Past lives

I saw Past Lives the other day. I don’t think it was the best of the oscar nominees, but it was the one that resonated with me the most. I too left a country to start a new life, twice. It takes a little time, but, after a while, it really does feel that the person I was in those past lives is just a completely different person. It affects the people you leave behind, but also my own life; every time I go back to one of the countries I used to live in, I can’t help but be reminded that that life is now gone forever. Depending on my state of mind, and which bits of the past I remember, that can either feel sad, or liberating.

I’m turning 40 this year. Insert cliché here. Because my past lives were all very real breakpoints in life I think turning 40 doesn’t affect me as much as it might others. If I had lived only one life, I would have a lifetime worth of things I still want to accomplish by now. Instead, I have two past lives’ worth of things that other versions of me wanted to accomplish, and I feel less emotionally attached to those things than I wish I would. I still want to cycle Japan, but it’s not a hobby that current-me would start. I still like going back to Holland, but I can definitely no longer call it my home.

I’d like to write a book. I’d like to build a computer game, from the ground up, by myself. I’d like to be at peace again, the way my past lives were. Despite having it better than ever, I’ve never worried as much as I do now. Though perhaps that’s finally starting to decrease a little. I don’t know if hitting 40, or other upcoming events in my life, will trigger a new life. For the moment at least, I want to make the most of my current life.

Posted in Thoughts

Random things

I’ve not written much lately, which isn’t unusual. I used to blame lack of time for that, but in terms of available time, I have time to write. But I choose to spend most of that time elsewhere these days and don’t feel much like blogging. It feels like, at this point in my life, not much is happening that is worth reporting on publicly.

I’d write about public events or general content, but those posts tend to require a bit more time and preparation, especially in this day and age where the internet is getting more and more locked down and you can get “cancelled” for saying one wrong word. Blogging has become an ever increasing risk with lower and lower returns. I’d like to keep doing it, but things like the UK Online Safety Bill really make me wonder if it’s still worth it. Running a blog on your own domain with all kinds of cool features has never been easier from a technical point of view, but it’s just increasingly not worth it.

Callback to my post about Firefox vs Chrome: I’m still using both. On the desktop, behind the safety of a Pi Hole and several ad blocking extensions, I’ve completely switched back to Chrome and I love it. The UX just feels that tad bit sharper than Firefox. But on mobile, especially when I’m out of the house, Firefox is still my go-to browser. The lack of ad blockers in Chrome means that I frequently end up with three quarters of my tiny phone screen being filled with video ads and banner ads. That’s just terrible. Youtube has begun to disallow ad blockers on desktop, which is quite worrying in terms of setting a precedent. Enshittification is definitely a thing, and the internet we used to know is gone. If there is a place that preserves the freedom of the old internet I would love to know about it. Now’s the time to switch.

Posted in Daily Life , Tech , UK

Lifestyle changes

This week has just been full of surprises. A while ago I was diagnosed with a long-term disease that affects what I’m allowed to eat and drink. Today I was diagnosed with a second long-term disease that also affects what I’m allowed to eat and drink. I’ve barely reached middle age, but the doctor was quite clear that the changes to my body are irreversible, and I won’t be able to keep the same lifestyle that I used to have when I was younger.

That came as quite a shock to me, even though I knew it shouldn’t. I know I’ve got health issues I should take better care of, but I always seem to get away with things as long as I occasionally do something healthy to counteract all the unhealthy things I’m also doing. That definitely seems over now. I’ll need to severely limit myself in what I eat and drink, otherwise I’m very likely to die. It’s as simple as that.

Initially, when I heard the diagnosis, I felt upset, because I didn’t want to lose what I had. I was happy with my life, I didn’t want to make changes. But now that I’ve thought about it, and now that it’s absolutely clear that it’s just necessary, it just seems fine to me. Just another thing I have to do to survive. I think I can adjust my mindset to accept the new reality, but only time will tell. Time never stops.

Posted in Thoughts

Why I’m going back to Chrome after six months of Firefox

For the entirety of the last decade I have been using Chrome as my main browser. I started using it when Google’s motto was still “Don’t be evil” and have since lived to see the hero become the villain, so I wanted to give Firefox a serious try by making it by main browser. Here’s a very subjective report on things I liked, didn’t like, and why I’m switching back to Chrome. Disclaimer: all of this represents a snapshot in time of the features present in both browsers, and my views are entirely subjective. Your mileage may vary.

The reason I went with Firefox is because of its extensions, and its attitude towards free software. I fundamentally believe that software should be free, and having an open ecosystem for web technologies is something that Firefox contributes to, whereas (again, in my opinion) Chrome tries to take that away. Google would love nothing better for their users to be tightly tied into the Google ecosystem, which is an idea that I really dislike but at the same time benefit greatly from. Chrome’s sync for bookmarks, passwords etc. is just better than Firefox.

Another reason I wanted to switch is that, at the time, there were rumors that Chrome was going to completely get rid of ad blocking extensions in Chrome, and that would have been a dealbreaker for me. As of June 2023 this hasn’t happened though. I’ve also switched from an Android phone to an iOS phone during this time and have found the differences to be less, since both browsers use webkit underneath on iOS.

I’ll get to the core of why I’m switching back: Firefox annoys me. It’s just less user-friendly than Chrome. Here’s some things that Firefox gets wrong on mobile:

  • I have a bookmark with the word ‘weather’ in the url, and a different site that I visit every day to check the weather for my area. Chrome is smart enough to present me with the site that I just visited first whenever I search for ‘weather’. Firefox insists on showing me a stale bookmark that I haven’t visited in years and I have to scroll down to actually to get to my recent sites.
  • For some reason I’ve also seen the exact opposite behavior in Firefox as well, where I’ll have a bookmark for my online banking site that I want to go when I type ‘bank’, but because I’ve visited some obscure unrelated website that had ‘bank’ in the url, once, five years ago, I keep getting that recommendation rather than the bookmark I visit every month.
  • Speaking of bookmarks, I’m probably old-school in this, but I have a lot of bookmarks. One thing I do a lot is bookmark a site on mobile to my bookmark toolbar and then later check it on desktop. Firefox mobile never remembers the last folder I saved my bookmark in, and it always expands all subfolders in all my bookmarks, so I have to scroll down for half an hour and read through every folder name to get to the toolbar folder. It sucks. Chrome usually gets this right and remembers the last folder you used, but if I recall correctly this behavior did vary during the last years or so, so it is or was not perfect either.
  • Speaking of sync, I’ve occasionally had issues where the sync just didn’t happen and I sat at my desktop waiting for the bookmark to pop up. Chrome’s is pretty much instant.
  • On Firefox sometimes the most frequently visited sites on the start page just disappear. I don’t recall ever seeing this in Chrome.
  • Firefox crashes a lot, both on Android and on iOS. I’ll try to navigate to a site and the entire app just goes away and performs a load-from-scratch routine when I next tap the app icon. Again not something I’ve ever seen Chrome do.
  • Firefox is just laggy when the phone is on power-saving mode. Seriously, it takes several seconds to close a tab on my iPhone 12? That’s very, very poor. As usual, Chrome’s UX is lightning fast even in power saving mode.
  • Controversial ding: Firefox doesn’t know as much about me, so its recommendations are worse. I know, I know.. I say I care about privacy, but I have to admit I just like Chrome’s recommend articles way better than whatever Pocket comes up with. Though on that note, Chrome sucks in a different way: whenever it thinks I’m interested in “Thing A”, it will start recommend me all the local newspaper sites that write about “Thing A”, and I have to blacklist those sites one by one. I really don’t care about what some local town 200 miles away writes about the topic, but Chrome will happily recommend the same thing from a different local town 210 miles away instead.

And here’s a couple more things that Firefox gets wrong on Windows 10 compared to Chrome:

  • Firefox mutes tabs once, Chrome mutes sites and remembers it for all eternity.
  • Firefox sucks at multi monitor. It never remembers its window size correctly when you have two monitors with different display scales.
  • Site compatibility: this is not a huge thing, but some sites just look better in Chrome. I’m not sure what it is: different fonts, minor layout differences, but you can tell. It’s not a good thing because it means the web is over-optimizing for Chrome, but it’s just the way it is.

I know things may improve. I was really hoping that they would, but right now I think Chrome just has more (human) resources to throw at these things, and that, in my opinion, makes it an obviously better browser than Firefox (disclaimer: for my purposes). Perhaps I’ll try this experiment again in the future, but I think the only thing that would make me do that is if Chrome somehow becomes worse. Then again, given the kind of anti-user behavior that Google thinks is ok these days, it’s entirely possible that Chrome will become worse year of year, but for now Chrome is definitely still the clear winner for me. Let’s revisit this in a couple of years and see whether my trust in Chrome turned out to be misplaced or valid.

Posted in Tech | Tagged ,

The meaning

When I was younger I knew with absolute certainty that I wanted to be cryogenically frozen when I died, so I could eventually live again, whenever science has evolved enough to resuscitate my icy cold head. Why wouldn’t I want to live forever? At the very least I could observe the world endlessly and see what happens. I think I felt a lot more special, important and unique back then. Now that I’m hitting middle age, I’m kind of ok with just fading into obscurity after I die. My contribution to the world will end when I die. All I want to do until then, is ensure that my contribution is a positive one. Exactly what that contribution is and how it will be judged, I still have no idea.

I’m definitely resonating with the ‘middle’ in middle age lately. A lot of the goals I have are pass-me-ons from my younger self. I remember the enthusiasm I had for my goals back then, but nowadays.. it’s all just kind of faded away. I know that I have to do something with my goals before I hit old age. The reason for that is pretty simple: my family doesn’t age well. Looking at how others in my immediate family have aged, even if I do everything right, it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll have a good quality of life after 70, and personally I wouldn’t bet on my chances after 65 either. If I want to achieve things, it needs to be before then. It reminds me of the Your Life in Weeks post by Wait But Why. We should spend our time wisely.

I always considered myself an Optimistic Nihilist. The nihilist part of that is: I believe that, ultimately, there is no real meaning behind anything, and when we die, that’s it. But the optimist part of that is: if all that’s true and nothing really matters, then we might as well enjoy ourselves while we can and live life to the fullest. This was my belief when I was young, and I believe that I still believe this now, although lately my applied beliefs are more in line with that of a paperclip maximizer. I exist to provide, and I provide to exist. I try to make money so I can exist longer. I try to keep my body somewhat healthy so I can exist longer. I don’t consider any of that a great life goal in and of itself, but, despite literally decades of thinking about this, it’s still the only answer I can give myself, and I’m in a privileged enough position to not have to worry about the simpler challenges in life, like being employed, fed and healthy, for which I am very grateful. For now though, all I’m doing is buying myself more time to think.

I’m still at the lower end of middle age. I have time. I don’t know what to do with that time yet. But I have time. There should be more.

Posted in Thoughts

My Japan

It’s been an interesting year for me. Not-so-great things happened in the years before, but this year it really felt like things were starting to look up again. It’s been great to be able to go on holiday to Japan and spend some time away from the drudges of daily life, while also being in the right mindset to properly appreciate the time away. Today, sitting at the riverside, listening to music, it felt amazing to just take in the scenery and be in the moment. It’s something I’ve not done nearly enough lately.

I’m getting older. I’m not the same person I used to be when I lived here, already more than ten years ago. I’ve got different priorities, different hobbies. Being back here feels like I am meeting my past self, exposing all those changes I otherwise don’t really think about. There’s some things that my past self and I have differing opinions on, and being where I used to live a long time ago those differences become readily apparent. It’s a valuable and interesting experience, because it helps me appreciate how I’ve changed, for better and for worse.

Lastly, I was able to test if I could still enjoy Japan in the same way that I used to enjoy it back then. This, at least, is one part of me that hasn’t changed. I don’t think anyone I’ve met here has experienced Japan in quite the same way I did (and that’s only natural – everyone has their own story to tell). The way I intrinsically appreciate Japan is mine and mine alone, and not something I can easily put into words. But even after 17 years that feeling is still there, and I can still find those golden moments here. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of Japan.

Happy new year everyone.

Posted in Thoughts | Tagged ,

Zen or Kaizen

In my early twenties I used to be pretty calm about life in general. There were definitely a few things in life that I could get hugely worked up about, but my general take on life was that I aimed to be at peace with any kind of situation (a.k.a “being zen“). But the older I get, the more I feel that this idea clashes with the idea of “striving for better” (sort of like “kaizen“, a.k.a. Continuous Improvement), and I wonder if I’m being dishonest to myself when I aim to “be zen” while also striving for better.

Some banal examples of this are creature comforts: if I’m already happy with decent headphones, why would I want to have better ones? If, ultimately, I’m content with living in a two bed apartment, do I really need a three bed house? Other examples are more fundamental: if I have enough money to take care of myself and my family, do I really need that new job with the higher salary and the fancy job title?

I find that it is difficult to go all-in on something if you’ve already convinced yourself that you don’t need it. Though, out of all these examples, I think the job example is the easiest to justify, because having more wealth will benefit you and those around you. The amount of wealth you’d need for that statement to hit diminish returns is likely beyond most of us. Fancier headphones or better quality coffee are probably a bit harder to justify.

Once you start striving for something seriously, it’s difficult to go back. A two bed apartment might feel huge when you first buy it, but if you used to live in a three bed house you’ll notice the size much more. If you’ve experienced fantastic headphones you’d absolutely notice the lack of fidelity in cheaper models. Lifestyle inflation is a real thing. If you truly want to be zen, you have to make peace with your lifestyle deflating as well.

I believe it is possible to both be content with everything and also strive for better at the same time, but I think you have to deceive yourself a little in order to accomplish that. Being truly zen about your situation means not striving for better, and striving for better means you cannot be truly zen. Doing both means turning a blind eye to that dichotomy.

Posted in Thoughts | Tagged

What I love about traveling in Japan

I always end up feeling lucky when I travel in Japan. It’s a country that rewards you for being unprepared. For example, yesterday we had to get from Kawaguchiko to Shizuoka. There’s no easy way purely by train, but Kawaguchiko has a bunch of busses, so I left it until the morning we left to decide how we’d end up in Shizuoka. It turns out the bus line I found online wasn’t running, but the ticket office attendant suggested we take the local bus all the way around Mount Fuji to end up in Fuji town at the seaside.

The local bus turned out to be a great pick: if took us past all the surrounding lakes on a scenic tour of the area. There were only 5 people in the entire bus, since it’s the off season. Most tourists end up taking the trains or buses back to Tokyo. I really enjoy experiences like this – it’s little off-the-beaten-path finds that make otherwise crowded tourist destinations even more enjoyable. And with a beautiful blue sky as the backdrop, what more could you want?

It’s hard for me not to contrast this experience with that of other countries. Some other countries might ‘punish’ you in this situation, by forcing you to spend more money or time to get to your destination. When we traveled Cuba we tried to take a bus from the far end of the island back to Havana and had to wait until the last minute until we were sure we’d even get a seat, despite having been reassured that we wouldn’t have to reserve. And then of course that bus randomly ‘turned off’ several times in the middle of the night as we were moving, causing the driver to have to clutch-drop on a downhill to get the thing going again. Or England, where I’ve run into plenty of cases where public transport was just cancelled or delayed without further notice. But in Japan, supported by its excellent infrastructure and incredibly helpful locals, you are rewarded, because there’s always another way to get to where you want to go.

People travel for a lot of reasons: culture, meeting people, activities. As for me, I get a lot of enjoyment out of taking in the scenery. The aesthetic of places always appeals to me, and it’s usually one of my main goals each trip to visit a place with a beautiful view. But I also appreciate the easthetic of ‘boring’, normal locations. A long road leading from the suburbs into a city, with restaurants, car shops and malls on either side, might sound pretty generic, but there’s a uniqueness in how each country (and each city) plays the theme. Perhaps it’s not beautiful in the traditional way, but Japan’s take on it is definitely unmistakeably Japanese. That, to me, makes it interesting. It’s great to be able to experience that again.

Tagged ,

Mission to Japan

Foreword by me: when I mentioned to my wife that I wanted to write more during this trip and that I was going to write a bit about our travel woes she said she’d write something too, and she was happy for me to share her account of the proceedings here. What was interesting to me is how she highlighted different aspects of the same experience. Below is her version.

—————————————————————————–

It started like any other trip, we called for an Uber to the airport.

In a change of pace, we opted to fly from LCY. It was an eye watering £70 but with the Tube down and us having luggage, we considered it worth the cost, but I hadn’t bargained on the eggy fart from the driver. I think he had issues with his windshield jets as he kept having spray screen wash on from a bottle and then wiping it off. A little disconcerting particularly on a densely foggy and frosty morning.

We arrived at LCY in good time, passing the time at Costa and Pret. Between the time we dropped our bags off and queueing for security, disaster struck. Our flight to FRA was cancelled.

We queued up at the BA desk and was given the option of booking on a flight from LHR connecting at HKG in a few hours or our planned flights a day later. We opted for LHR. Upon closer inspection of the ticket pass, it turned out that we were flying into HND and not NRT as originally planned. Ho hum, Tokyo is Tokyo.

Looking at the inclemental weather, the chap at the booking desk advised us to take public transport. We weren’t convinced and the earliest Uber was six minutes away. As we were by the Taxi rank, we opted for a black cab and the cabbie advised taking us to Paddington and then Heathrow Express. Time was of the essence.

As we drove through London, we came across some of my stomping grounds near work. The roads were quite busy and I hadn’t realised just how higgledy-piggledy the roads were from Spitalfields to Euston.

We eventually arrived at Paddington and caught the Heathrow Express without much fanfare.

When trying to check in at the kiosks in T5, we got an error alerting us to see a person. We were then directed to a queue which just didn’t seem to be moving fast and time was ticking. Up to now, I had been feeling strangely calm, I could feel my heart racing, adrenalin coursing through my veins. In an act of desperation, we flagged down a very helpful chap who was initially unsure as to whether we’d make our flight. His supervisor thought otherwise and we were elevated to the front of the queue.

It was a bit touch and go at the counter. The dull but very helpful chap was having difficulties getting us checked through the second leg of the flight but eventually got through. We wouldn’t be sitting next to each other on the first flight to HKG but at this point, I’ll take whatever I can get.

Security, dinner and boarding was fine but we were held at the runway for an indeterminable amount of time due to last minute change of staff and paperwork. Once again, time ticking away, the chances of us making the second leg of the trip was dwindling fast. Rather annoyingly, I wasn’t getting reliable signal on my phone and couldn’t message my significant other. The seat to seat chat didn’t seem to be working either (in retrospect my significant other told me he couldn’t find the chat button). It was a fairly uneventful flight, the only thing of note was that they ran out of sweet and sour chicken by the time it got to my row and I didn’t sleep a wink.

As expected, we missed the connecting flight at HKG but were greeted by very helpful ground-staff. The next few moments felt like a whirlwind of events. We filled in the health declaration, collected bits and pieces for a COVID test, got swabbed, filled in more paperwork, picked up our baggage and issued a meal voucher.

I’m impressed by the organisation of the COVID tests, there was no waiting and everything was very smooth.

For a major international transport hub, I must say that I’m quite disappointed in HKG airport’s eating options. We tried to spend our $HK 150 once we made it airside and it seemed that pretty much everything is shut at 23:00 and reopens at 7:00am. Not even a cafe was open. Vending machines were few and any that were there didn’t accept foreign cards which is not useful at an airport. The take home here is to always pack snacks.

Our flight to NRT was pleasant, JAL’s service was swift and efficient, as you’d expect from Japan’s flagship carrier. Even the food was a few notches about BA.

As soon as we were on the final leg of our trip everything went fairly smoothly. There were some disadvantages to being in NRT super early (before 7:00am), namely that most things are shut apart from the conbini which was a sight for sore eyes.

I’ve lost all sense of time and I’m not even sure what day it is or how long it’s been since we left Cholesbury but we’ve finally made it to Kawaguchiko. I guess it could’ve been worse, we could still be stuck in London since snow has blanketed the country. At last we made it to our final destination and begin the vacation proceedings.

Tagged , , ,

A Travel Story

Has air travel gotten worse since covid? I certainly think so. It’s been a while since I’ve gone on a long trip, and today was without a doubt the worst experience I’ve had in decades. Normally I’d keep my rant to myself, but one of my goals for this trip is to write more, so the tale of how we got to Japan seems like a good place to start.

TFL was the first hurdle to overcome. That’s not a new thing though, they’re always pretty unreliable. It turns out that there was maintenance work being done on all the train lines that could connect us to our London City Airport flight, so our options were to either take several rail replacement buses and do multiple tube transfers in London, or take an Uber. Uber it is. As we were driving to the airport I definitely noticed the thick fog, but it was not something I could do anything about.

Let’s talk about flight check-in post-covid. British Airways’ method is horrendous. They ‘partnered’ with an app called Verifly, and it just did not work. Verifly is not up to date with the latest covid requirements for each country, and the verification result never seems to make it back to BA, meaning that we could not check in online and pick any seats for our long haul flight, at least not without paying BA more money.

Despite our online check-in woes the check-in at the airport went fairly smoothly and we dropped our bags off as soon as the bag drop opened. It was at the security gate where our troubles began. It didn’t let us through. Seconds later a guy came up and told us our flight was cancelled. We rushed back downstairs to the BA service desk to get ourselves rebooked, but there was already a hefty queue in front of us, and BA’s customer service desk at LCY isn’t the most populously staffed. When it was finally our turn the only replacement flight on the same day departed from Heathrow, in about 4 hours. Having no other option, we took it. The guy at the desk assured us that we could make it if we took public transport and left immediately, which should be doable given that he assured us all the bags we checked in were already waiting for us.

That turned out not to be true, and we had to wait a while to get our final suitcase back. What follows could be described as a “mad rush through London” but was in fact a quiet taxi ride to Paddington where we took the Heathrow Express (yes, I know.. but we were in a hurry and I fully intend to get this reimbursed from BA). We ended up taking a taxi because public transport seemed iffy according to the TFL site at the time (what a surprise) and the Uber didn’t show up in time. It turned out to be a good choice because the taxi driver said we’d be better off driving to Paddington and taking the train rather than driving all the way to Heathrow, given the weather and road conditions. We ended up at Heathrow with about two and a half hours to spare. We never did find out if the original flight was cancelled because of the thick fog or because of something else.

Our original flight would have had us transfer at Frankfurt and onwards to Tokyo Narita airport, our replacement flight would take us to Tokyo Haneda via Hong Kong, arriving only a couple of hours later than originally planned. At least, if we could make it on to the flight in time. We got to Heathrow with a reasonable amount of time left, but when trying to check in with the machines all we got was a piece of paper that said “Request assistance”. Despite it being BA’s main terminal at Heathrow, the general check-in area was woefully understaffed and handling of each person in the queue took forever. We were still very far back in the queue when I realized that we wouldn’t make our flight, and asked for assistance to a random BA member of staff, who saved us by bumping us up in the queue. The person who checked us in seemed to indicate that the reason we needed assistance checking was again that the covid certificate from Verifly wasn’t logged in their system. Once again, Verifly + BA just does not work.

Despite all the setbacks we managed to get checked in for the Hong Kong flight and headed through security. While doing that I was fortunately able to cancel our first night’s hotel at Narita free of charge, since our new flight would take us to Haneda instead. We got to the gate with minutes to spare and even had time to pick up some food, so I was pretty happy. Surely that was the last of our problems.

Hah, no. After we boarded the plane it sat at the gate for two full hours, apparently because some of BA’s crew members had to come in at the last minute and they had to get paper(!) approval from the Hong Kong authorities before they were allowed to board the flight. So by the time the flight finally left Heathrow I already knew we missed our connecting flight, which departed about two and a half hours later from Hong Kong.

This opened up a whole new world of trouble. We were supposed to just transfer at HK so we wouldn’t need to worry abouy any additionala covid restrictions that would have been required if you went landside. My assumption while flying was that they’d get us a replacement flight that’d be reasonably close to the original flight, so we could still sort it out at the transfer desk without going landside, but as soon as we got out of the plane a person from the airline was there waiting for us to guide us through the airport to get us landside. BA did get us onto a replacement flight already, which was nice, but it was about 6 hours later, which was not nice, because that meant we had to go landside to pick up our luggage and check in from there. And that meant that we had to do a covid test and sign all the documentation needed to enter Hong Kong. We passed through a whole area of sterile covid test cubicles, all fully staffed, but no passengers in sight other than the two of us and one other person who missed his connection. I’m not sure if that’s just a matter of timing and being between flight arrivals, or if just not a lot of people go to Hong Kong any more given the covid situation there. I suspect the latter but I can’t know for sure.

After going through all that we picked up our luggage and our guide brought us to the departures area, where we had a long wait for our final flight. British Airways kindly provided us a lunch coupon for our troubles, but our guide warned us it might not be valid since BA didn’t renew their contract with the airport vendors. This turned out not to be an issue because all the shops were closed anyway.

From there on it was finally smooth sailing all the way. The Japan Airlines flight was excellent as always, and we didn’t have any issue going through immigration and customs at the Japan side. Though it wasn’t clear to me that the Japanese covid site’s “quarantine pre-screening” part was required for the ‘normal’ arrival process to happen, given that we only required proof of vaccination. We managed to finish it before arrival though, and basically just walked through by the time we got to Narita – Yes, our replacement replacement flight took us back to Narita instead of Haneda. I had already cancelled the hotel, but that was fine though since we ended up arriving the next day’s morning instead.

We made it to Japan! It’s been a couple of years, but it feels like forever.

Tagged , ,