I need some good sleep

Today felt like it was two whole days. The mix of an all nighter Monday night, a 12 hour plane ride, stressful lines at customs, and a virtual art museum — it was a lot. With the 6ish hours of us actually in Tokyo, I enjoyed noticing lots of little differences between Minnesota and Japan. You always think you’ll notice the big differences, but I was more focused on the little things.

The beginning of the day was a little stressful, with pulling an all nighter I wasn’t sure how things were gonna turn out for me. I have never been on a plane for more than 5 hours so I was quite nervous about a 12 hour flight. I thought staying up all night the day before would maybe help with sleeping on the plane and helping me with jet lag. Though I was expecting to get on the plane and sleep for 8 hours straight it was more like I was in and out of sleep in 2 hour periods. Which ended up working out just fine, though I was still a little sleepy on our outing once we got to Japan. By far the most stressful part of the day was once we landed in Japan and went through customs. There were hundreds of people trying to get in this line, our group got separated, the line was excruciatingly long, and my senses were over loaded with the extreme heat and the insane amount of different types of smells going on.

After we landed in Japan we went to teamLab borderless. TeamLab borderless was a digital art museum/experience. TeamLabs was such an amazing first experience to do in Japan, especially because we were all so extremely exhausted. It truly can not be done justice by trying to explain it but I have put a photo of one of my favorite exhibits. TeamLabs used lots of colors, projectors, mirrors, and I noticed smells being used in extreme ways to mess with your brain. Half of the exhibits were hard to find unless you are looking for them (and they did mention that when we got there). The main areas had projectors projecting many of things in the walls and when you touched the wall things would change. But when you found the “secret” rooms you would be bombarded with vision overload. Insane lights and colors mixed with many mirrors and executed in at least 10 very different ways. Some times I wouldn’t know what I was even looking at, I loved it. It was so beautiful.

When you travel noticing differences from where you are from and where you are can be really fun. Of course you are gonna notice the really big things like language, architecture, and some cultural norms. Something I found myself doing a lot of just noticing the stupid little things. One thing I noticed was a lot of their cars are very boxy and square like, so many people are walking and biking, and masks are worn on a regular basis. Yes, all of these things have explanations; people walk a lot because there’s public transportation, lots of bikers cause sometimes biking is gonna be faster than driving in Tokyo traffic, masks are worn to not spread and not contract sickness, and the square car thing… I’m actually not sure. But I just found myself noticing silly little things that don’t matter. I like noticing the things that aren’t that big of a deal. What really helps me understand a place is the people and the simple little things they do.

The square cars are so silly and I love them :3