The Jet Lag Rule That Almost Broke Me
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The Jet Lag Rule That Almost Broke Me
There's this moment right when the plane lands at Haneda where reality splits in two. My body is absolutely certain it's Tuesday afternoon in Toronto. The Tokyo skyline outside the window is insisting it's Wednesday morning and I need to get with the program.
I've always had a rule for this: push through until midnight. Don't nap. Don't even sit down for too long. Keep moving or the jet lag wins.
My strategy for years was pretty straightforward—overwhelm the exhaustion with sensory chaos. If I could keep my brain so jacked up on Tokyo's noise and lights, maybe it wouldn't notice it was dying.
This trip, that plan didn't just fail. It completely backfired.
When Chaos Stops Working
I started at Ameyoko, like always.
If you haven't been, picture life compressed into one chaotic street under the train tracks. Vendors shouting, knives working through fresh tuna, smoke from grilled eel mixing with the sweet smell of fruit skewers. It's got this raw, post-war black market energy that usually jolts me awake.
Except this time, it didn't wake me up. It just... blurred.
So I escalated. Went to Akihabara—the neon heart of Tokyo. Stood under seven-story billboards blasting J-pop, walked through arcades with enough lights and sound to short-circuit a normal person.
I felt like a ghost. The lights were on, but I wasn't actually there. Trying to beat exhaustion with more chaos was like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.
The Loneliness of Being Half-Awake
Jet lag in Tokyo has this specific kind of lonely that's hard to explain.
I ended up in Kamata, this working-class neighborhood way off the tourist map. The streets were wet, reflecting the streetlights. Office workers heading to izakayas, groups of friends laughing over ramen—and I'm just this zombie trying to stay upright, waiting for a midnight that feels like it's never coming.
At one point I caught my own silhouette against a vending machine's glow, just standing there in an empty alley. Not going anywhere. Not part of anything.
I needed something else. Not chaos. Not silence. Something in between.
Books at Midnight
Half-delirious, I took a train to Jimbocho.
Tokyo's "Book Town." Which sounds like the worst possible place to go when you're fighting sleep, right?
But the second I stepped out of the station, something changed.
In Jimbocho, the bookstores don't stop at the door. The shelves spill out onto the sidewalks. Under warm yellow streetlamps—the kind of light you'd find in a library reading room—stacks of vintage paperbacks and old hardcovers just sit there, open to the night.
People were browsing. Not rushing. Not checking their phones every thirty seconds. Just reading. There was this calm, collective stillness that felt completely different from the manic energy of everywhere else I'd been.
It didn't demand anything from me. It just... existed.
Navigating Tokyo's rail network while sleep-deprived requires reliable connectivity. Pocket WiFi kept me oriented when my brain couldn't hold a map.
What I Got Wrong
That's when it clicked—I'd been doing this wrong for a decade.
The rule isn't about drowning the exhaustion in noise. It's about finding a place that matches where you actually are. When your body is vibrating with fatigue, you don't belong in the electric chaos of Akihabara. You belong somewhere quieter. Somewhere moving at a different speed.
I made it to midnight. Barely. But I stopped fighting and finally just let the night happen.