Well, I’m 2.5 hours away from landing in Tokyo, and I’m bright eyed and bushy tailed – not surprising that it’s only 6am Eastern Time, but unfortunately, it’s 7pm Japan time, so I need to burn some energy and get ready to go back to bed in a few hours. I keep trying to remind myself “it’s nighttime… it’s nighttime…”, so I’ll be prepared when I get off the plane, but I’m just so used to the European flights where it’s dark like this and then you land and it’s morning and you have the whole day in front of you. As a result, I just feel like a time traveler lost in the space-time continuum sometime between early morning and early evening.
As far as my how to avoid jet lag plan went, I stayed awake for the first hour or so of the flight, in order to eat dinner, and then hit the hay for what was originally supposed to be a 2 hour nap. I proved my skill at sleeping on planes when I went to bed at 9pm (seriously, it is one of the most useful skills I have)… or perhaps I’m overselling myself and it’s just that I hadn’t gotten much sleep in previous nights. After getting home from Dallas last night at 1:30am and only getting a few hours of sleep, I spent the day yesterday exhausted, and constantly pushing out the plan for how long I would sleep. By the time I was ready to go to bed and set my alarm, I decided to go with 5.5 hours – enough that it would be basically feel like a regular night’s sleep (albeit on a night when I stayed out too late with an early morning wakeup call).
So here it is, 7pm Tokyo time, and I’m shocked to see that aside from the flight attendants (who are awesome, by the way – I keep going in the back to chat with them because they’re really friendly, cool, and accommodating), I’m one of the only people who aren’t sleeping right now. Come on, guys, you are all going to be a mess when we get to Tokyo if you don’t get your act together and stop acting like we’re on American time!
One really random tangent that popped into my head: the only other time I’ve ever been west of California was when I went to Hawaii for the Honolulu Marathon… which was also accompanied by my friend Kelly. She is apparently good at getting me to go the opposite direction of my usual travels! Perhaps we’ll start planning an Australia trip next…
Sounds like a great trip!
I’m one of those sleep-when-I-can, deal-with-it-later folks. I always admire you disciplined types who can stay up for hours to accommodate a new time zone.
Get any push ups in on the plane? 🙂
So I’m not the only one who spent the whole weekend on a plane (though my total time in-flight was a round-trip). Hope your plan helps you adjust quickly! (My recovery plan usually involves running to make sure I’m good and tired when the local “bedtime” rolls around…) 🙂
Have a wonderful trip!!!!!!