The time difference between Japan and my old home Texas is 14 hours (15 during daylight savings time). This is just about the most annoying time difference you can have between two places. You have to figure that a significant part of the day when you are awake, I am asleep, and vice versa. Once you factor in work and school into the time stream it doesn’t leave much time to talk to people.
Weekends are easier as one or both parties can stay up later and don’t have work to get in the way. But it’s still a difficult thing to actually be able to chat with someone real time.
And when I do, it’s always confusing as to when it is.
It’s not at all uncommon for someone to message me out of the blue and for us to talk for a bit until I realize that they are in fact awake at 3 in the morning where they are. Or for someone to message me right as I am about to shut down the computer and call it a night. Most conversations end with one of us wishing the other a good night and the other wishing a good day.
One thing I can tell you for sure is that I feel like I’m living in the future. Not because Japan is amazingly advanced or anything (I live in the inaka after all). Just because, technically, I am. Sometimes when I talk to people in the morning (for me) it takes me a bit to realize that it is still the previous night where they are. I’m already on Wednesday, but they are still on Tuesday night. It is about this time that the urge strikes me to say, “Fear not, for Wednesday will dawn. For I have seen it. I have lived it. Nothing of horrible note will occur between now and then, so rest your weary souls with peace this night.”
Of course, I don’t say this because a) it’s crazy and b) it doesn’t quite work that way. If giant space aliens from Hovering Squid World 8 show up to annihilate us all on what is to me Wednesday morning you will all still be destroyed Tuesday night (possibly in your sleep without knowing what was going on at all). Just because the Earth has turned enough for me to have a sunrise doesn’t mean we will make it to the point where the rest of you do.
But it still feels like I’m in the future. And as this may be as close to actual time travel as I ever get, I’ll take it.
Speaking of time travel, flying back to the states is always a bit of an exercise in time travel. Flying from Tokyo to Dallas I tend to land before I even took off. I may be sitting in the airport waiting for my connection going, “Wait…it’s 5 pm on Friday. I’ve already had a 5 pm today.” My internal clock doesn’t enjoy those moments. Coming back to the states you experience the longest day ever. But then when you fly to Japan you magically lose a day. That seriously throws me off, much as I imagine real time travel would.
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