mitsdriveswhere

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might fuck around might climb a mountain type day huh

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might fuck around might climb a mountain type day huh

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might fuck around might climb a mountain type day huh

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No Kings Protest on Saturday, June 14th, 2025 - Colorado Springs

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reminiscing on when i went cave diving a couple years back & another dude who was in there was playing minecraft music out of his backpack so i just heard c418 slowly approaching me from within an actual cave. shoutout to that guy

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livin' the dream (took a public bus to work)

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happy Fuck Adolph Bandelier Day everyone

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today I drove to the end of a dead-end road on a barely inhabited island in the north Atlantic and was rewarded with a model village inhabited by a family of geese

be horrible with mama

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planning is hard

I feel like it's been a while since I've had a Story about a trip I went on. I've had stories, sure, but Stories? With age comes wisdom, so they tend to be far less frequent. Also because most of my Stories involve some amount of emotion that, on the emotional spectrum wheel, is probably not one I like to sit in because it is, in fact, unpleasant, and I have therefore selected out some behaviors that cause them to happen.

That being said.

I am what my sister has described as, very type B.

I would say, for the most part, that is the case. While I do have pretty rigid routines, they are routines that keep me regulated - eg, relaxed. Havin' a good time. If I deviate from those routines, I need at least 5 business days to realign, but I'm quite good at my routines, and I like doing them. If my routines are broken, I become very stressed, anxious, and close down. My solution to this is to have a lot of routines for the situations I find myself in the most (ie, work and weekends), and to entirely avoid any type of planning for anything outside of that.

I like to experience the full range of human emotions, even the unpleasant ones, so there is a certain amount of 'routine' that can also be placed on having no plan whatsoever. I think I draw a very good line between planning and not planning. However. I have also been told by numerous individuals that the way I travel stresses them out.

Which isn't usually a problem, because I travel alone. I'm the only one I'm stressing out. Point being. I was going to visit my sister in Japan, and I was trying to be financially efficient with my travel plans. I got the best deal anyone I know has ever heard of on my flights (>$1000 round trip from Colorado to Japan), but it did involve a few extra steps.

Essentially, it would happen like this: take a car to the airport, take a plane, take another plane, take another plane, take a train, take a shinkansen, take another train, then take a bus - or walk, depending on how late I got in. Fairly straight forward, I thought. Perhaps foolishly.

I was supposed to leave my house at 4:30AM. I set two alarms - one 4AM, when I was supposed to wake up, and one for 4:30AM, when I left.

Can you guess which one I slept through?

Yeah, I woke up to the 4:30AM alarm, immediately rolled over and texted my mum - who had graciously agreed to wake up early and drive me to the airport - the following texts:

"Fuxk fuckbfuck I woke up late give me 6 min I really need to showe"

"Shower"

"I'm sorry"

Luckily I had actually gotten everything ready by the door the night before so I stumbled out of my house 9 minutes later, and we got to the airport on time.

For a delayed flight. I checked our new departure time - I would have 25 minutes to get from one gate to the other at DIA. Not stressful at all. Got to my gate at DIA.

For a delayed flight.

I sat down, kind glad that it had delayed so I could breathe easier but also a little bit freaking out because boarding started at LAX 15 minutes after my flight would get in from DIA with this new delayed departure.

At one point while we were waiting the flight attendants came over the intercom saying they didn't have enough seats, if anyone would agree to wait for a later flight. No one got up. Ten minutes later they offered $1000 a piece to two people to take a later flight - that got two people up and moving lol.

So I get on my flight, land in LAX - an airport, mind you, I specifically wanted to fly into because I wanted to see its famously terrible car infrastructure. There are news stories about how terrible it is. And I was just running from terminal 6 to terminal 7 so I could catch my flight. Haaah.

Twelve and a half our flight, couldn't sleep at all. Watched 2 seasons of two different shows. Watched 4 movies. Finally get into Narita Airport.

Now, I had been told that for Japanese customs, you can expect a wait time anywhere from 15 minutes to 3 hours - and I had to book my shinkansen later that night in advance, so I split the difference and banked on 2 hours.

Yeah it was 15 minutes. I was out of Narita airport and had so, so much time until I needed to catch my shinkansen an hour away. So I went to an airport employee, whipped out my google translate app, and asked where I could get a train from Narita. He pointed to the escalator and told me how to find the ticket desk. Got my ticket, got on the train in Narita.

Lovely train ride from Narita. One of my absolute favorites. Really shows a lot of the beauty of both Japan's countryside and cities. Also gave me the time to discover that the eSim I had been planning on using wasn't compatible with my Shittiest-Cheapest-Phone-Plan-Ever Sim card. So I could use public wifi, but if there wasn't any, my phone was essentially a very cool light up brick.

Cool.

Got into Tokyo Station.

First of all. Why did I do this. Why did I chose to stop at the 7th busies train station on planet earth as my first ever major train station - ON A SATURDAY EVENING. Why did I do this. I couldn't tell you. Anyway, I kept hopping from shinkansen wifi to shinkansen wifi as they arrived and left the station to Line my sister, asking what I should do - they said I should try to get a ticket to an earlier shinkansen. I (somehow) managed to get myself to the shinkansen ticket desk, and used my google translate app to ask if I could change my ticket to a train sooner. My options were: 8 minutes, in an hour, or in an hour and a half.

And me, with confidence I should not have had, chose the one in 8 minutes. The Nozomi #something. Problem. being.

'Nozomi' is not spelled 'Nozomi'. It's spelled 'のぞみ'. Maybe I just wasn't looking in the right places, but I could not find any of the train names in English. I'll be honest, I started to panic, have a little itty bitty little panic attack.

I stopped, pulled myself together. Panicking does nothing for me here. Thousands of people do this every day. Thousands of stupid people do this every day. Just focus. So I pulled, from the depths of my two month interest in Japanese from ten years ago, the single Japanese letter I could remember: の. I knew what that meant, and I was pretty damn sure there were no other lines that started with that, so I went with that one. Thank you random Japanese man who was standing on the platform who confirmed for me by looking at my ticket and nodding to me that I was at the right place. Got on the shinkansen. Was awesome!

Got off at Osaka Station. Second of all. Why did I do this. Why did I chose to stop at the 4th largest train station on planet earth on A SATURDAY EVENING. Was again feeling a teeny tiny bit panicked. a minuscule panic attack, you could say. I couldn't get any wifi anymore, couldn't Line my sister. I had three error, unsent messages to them, the last one was 'Bro please answer me' lol. But! I took a breath. Panicking does nothing for me here. Thousands of people do this every day. Thousands of stupid people do this every day. Just focus. And I walked from one station employee to another until they got me to the ticket desk, and I got on the most packed train I've ever been on in entire life.

It was so packed when people got off on a different station I was nearly pulled/pushed at a 40 degree angle out of the train. But I managed to right myself, and on the train went. One station before my sister's, I got a seat. I immediately went to sleep. I'd been up for 26 hours at this point. I was tired.

Finally the train got into my sister's station. Too late for buses. Too late for taxis. I start walking, holding onto my phone that held their last Line messages to me, directions to their house. I'd walk the last mile and change.

"Turn left at the 7/11" they said.

Lo, for they had no idea.

There were two 7/11s between the station and their house.

So I turn at the wrong 7/11, going off in the wrong direction.

It's at this point, that I remember I - the avid planner - had actually downloaded the offline map of my sister's town, and so I opened it, saw I was going in the wrong direction, righted myself. Thirty minutes later, I'm maybe 5 minutes from my sister's house. It's 11PM. I am tired. I see, in the distance, someone biking towards me. Waving. And I hesitate. What if that isn't my sister. Wouldn't that be so awkward if I waved back. So I didn't. I just kept walking, the biker slowly approaching.

And what a good thing I didn't. Because it wasn't my sister. It was some random dude. On a bike. Waving at no one. There was no one behind me! I Looked! So I walk some more, see an apartment building, with the name of the apartment complex I'm looking for. Go up the stairs. Ring the doorbell.

Silence.

Panic.

What if I just rang some random Japanese person's door bell at like 11:30PM. Oh my god. oh my god. oh my god oh my god oh my god.

Door opens.

It's my sister.

They seem kind of surprised I'm standing there. They hadn't heard from me in two hours. I look them dead in the eye, into their soul. And I say.

"There are two 7/11s."

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Shinsen-en Garden, Kyoto, Japan

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We got a little turned around in Kyoto

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The roofs of Himeji Castle

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Perhaps it's my light/color sensitivity (30% contrast, 0% screen brightness amiright) or the fact that I was born and raised in a desert, but I am always blown away by how GREEN some places can be. Mt Shosha, Japan.

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Also tried takoyaki, which nearly burned a hole through my entire skull when I put it in my mouth. Oh my god it was so hot and retained its heat for so long

Okay but have I mentioned the food?

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I've been asked several times what the best part of Japan was and hands down no question it's public transportation. To be able to get anywhere without a car, so smoothly, was just amazing.

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Camellias in the waterway at Mt Shosha, Japan