ok, admittedly this trip is a lot more premeditated than the slightly-sensationalized title makes it seem, it has been in the works for a while and i will be travelling there at the same time as a bunch of my friends, i booked my flight “last minute” because that’s when business class award redemption availability is the best (after airlines have mostly given up trying to sell those seats). i genuinely don't have a return flight booked, though. i probably should have gone back to japan sooner, like last year when the USD-JPY exchange rate was probably the best it will be in my lifetime (160 yen per dollar vs. 110 yen per dollar when i last went in 2019), but my friends have been talking about doing another japan trip for years and out of consideration for them i avoided doing a trip before they could go too. honestly it wasn’t that hard because i haven’t felt nearly as eager about visiting japan as i used to, my excitement has been tempered by reading lots of doomer japan stuff over the years like “dogs and demons”, or by how japanese arcade rhythm games are now easily accessible here since they opened a round 1funnily enough my current main game, pump it up, is korean and almost non-existent in japan due to konami’s ruthless business practices. also, last year it felt like everyone and their mother was going to japan, and as something of a contrarian i loathe being a bandwagoner.

however, as definite plans for a trip finally materialized among my friends in the past few months, i now have a lot riding on this trip. my enthusiasm is less about going to japan per se, it's more about the opportunity the trip represents for a reboot or reset. i’m taking it extremely seriously, this is not just another “fun” trip, it is going to be a spirit-quest, Japan Will Fix Me. you see, i’ve been in something of a personal and professional rut for the past year or two, ever since the exciting “startup” i ditched everything for was shut down by microsoft’s legal team (when i put it vaguely like this it sounds way cooler than it actually was). since then i haven’t really been up to much, subsisting off of savings (bolstered by good luck in the stonks market), occasional hustles like putting up christmas lights, and something i call “moochmaxxing” (living with my mom). i’ve settled into a stable routine, but stability can also mean stagnation... certainly this rut is a lot better than the last one i was in, i’ve done a good job rebuilding myself after being gutted by a decade of video game addiction, it’s not quite a rut i’d want to be stuck in forever though, there are still some glaring gaps remaining.

how do you get out of a rut? the daily repetitions for so long of the same activities and the same thoughts dig grooves so deep that they can only be escaped through an extreme shock: hitting rock bottom, a fateful encounter, a traumatic accident, running away and starting anew, etc. the problem is most shocks cannot be deliberately induced, for example it was only thanks to dumb luck that the covid pandemic happened and upended things enough that i was able to get out of my last rut, absolved of all responsibilities i was finally able to reach Gamer Paradise and realize it was actually Hellmore about this in the forthcoming second volume of my memoir, tentative title "a covid chronicle". my minecraft memoir is considered the first volume..

luckily, there is one shock that can be self-administered relatively easily, travel. it lets you exit the rut temporarily by breaking you out of your usual routines and environments, potentially serving as the catalyst for a more permanent departure from the rut. it's not foolproof, when i last went to japan in 2019 i didn't play minecraft at all the whole month i was there, then upon returning i immediately dove right back in and arguably worse than ever before (as seen in parts III-IV of my minecraft memoir). but lately after even my brief trips i've noticed that i'm always extraordinarily productive upon returning home, i see everything in the house with fresh eyes and suddenly i'm able to do things like clean up messes i've been procrastinating on so long that they had become invisible to me normally. after coming back from my last trip i got more done that same afternoon than i do in a week, even though i had already spent hours on planes that day, felt slightly sick, and was running on a mere three hours of sleep. the thing is, after those short domestic trips the post-trip afterglow usually wears off after only a day or two and then i'm right back in the rut, retreating back to the old habits and routines like nothing ever happened. perhaps what's needed to genuinely escape is a more dramatic intervention, a trip somewhere far away for a long time... yes, like a trip to Glorious Nippon. at the very least, if i empty my savings it should force me to do SOMETHING when i get back... the trip will be a sort of final gambit, or last hurrah.

i've changed a lot since my last trip six years ago and consequently my approach this time is going to be radically different, to put it briefly my last trip was meticulously planned and this time my plan is that i have no plan. but more about all that later...