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Documentary reviews, body neutrality, parenting, Jupiter, piano, cats, European history, ghosts, rodents, the collapse of civilization, and if this goes on long enough I'll probably end up cataloguing my entire smushed penny collection.

Travel Anxiety

We booked our plane tickets for Japan. I am… not excited.

I mean I am excited. I have always wanted to go to Japan, and I am especially excited for the Shinto shrines and the Buddhist temples and seeing the Pacific Ocean from the other side.

Although I did some good traveling in my early twenties, I have turned into an anxious and reluctant traveler in my forties. I have not left the country since 2006.

Here is a list of things I’m worried about:

  1. Flying across the Pacific Ocean. It’s just unnatural and absolutely terrifying. What if there’s an emergency and you need to make an emergency landing? Oh no, you just ALL DIE. Also I am still freaked out about Air France 447 and MH370.
  2. One of us getting really sick or injured while we’re away.
  3. A new pandemic starting while we’re abroad.
  4. A major earthquake happening in Japan while we are there. This is particularly dumb to worry about since Japanese buildings are engineered specifically for earthquakes. And I grew up on the Pacific Ring of Fire and have already been through several minor earthquakes in my life!
  5. Something terrible happening to the cats while we’re gone.
  6. Something terrible happening to the house while we’re gone.
  7. A major terrorist attack in Japan.
  8. Really anything that shuts down international travel and makes it impossible for us to return home.
  9. One of us being so sick or so grievously injured that we DIE in Japan.
  10. Insulting everyone with our loud Western ways and our large bodies.
  11. Being homesick the whole time.
  12. Losing our luggage on the way there and having to replace it with… what? Is there a single female person on Honshu that is as large as me? I think I would just have to wear a mawashi for the rest of the trip?

I would like to pretend that I am an enthusiastic, practical traveler who is totally pumped for this once-in-a-lifetime trip. I want to pretend I’m enjoying all the planning and the researching and that I’m excited to use what little Japanese I have retained from college with actual residents of Japan.

But no, I am me, and at least on this blog I can’t pretend to be anyone else. Out in the world I will pretend I am relishing the planning and really looking forward to the whole thing. But you will all know the truth: that every morning since booking these plane tickets I have woken up at 3 AM with an unhinged panicky feeling.

And people enjoy this.