From Berlin, with love

I tried writing this post from Tokyo, where I spent most of my time during the past two weeks. The city probably deserves an entire post for itself, but for some reason, I haven't been able to do so.

It took me about a week to remember that this city is one of the few places of this trip I've already visited in the past. It didn't happen until I walked past this basketball court in Shinjuku. That's an awful lot of time to remember something that I should never have forgotten. I was exactly here, about seven years ago, and at this moment, I couldn't tell if this was not much time, or a very long period of time.

Something I didn’t notice during my previous visit was how dense the city actually is. I guess I knew that Tokyo is the most densely populated city in the world, but didn’t really think of it much, back then.

I guess that spending the past weeks in less populated areas influences my judgment, but this struck me as soon as I got off the train at Tokyo Station. I was lucky to stay in a quiet side street in Shinjuku, but couldn’t really avoid the crowds everywhere, as soon as I was stepping out of my accomodation.

I tried writing this post from Yokohama, where I decided to go to escape the record temperatures and intense heat of the city. While it's much smaller than Tokyo, it is still quite populated, and being closer to the water definitely helped a little.

I didn’t expect much from the Cupnoodle Museum, but I think it was my highlight of the little time I spent in the city. There’s something along the lines of “do only one thing, but do it as well as possible” that’s noticeable in many different parts of the culture here, and the fact that someone (namely, Momofuku Ando) built an empire by applying this principle to instant ramen made a lot of sense to me.

I tried writing this post from Kamakura, where I chose to go only because I wanted to see the sea one last time. That was the only reason why I got there.

Not many people think of beach destinations when they think about Tokyo, but Kamakura seems to be very popular for locals looking for some fresh air on a day trip. The waves were not the biggest I’ve seen, but they seemed to be enough for the people to show their skills.

I stayed at a hostel that’s definitely a meeting point for tourists, and especially solo backpackers. Me, the staff and the other guests stayed awake way past closing time and exchanged a lot about our different travel experiences, while sipping on too many highballs.

I spent the next day curing my hangover watching surfers, while sipping on more highballs, at a beach bar.

I tried writing this post from Narita, Bangkok, and Munich, which were my last three stops before returning home. But in the end, there’s not really much I was able to write while the only thing in my mind was that I had actually booked a one way flight to Berlin, right before arriving in Tokyo.

The last few conversations I’ve had with strangers made me realize that I would need some time to properly process and reflect upon what happened in the past 280 days.

I’ll send a final update in a couple of days, please hang on.

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