おはいよfrom Kyoto!

Dear friends,

Travel fatigue hits hard, especially after a 25-hour adventure, door to door, featuring just about every major mode of transportation except for a boat. We’re talking Uber to Harstfield-Jackson, a long-haul nonstop flight from Atlanta to Tokyo, a bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto, and a taxi—at long, long last—to our hotel.

Against the odds, my husband and I safely made it to Japan. Aside from Bug getting pulled over for a pat-down at the airport and my struggling to get up, down, and around train stations with a deficient leg and heavy luggage, things have been great so far.

Despite plans to write a scheduled post or something beautifully coherent from the plane that I could share here, all I have are some rough drafts in a Moleskine notebook. My pen exploded en route. My brain fizzled out in attempts to perfectly dose my caffeine intake and beat the worst of my inevitable jet lag. There are some good thoughts in the notebook, I need to shape the best ones up in order to make them more shareable.

For now, the highlight of the flight in terms of this particular Substack’s thematic content? Watching the movie Challengers with Zendaya, which was enjoyable on its own, but that I most appreciated for a few extremely well-executed scenes involving Zendaya’s character, Tashi’s knee injury. This injury isn’t the grounding force of the story, but it’s a major narrative line in the movie. The freak accident nature of the injury and Tashi being forced to reevaluate her own sporting ambitions and reshape her identity in light of the injury are two things from the movie I related to strongly.

So instead of having an eloquent, on-time, scheduled post to share I’m drafting this from an Uber on the way to the Bamboo Forest, Arashiyama, where Bug and I are beating the crowds to see the notoriously-busy monkey park first thing in the morning. I’m told there are a few hikes involved in navigating the park grounds. I’m wondering if I should have bought a cane at a Family Mart. I’ll know soon enough

I’m not sure how well my leg will hold up on this trip, and I’m a little bit anxious, mindful that every day in Japan will require a ton of walking. The best I can do is respect the fact that I’ll need to pace myself here for the next twelve days.

Given the long, multi-part odyssey from Atlanta to Kyoto, the swollen legs and feet, and a subsistence diet of airline meals and 7-Eleven rice balls, I was a bit delicate yesterday and am still feeling fatigued today.

Even so, after a substantial hotel breakfast and what must have been a litter of genmaicha, I’m excited to be here and make the most of—what I realized—is my first real vacation, no agenda, in many years. The vacation is all the more significant because of the circumstances: being 6 months out of knee surgery on October 19 and on the cusp of my wedding anniversary next week.

With that, have a great week and full disclosure (with no apology) that these next few posts will effectively be something of a travel blog.

Until next time,

EZ

Bug in Japan, big in Japan