A few weeks back, I found out that there was going to be a play on in Tokyo with my most favourite actor. Now, I’ve missed shows of his before, however, this time, there was the dangerous combination of him working with someone who I had never seen live before, but had always wanted to. Since I had the money, I went ahead and bought tickets for the show, and tried to plan around the pending madness that was Christmas looming.
The church where we performed Handel's Messiah
I would have liked to do a whole weekend in Japan, but it turned out that the show was the same weekend as my choir’s performance, so the plan was set: after finishing the performance of the Messiah, I would get home, grab my things, and head to Incheon Sunday morning. My return flight would be Monday night.
In short: I would be in Japan a total of 33 hours.
Note: I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND doing this unless you are either incredibly familiar with where ever you would choose to go, or have amazing planning skills. Or have no plans at all. The only way I made this work having as few plans as possible, and knowing the trains to and from Narita incredibly well.
After our choir performance, I tried my best to make it out to Incheon before the last bus, so I could sleep at the airport. No such luck though. I was able to catch the first bus, and the flight to Japan went without any trouble. I even got the emergency exit seat! Ahh, extra leg room, my beloved.
Once landing in Japan, I tried to get back into Japanese auto-pilot as quick as I could, with little success. Say what you like about Japan and Korea being completely different, but to me, they’re similar enough for me to get a little confused with small social mannerisms. I was standing on the wrong side of the escalator, a little lost with the trains at first, and I kept doing a double take when they spoke Japanese at me, despite me understanding what was being said. By the time I got to Tokyo, I had the sense to get off at Nippori and transfer to the Yamanote, instead of going all the way to Keisei Ueno and having to walk even further.
Once I arrived at Ueno, it was like old times. All my friends had been waiting for me there, and we immediately went over to TGIFridays, my favourite restaurant, for a sundae, because I missed them. The nice thing about coming to Japan for such a short period of time was that I knew exactly what I wanted to do. All I wanted was a sundae, karaoke, my friends, and a play. And I got all of those! Going to karaoke after months of noraebang was strange. I missed all my Korean songs I’d been singing, and didn’t really know what I wanted to sing otherwise. Who knew I depended on Korean songs to get me through an hour or two of music now!
Afterwards, I headed off to Shinjuku to find Space Zero. After some help from Eda, I was able to find it, and was able to settle into my amazing seat. I won’t go into all the details about the show, but it was well worth the entire trip to Japan, because it was everything I wanted it to be. My favourite actors were dancing to k-pop, which threw me for a loop, and looked gorgeous, so all was well.
The part where I was really unorganized about was where was I going to stay. For a while, I thought I might stay at Eda’s place. However, I’d been having a long week, and was coming up to a week of exhaustion. So I opted to go to a really nice hotel next to the theatre, and slept like a LOG. 
the set meal at Ikea was huuuge. O_O
On the Monday, I had only two plans: Go to Ikea, and bring Eda back with me to Korea. It would seem silly, to go to Ikea when in Japan, but, my blankets have been not so awesome, and I really like Ikea sheets. So since I had nothing else planned that day, Ikea sounded like a sweet idea. And it was on the way. Kinda. So we headed out to the middle of nowhere, otherwise known as Minami-Funbashi, and I was able to get my most favourite bed sheets, along with the cutest cover known to man kind. We also consumed many meatballs, and the best cake ever. Once again, this alone made the trip worth it.
We discovered that Eda and I weren’t even at the same terminal, let alone the same plane, so we said our goodbyes on the subway, planning to meet at the arrivals gate by the busses in a few hours time in South Korea. Despite some fog drama (who ever thought to build the hub airport for South Korea there needs their head examined – it’s ALWAYS foggy at Incheon, it seems…) we were both able to arrive in Korea with no problems, other than missing our last bus to Anyang, and having to take a bus to a city near by and cabbing back to my place. In hindsight, it seems not stressful at all, but I was freaking all evening.
The week during Christmas was insane, and worthy of a post all of its own. If not three. So I’ll try writing those up some time this week. For now, I’ll leave you with a video of a song from my choir’s performance of Messiah. Can you see me in the video?
