The Japan time warp

I forgot what it's like hurtling through the air in an aluminum tube packed with 350 people at 550 miles per hour. Especially going west. On the flight east, you leave Tokyo in the mid afternoon, say 5pm, and after an eight hour flight, you land in Seattle at 9 am in the same day you left. On the trip to Japan, like the flight I'm on now, You arrive a day and a few hours after you leave. Even though through this time warp, in my case from 2:20 to 4:40 the next day, adds up to 26 hours and 20 minutes, there is no night for the entire trip. In real time, without thinking about time zones and stuff, I will have been exposed to about 22 hours of daylight. This makes it kind of hard to sleep.

The last time I went to Japan, I had a lot of trouble getting my internal clock fixed on Tokyo time after I got there. I probably took a week for my body to figure out the time warp. When I returned back to Washington, I expected that I would have the same trouble, but the adjustment that time was remarkably quick.

On the flight East to the West, (Why do they call Asia the east if its in the west? (damn Europeans...)) there is a night time between. On the plane, they serve you dinner a couple hours into the flight, it gets dark for a couple hours, and then they serve you breakfast a little before you land. On the way to Japan, they do the same thing, trying to make a simulated night by serving dinner, at the beginning of the flight, then breakfast at the end of the flight. Our bodies aren't fooled by it. You look out the window and it's still day time. It's going to be a long day. That's the Japan time warp.

Next time I should fly first class. The have power up there. For my laptop.

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