Packing is hard

It's a little weird because I'll be coming back here in 2 months, so I can finish going through stuff and getting rid of and/or bringing back whatever then.

So trying to decide which things I actually want to have with me in the US over the next two months has been a little difficult. I mean, in general I'm trying to bring as much as possible back with me, but I'm also just thinking how completely ridiculous the concept of belongings is in the first place. Life would be a lot easier were we not tied to these kinds of things.

Yesterday I basically spent the day packing and stuff.
I went to get my last Tenkazushi for lunch, then came back to the house and did laundry. I threw stuff into the dryers at the downhill laundromat around 3pm and then went to meet up with Kobayashi for coffee since she said she had a going-away present for me. It turned out to be a USB stick full of photos of college baseball from this year, some crazy stuff like the WUBC training camp. Also on the stick is a Waseda cellphone charm (she actually went to Waseda, unlike the rest of us who just cheer for various teams).

Unfortunately we spent like 2 hours talking about random stuff, so I got back to the laundromat around 5:30pm, my stuff had been sitting there for like 2 hours, but this is Japan so nobody took any of it. Whee.

Then I spent the evening packing, with a break to go to Yokado (20 minutes before the 6th floor closes and I managed to get a plastic case at the 100-yen shop, play a final game of Pop'n at the arcade, and get a final apple taiyaki) and to Otoya for dinner (katsudon/udon dinner set). Completely stuffed, I came home and continued packing. Napped from around 2am to 9am or so.

The thing is that in addition to packing I have also been cleaning up to some extent. Usually when I come back to Japan after a trip to the US, the house is a wreck. This time, when I come back, the upstairs rooms will be in pretty good order, at least.

I really wish they'd have kept the weight limit at 70 pounds per bag instead of 50. 50 is really tight for me. My carry-on is also going to weigh like 50 pounds :|

In Sammamish

I got to the airport plenty early to make sure I got my kuroneko-delivered stuff. I ended up using the "oversize" lane to check in so that I could still use a cart to carry everything... all of my "bags" were pretty much exactly 23kg. Whew. So I just had to pay for the third bag, which was really a box of baseball magazines. It woulda been like 35000 yen to ship it, so the 18000 yen to check it as luggage is a bargain, kinda.

I got lunch at Subway only because it was fast and convenient to get to, rather than wandering through Narita with all my stuff. At least I got a chicken katsu sub, so I was getting something Japanese-like. The dude ahead of me in line was hitting on the girl making sandwiches -- it was really kind of blatant and a little odd to me. He was all like "when's your break time?"

Security and customs went really fast and I found myself at the gate at 4pm, an hour before "boarding" time of 5pm for the 5:45 flight. So I plugged in my laptop and started writing a Marinerds entry, without network.

But then the flight got delayed, due to maintenance problems. We boarded at 5:30... and the plane didn't take off until well after 6pm.

The flight itself went pretty quickly. I watched two movies, "The Social Network" and "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World ". Then I worked on logic puzzles (the color-by-numbers sort) for a while and next thing you knew, we were landing and I hadn't slept at all.

Customs and immigration were pretty quick too. Baggage claim was not quick, and I got kinda worried, but all my stuff came out fine in the end.

Mike met me at the top of the stairs as he usually does, and we lugged all my stuff back here. It's cold and rainy and cloudy in Seattle, of course. On the other hand, central heating is an amazing invention.

I'm trying to stay up as "late" as possible, but I think I'm going to crash shortly. If I only nap for 3-4 hours, hopefully I can still actually sleep later tonight...