"What are you going to do with all that time?" That was the question I fielded most often in the weeks before my final day of work. It's also a question that I've asked myself repeatedly, knowing that in order to have a good answer for you, I need to have a good answer for myself. "Traveling" is insufficient in my case, because I've had and will have opportunities to visit some really exciting places. Plus if I just treat the next four months as a long vacation, I'm going to have a pretttty rough time readjusting to all of the stress that I recently escaped.
Instead, the cheesy but honest reason for this time off (besides eating) is to improve. It hasn't even been two weeks since my final paycheck and I already look and feel and think so much healthier. I'm a high-strung guy. I wear my emotions on my sleeve, can be stubborn as hell, don't always make the perfect decisions under pressure and can really get better at coping with stress. This improvement shouldn't require an extended period of unemployment and reflection in front of Japanese shrines, but, in going back to the first post of this trip, I'm really fucking lucky.
So how can I make the most out of the next few months and truly develop as a human without sacrificing the fun that I can and should be having while traveling?
Let's get the easiest one out of the way first. This is long overdue, but I'm going to actually try to practice mindfulness on a daily basis. I've been doing some #millennialmeditation through Headspace each morning. Just a few minutes of guided practice where I try to redirect my thoughts away from getting trapped inside of a train station (more on that in a minute) and sushi and where I'm going to do laundry. We're still in the finger painting stages of meditation, but I do feel like I'm getting slightly better.
Just in case you're getting bored with the philosophizing, here's a pic of some fire curry udon. Bury me on a bed of udon noodles.
Next, I want to constantly push the boundaries of my comfort. I'm a pretty risk-averse dude, and it would be pretty easy to travel with training wheels. Instead, I'm forcing myself to have uncomfortable conversations with people who don't speak my language and buy tickets for trains in characters that I don't understand.
A few days ago Marisa and I got trapped inside of a train station in Osaka. She lost her metro card, so I bought her what I thought was a one-way ticket. Turns out I bought the wrong ticket, and she couldn't get out. So I got out to look for help, then re-entered when I couldn't find any. Turns out both of us were now stuck because I think I violated some sort of one-in/one-out rule. Why am I telling a story about a nothing problem? Well, historically, even something this simple would have really stressed me out! But this time, we just laughed about it. It took some searching and patience, but we found a conductor-looking fellow who took us upstairs and gave us a freebie.
The lesson in all of this is that, for us anxious folks, things are never as bad as they seem. Most big problems are really just a collection of tiny problems that can be solved one at a time (shoutout my old boss for this insight; it's again very basic but equally profound). So yeah, I want to get stuck in train stations and reinforce this lesson over, and over, and over again.
Lastly, I want to discover and explore things that truly give me joy. I feel that when I'm barreling through life, I seek refuge in a comfortable but limiting routine. I get up, I go to the gym, I go to work, I eat dinner, I mess around on the Internet, I get depressed reading the news on the internet, and I go to bed. There are other things that I love doing - writing, for example - that are sacrificed in order to avoid straying from the routine. I want to use the next four months, both at home and on the road, to prioritize those things and add a few more to my list.
I hope that answers the "lol ur just traveling?" question a little better. Maybe that entire explanation got a massive eye roll. And maybe this will just turn into an extended vacation absent of true self-improvement. I can't make any promises, but I'm going to do my best.
"Just tell us about the fucking food you ate." - everybody.
Here's the cliff notes version of what's happened in the past few days:
-We spent the last two days in Osaka, where we stayed at the Imperial Hotel Osaka (I got a ridiculous deal). The hotel was right on the river, which had a riverwalk adorned by the sakura (cherry blossoms). It was beautiful. It also had a bar near the top floor with allegedly the best view in the city. During our lone drink in said bar (cheapest drink was $14), we saw a sumo wrestler arrive with a posse of four guys in suits. I'm not sure if he was famous, but I'm going to tell people he was.
-We visited most of the neighborhoods in Osaka, from the heavy tourist areas (Dotonbouri) to the more hipster spots (Nakazakicho). The one downside to our hotel is that it wasn't centrally located and was about .7 miles from the closet metro. Again, champagne problems, but we walked a lot.
-We ate so much good food. I gave you a little sneak peek above, but I've had two udon meals in the past three days that have been unbelievably good. Our first stop in Osaka was at a tiny, locals-only, 12-seater restaurant. We both had the restaurant's staple, which was udon with beef in a beef broth. The broth was the richest and most flavorful beef broth I've tasted.
I would sell my soul to this bowl.
-We also had our first yakitori (chicken on skewers) experience. It was pretty good, but not as memorable as our other meals. Additionally, we had ramen, sushi and yakiniku once again, so we've essentially completed our second lap on the Japanese cuisine circuit.
-We did a little shopping. I bought a hypebeast shirt that I really like but is way too cool for me.
-We stumbled into a random motorsports themed bar, full of 10 people who seemed genuinely shocked that foreigners walked in. But they greeted us warmly, gave us a few seats at the bar, and were nothing but amazing to us as we pretended to enjoy motorcycle racing on TV. The bartender was also thrilled when I told her I was from Daytona (she had visited for one of the races). I told somebody I was from Daytona and it wasn't embarrassing!!!
Vroom vroom, bitches.
-We are now in Kyoto, where we arrived this morning via train. I again messed up and stuck us on the local train, so we made about 20 stops instead of four. We spent the late morning/early afternoon eating and walking to a few different shrines. Kyoto is a beautiful contrast to Tokyo in Osaka, with most of the urban sprawl giving way to forest and shrines. It is once again slammed with tourists, but there are pockets to escape to. If you aren't hellbent on seeing the cherry blossoms, I would actually recommend coming when they aren't in bloom. It may not be as pretty, but it's worth the sacrifice to avoid the swarms of people.
In front of the weeping cherry tree in Maruyama Park (Kyoto).
Thanks for reading. By the way, follow me on Instagram (@zbzimmerman) for pictures and videos of our trip. I'm posting to my story regularly, much to the dismay of Marisa.