2025-04-03 Journal Entry

What a time to be alive. It took like nine thousand years to get through the Starbucks line, but here we are! I almost felt the need to intervene with this woman who was arguing with the staff through a translation app. I don’t really know what they were arguing about – some kind of discrepancy with the amount of money she gave them or the quantity she ordered or something, she kept being like not one, ten! and showing them her phone. I don’t really know what’s up with that, but it went on for like 10 minutes before they pulled her aside and handled it with a manager-looking person. Language barriers are tough.

It’s hostel-switching days, which are always kinda annoying, but I did manage to find a table, despite the crowd, so I’ll basically just camp out here for another two hours or so, and by then my place will be ready! Easy peasy.

What else is going on. God there’s people outside walking through the crowds with a huge camera on a tripod. I get it, but I find that so annoying. I don’t really mind the camera, but be intentional. Don’t just walk through the crowd with a camera out, that’s not how you get anything good. You’re just gonna post that on your shitty Instagram with 5 followers for one like, nobody else cares about your $5k camera on a stick.

I’m just going to keep on typing for a little bit instead of thinking, because I have little else to go off of at the moment. I want to start poking at another essay, but I’m not really sure what it should be at this point. There’s possibly something out there about Being a Good Traveler, although I don’t really know if I’m qualified to say much there. I don’t exactly think I exemplify it in any way – there’s probably people like Small Brained American, the guy on YouTube, who exemplify this better. And I suppose there’s two sides to it anyways, one of which is being a good traveler like being a good houseguest, and one is being a good traveler as in being good at finding interesting stuff in a place.

Much of it, transparently, is just seeing what seems like Japanese people being somewhat sick of tourists. I get it – I’m sick of tourists here. Plus there’s the subtler desire to be liked and so on.

Hmmmmmmm what else. There’s something about the phone, although to some degree I think that’s probably beaten into the ground by others. Or perhaps not. It’d be nice to really cut the cord and have my phone really just call and text, but I think I essentially do need to have some Maps app of some kind for traveling, life would be noticeably more difficult without that. I’ve certainly gotten better at navigating without them once I’m oriented somewhere, but having to like buy physical maps would be an even bigger pain in the ass. I think my current relationship with it is actually halfway decent – it basically lives in my little shoulder bag until otherwise requested, which is really not often. I think my screen time is down to like an hour a day, and most of that is maps. I do have locks on Instagram and Threads, since despite hating them, they have a way of enticing me with precisely dumb enough content that I have to see it. They’ve actually mastered rage-baiting me, which I think is fucking disgusting.

For many things in life, aversion is generally pretty bad, but I find that when looking at life directions, when thinking about which way should I go, turning things down until something good comes up is actually not a terrible strategy. As long as you don’t forget how to say yes every now and again. Committing once you’ve got something is important. It’s the actually good interpretation of strong opinions, loosely held etc., which as much as I despise the kind of people who say that, for life advice it can sometimes be a decent barometer.

Aaaahhhh I have little else more to say. I want to rummage around in my old journals for some potential essay topics – I know I’ve got them in there somewhere, I usually highlighted them and so on – but right now I’m kinda running dry. Let’s see if we catch something good today.