. We kind of had to; there was no other way to take it all (or at least, as much of it as possible) in. But I think it had caught up with Daniel, and he was ready to come home.
Me, not so much. I had a few momentary visions of making my way through Tokyo for a day or two, completely on our own, like a high wire act without a net. There were, after all, plenty of places we hadn’t gotten to see or do that we would’ve wanted to (had we known how to access them). Granted, those extra days wouldn’t give us any of the know-how, but they would have given us the time to try.
I still rather regret having passed up the opportunity. The idea of a night in a capsule hotel, or one of those 24 hour manga cafés sounds just appealing enough to want to try (heaven knows that the other sort of hotels I mentioned previously I wouldn’t even consider when traveling with Daniel), even as a foreigner who only knows enough Japanese to screw things up. But – and there’s no denying this – it would have been an adventure.
Then again, as I’ve said, so many times, before, adventures aren’t often fun when they’re happening. And if nothing else, the way my body feels right now is more than enough confirmation that I made the right decision. I would not be able to enjoy the adventure – heck, I probably wouldn’t be able to make my way through the adventure – if I was feeling like this. It wouldn’t have been worth it.
Then, again, it’s possible that our replacement flight wouldn’t have taken us through Denver.
Anyway, I’ve got laundry to do, bills to pay, and at the moment, I just feel like going back to bed. I’ll catch you up a little bit more when I’m feeling better. Until then, honey, keep an eye on us, and wish us luck. We’re going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 