Hey there, Joel
Pack the suitcases up, it's time to be on our way home. Yesterday's souvenir shopping mostly filled our big checked-luggage suitcase, but we had room for just a few more things. Jethro was out the door sooner than Jamie and me because his flight was earlier, and he took advantage of the extra space in his luggage to fill it with as much Conbini food as he could, so we did the same! Conbini - Convenience Store - sell some of the best food you can find in Japan. The pastries and such are just SO GOOD. Maverik could learn a thing or two.
Hotels here offer a free service of storing your luggage before/after your checkout times - it's so great! We checked out at 10am but left all our luggage but our daybags at the counter and ventured out for our last few hours before needing to go to the airport. Not too far from our hotel is one of the main hot-spots of Japan - Asakusa. Jethro stopped by the night before for his final adventure and so it became ours as well. It was so packed! It's always packed. On one end is a very old gate to the shopping street which eventually leads to the temple.
Yesterday Jamie and I thought we had finished up almost all our souvenir shopping, but we were wrong. We bought a lot more things at these shops! At one of them after asking if I could use a Visa card I casually asked the shopowners how long they had been working at that store. The man glanced up startled and with a shocked look on his face said "Your Japanese is really good!" That's always fun to hear. He answered thirty years. Thirty years! In the same 10'x10' shop selling souvenirs. Crazy.
If you didn't know, I really love photography. Many years ago when Twitter was still young and innocent I made many friends online from Utah that were fellow photographers; back then we'd get together often to go on Photowalks and talk gear. It was great - the golden era of social media. One amazing person I met back then was Jeremy Hall, just a few years older and wiser than me. Before too long we were chatting almost every day about one thing or another over text message and we became good friends. One thing we often talked about was taking a trip to Japan to fill with photowalks across the country.
A handful of years later and before we could take that trip Jeremy was diagnosed with a rare cancer. He then dedicated his life to becoming as healthy as he could to give his body every advantage at beating it. He chose the mantra "I Choose to Live" and created shirts to help raise some money for his care. Sadly, cancer won and took my friend away from me. While packing for this trip Jamie came across a bag of shirts I had stashed awhile ago filled with shirts I wanted to fit back in to one day. Inside was the shirt I bought from Jeremy's campaign, and this time around it fit me. I decided I needed to take that shirt with me and take Jeremy to Japan. Today was the day.
I miss my friend, but I'm grateful I got to pay tribute to him like this.
After Asakusa it was time to eat and I thought we should go grab some Gyoza from the shop that was closed yesterday. Fool me once shame on your, fool me twice shame on me. They were still closed! I don't know what's up. So, instead Jamie and I headed to the noodle place from a few days ago. It was absolutely delicious.
We'd already had a packed day and it was only lunch! But dear readers and friends, the fun was only just beginning. And by fun I mean the frustrations. We picked up our suitcases from the hotel and hopped on the subway towards to airport. We paid $50 for a heavy bag fee on our checked luggage because I guess we shopped a little too hardcore. We breezed through security and made it to our gate. We were ready to go.
And then our flight was cancelled right after boarding started. Suddenly things were not so good. The gate agents were overwhelmed with what to do, and everyone was starting to panic. As Jamie was trying to get help from the gate agent someone close by us overheard her and mentioned they had managed to rebook on to a later flight using the United App so we quickly downloaded that and tried to figure out what to do. It wasn't clear at first but magically Jamie and I ended up getting on the later flight as well. Only it was headed towards San Francisco instead of LA, and we'd need to redo our final flights home to Salt Lake. Thankfully that all turned out okay as well, and everything seemed like it would be just fine.
We went and grabbed dinner since we had several hours to wait and then headed to our new gate to make sure everything was okay. We communicated with the gate agents that we had a checked bag that needed to be transferred over and was assured it would be taken care of. Only it wasn't. After we landed in San Francisco we went to baggage claim and waited. And waited. And no bag. I pulled out the app and tracked our luggage and it was still in Japan. As of this writing it's barely in the US.
And now we're home! Suffering from jet lag and trying to make it to bed time. Thanks for coming along for the journey! I'll be sending one more newsletter out with final thoughts and maybe revisit some of our favorite photos!
Joel & Jamie
Jethro's Closing Thoughts
Today is a travel day. 28 total hours to get back home. But do you know what’s fascinating? Time keeps marching forward.
Sometimes it seems like it goes fast.
Sometimes it seems like it goes slow.
Sometimes it seems like it will never pass, but it always does.
It’s so fascinating because no matter how much time there is, it still passes at the same rate, even if we don’t perceive it as such.
When we got to Japan, with 7 days in front of us, it felt like there was so much time to do a bunch of stuff.
But each day, we realized that our time was coming to a close. We knew that 7 days wasn’t enough time to do everything we wanted, but then, last night, after I was all done packing, I couldn’t believe the time went so quickly and it was already over.
Time keeps marching on, regardless of our efforts to stop it, speed it up, or slow it down.
And while it passes at the same rate for everyone, it doesn’t feel the same for each of us or even in each situation in our lives.
For example, I’m in LAX, after flying “all night”. I left Tokyo at 11:55 am on Wednesday and arrived in LA at 5:25 AM on Wednesday.
The 10 hour flight went by very quickly. In fact, I was surprised that it went so quickly, especially since I didn’t even sleep!
My kids are growing up. I’m growing older. We all are. No matter what we try to do, these things continue marching forward.
People often say that you should live in the moment, and I agree with that, but I think it goes deeper.
Learn from the past, prepare for the future, live in the moment.
- Jethro