Off to Japan | 日本へ行くよ
Let the travel porn begin!
Tuesday, LB and I fly to Tokyo for the first time in seven years. We are, as they say, fucking stoked. While we have both traveled a decent amount in the past five years—she went to Chicago, Paris, & Barcelona without me which I still cannot forgive and I went to Phillie, Chicago, Detroit, Seattle, & SF for my book tour—this trip to Asia marks the first time we will be traveling abroad together since 2019 when we went to Belgium and Luxembourg! And that trip was kinda overshadowed by our imminent move to Ann Arbor to start my tenure track job, mixing the excitement of new things with the dread and sadness of leaving LA, which has always felt wrong to us. Truth be told, before the pandemic hit the world like a giant epidemiological gut punch, LB and I used to travel 1-2 times every year. We vowed back in 2013 that if we could not have kids, then traveling would be our child. We vowed back in 2013 that if we could not have kids, then using our dual income to travel together would be the only thing that made sense. And it still does now more than ever. My wife in particular really deserves this vacation. She’s been the superreliant supervisor for too long, always working, even from home, always twenty minutes from the hospital to fill in for someone while her colleagues went on vacation every three months (or so it seemed) without fail. I’m excited to see my Japanese family but I’m probably happiest for LB, who deserves this vacation more than anyone I know.
So, in the coming days, I’ll be posting photos and Reels daily on Instagram to share my trip with you. While in Japan, writing will take a back seat to living for obvious reasons, the least of which, is that I’m not going to bring my laptop, which I know is anathema to the writing life. But ever since I left a (later retrieved) laptop in a plastic tray at the x-ray machine at LAX after the TSA employee screamed at us to take off our shoes, take our hats off, take our jackets off, remove our watches, take off our belts, place our phones in our bags, remove all liquids, remove laptops from sleeves, empty our pockets, don’t slow down the line, hurry up people, what are you waiting for, I got distracted by my own adrenalin spike and accidentally left my MacBook there in a tray. I still blame the screaming man. Ever since then, I vowed never to bring my laptop unless I knew I was going to use it and if I’m using it on this trip then I’m not walking ten miles a day, which is the plan. Instead, I plan on visiting temples and flagship stores in Omotesando, Akiba, Harajuku, Ginza, Aoyama, Asakusa, & Shinjuku and eating well and taking short trips to Matsuyama and Nagoya along the way. I intend to live the best life I can over there with the person I love the most. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!
—ジャクソン | Jackson