The next day’s itinerary was Kyoto and Osaka Castle. Before I dive into that, there are a couple things to go back and talk about. First, the jet lag. Japan is sixteen hours ahead of California, which you can also think of as eight hours back. For example, if it’s 10PM in California, almost time to sleep, then in Japan it is only 2PM, the middle of the day. As I said in the Day 1 post, my strategy to circumvent jet lag was to sleep on and off during the flight to confuse my brain’s internal clock. This ended up backfiring because it made me unable to sleep at the required time. Once we got back to the hotel, I was not sleepy, and I knew that I had messed up. As it ended up, jet lag did not ruin the trip for me, but there were a lot of moments of waking up in the middle of the night, as well as getting sleepy in the middle of the day. This was piled on top of inadequate sleep due to the fact that each night we would get back to our room at 11PM, have to take turns using the washroom, and then get up at 6AM the following morning. My body only just started to get used to the new time zones when we were in Hong Kong on the seventh day of the trip. On the return trip to San Francisco, I employed a different strategy – I stayed awake throughout the flight – only attempting to sleep at the time that would be normal in San Francisco’s time zone – so that I would be ready to sleep at the appropriate time in San Francisco. While it is true that I wanted to take a nap upon arrival at 9AM, it was much easier to work my way back to a normal sleeping schedule knowing I was already sleepy. And this turned out to be true, as I got back into a normal rhythm within two days. So, to travelers moving through numerous time zones, I would recommend trying the second approach. If it fails, try out your own ideas to see what works.
The other issue for us travelers, which turns out to be quite related, is leg weariness and foot pain, which became a big topic of discussion among the other members of my family. Due to the immense amount of walking required by our itinerary (an average of 10 miles a day), this was bound to come up. However, I didn’t expect that it would come up so soon. By the end of the Nara-Universal day, only the second day of sightseeing on a 9-day tour, we had to have a group sit down and talk about how tired and painful our feet were. My mom, who has chronically swollen feet, had brought bad walking shoes and was getting blisters. My sister is not a very physical person; once she gets tired, she does not openly complain, but one can tell she is having problems because she starts lagging behind. My dad, though not the weakest of us, is the biggest complainer; he leads a relatively sedentary lifestyle, and is nearing sixty years of age. As for me, I am a young guy that has to walk at least six miles a day at work, and I am in probably the best shape of the four of us; I would have probably been A-OK for the duration of the trip if it wasn’t for the jet lag and short nights of sleep, weakening us further. This all came to a head after dinner on the Nara-Universal day, when we all agreed that we should take it easier on the next day in Kyoto.
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AuthorI was born and raised in San Francisco, California. I am proud of my Chinese heritage, and I think my background gives me a unique edge on this vast field of opinion. As a self-proclaimed music historian, I have loved pop music ever since I first heard it. These are my opinions on some of the recent albums and songs that are making a splash in the industry. Archives
December 2020
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