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The entire day, it just kept pouring—everything was soaked, and walking around wasn’t exactly comfortable. My morning didn’t really start until 10 AM either. I woke up early at first, but the sound of raindrops relentlessly hitting something outside my window convinced me to stay in bed a bit longer. Eventually, I got up closer to lunchtime. Surprisingly, it didn’t bother me at all—by the time I headed out after 12 PM, I actually felt energized and in a great mood. Since these are my last days in Japan, I wanted to make the most of it and turn the day into something memorable.

Early in the morning at around 6:50 a.m., when I was about to leave my accommodation and start the trip, I noticed that the door lock wasn’t working. It honestly surprised me, although now that I think about it, the lock had never really worked properly before. The door was basically just hanging in the frame, and when I tried to open it, I ended up just pulling it open with my hands since the pin code mechanism didn’t react at all. I had noticed something strange earlier too, but because the cleaning staff were coming regularly, I assumed they were just leaving the door open. Of course, I tried to lock it before leaving, but nothing happened. To be fair, the owner had already warned me that even the main building door wasn’t working, but still, the whole situation felt pretty weird.

From the morning, the sun was out, warming everything in that really comfortable way—not too hot, not too cold. I felt totally fine in my jacket, but a lot of people were already walking around in t-shirts and even shorts. I mean, fair enough—it’s their call. I kicked things off with some shopping and a walk through Ginza. While wandering around, I ran into one of my favorite stores, Uniqlo, and couldn’t resist picking up a few things. I ended up buying four t-shirts in random colors, plus one special edition piece with a cool print and the words “Peace for All.”

After the previous day, I was completely drained, so I let myself sleep in until 10 a.m. to recover some of that lost energy. Once I woke up, I slipped straight into my routine and focused on a few tasks—especially my blog posts. I couldn’t ignore them; consistency matters too much to me. So, until around noon, I stayed in my small room, working while listening to raindrops tapping steadily against something near the window.

At the same time, I was starting to feel properly hangry. The last real meal I had was on the airplane, and on my way to the room I hadn’t managed to find anything worth eating. Honestly, the night before I didn’t even feel that hungry—but morning had completely different plans for me.

I left Istanbul at 2 AM on April 6 and landed in Tokyo at 8 PM. It turned out to be the longest flight of my life. Even though I had previously flown to Thailand for a similar amount of time, this one felt endless—like I had been on the plane for twenty hours. I’m not sure why, but time just wouldn’t move. To make things worse, I couldn’t even distract myself with movies or onboard entertainment because my screen barely worked. Eventually, it completely gave up and froze on a black screen. Luckily, the passenger next to me was watching a documentary about wild animals and some world news, so I ended up half-watching along with him. In that sense, I guess I was lucky—I still got some kind of in-flight entertainment.

My vacation honestly couldn’t have started better. I already managed to explore the city a bit and now I’m mentally ready for my next destination—Tokyo. I’ll write about Tokyo tomorrow though. For now, I just want to capture how fascinating and surprisingly smooth today turned out. When I booked my flight, Turkish Airlines included a free Istanbul tour program, so from 4 pm until 9:30 pm I joined this really well-organized excursion—with dinner included. And not just any dinner, but proper Turkish cuisine. What made it even more interesting was the company: I ended up at a table with a family from California, so I got to hear real, natural American English in conversation.

Today, I began my day with cloudy and foggy weather. I especially noticed the fog during my trip to the tire service, as the road was covered in it and visibility was quite low. Honestly, it didn’t bother me; I arrived safely at the tire service, where the work feels familiar to my people. There, I changed my winter tires to summer ones because the weather was already warm and the roads were no longer icy. Even though there are still some patches of snow in certain places, I decided it was time. 

The process went smoothly without any issues. It took around thirty minutes, maybe even less, as three workers operated quickly and in good coordination. For the service, I paid 2000 rubles (about $24.90) for my 16-inch radial tires.

I started the day with a cloudy and foggy morning. The fog was extremely heavy and completely covered the city. From the window, I couldn’t see the hill at all — it was fully hidden and seemed to vanish into the fog. The last time I experienced something similar was during a winter blizzard and a few times in autumn, but today the fog felt much heavier than usual. Around the river, it was especially dense and almost perfectly white. I first noticed it from the window, but when I observed it from a distance, it looked even more beautiful. It felt as if a thick layer of fog was floating above the river, while other parts slowly spread across the hills and trees.

In this post I already mentioned my work results, but today during the monthly meeting there was another discussion about our productivity. The CEO talked about the most important things that happened during the first quarter and said that the quarter was unsuccessful for the company. Honestly, I don’t remember that the main plan was not completed successfully during January, February, and March. In fact, the company achieved about 97% of the plan. Of course, it’s not 100%, but I don’t think it’s that bad. They also reported revenue of more than 110 million rubles.

Today I spent around two hours in a meeting where our CEO said he’s not satisfied with our results and overall productivity. He actually mentioned this at the beginning of the year, and today he brought it up again. The first half hour of the meeting was calm, and we were just discussing our tasks, but after that he shifted the focus completely and spent the rest of the time talking about productivity.

Today was my mom’s anniversary, so everyone spent the day preparing the table. When I woke up and walked into the kitchen, I saw a bit of chaos—everyone was rushing around trying to finish their tasks. Some close relatives had already arrived in the morning to help. So my morning wasn’t calm at all—it was busy and quite loud. Still, there was plenty of food, so I had no problem finding something for breakfast.

Today I spent the weekend at home. My relative arrived early in the morning, which made the start of my day a bit noisy and unusual. The weather was cloudy but warm, around +10 degrees. I’m used to seeing the sun every morning, so it felt strange when I woke up and noticed the sky was grey. I was still lying in bed when I heard someone talking loudly in the other room. At first I didn’t understand what was happening, but then I realized it was my relative. Even though I didn’t get up, it woke me up completely.