Week 52 (2025-W52): Landing in Tokyo

When Travel Turns Into a Reset Button

There’s a special kind of tired that only happens when you cross time zones as a family.

It’s not just jet lag. It’s the mental load: passports, bags, snack negotiations, finding the right platform, keeping everyone together, and trying to turn “logistics” into something that still feels like a trip.

This week, we flew from Berlin to Tokyo — routing through Munich and Beijing on Lufthansa and Air China. We got a great price for four people, and the flight was surprisingly fast because the route could go over Russia. Travel, for once, played nice.

We slept a bit on the plane and arrived the next day in the early afternoon, which is the time of day that makes jet lag sneaky: you feel functional enough to start moving… until your body quietly remembers it’s running on a different clock.

My first decision: don’t “optimize” Tokyo — experience it

When you land in a place like Tokyo, there’s an immediate temptation to do it “correctly.”

The perfect first meal. The perfect first neighborhood. The perfect shot for social media. The perfect plan.

I did something simpler: I took my family straight to Tokyo Station to feel the chaos and scale of it in real life. Not because it’s the most comfortable choice, but because it’s Tokyo—and Tokyo Station is like stepping into the bloodstream of the city.

It was loud, fast, confusing, and weirdly energizing. Exactly as advertised.

My intention was clear: Tokyo Ramen Street in the underground.

And we did make it there.

But the station has its own logic, and “the plan” rarely survives first contact with reality—especially when four hungry people are involved.

The accidental win: not ramen… Hiroshima

Instead of ramen, we ended up eating at a Hiroshima-focused restaurant and had a dish that still sticks in my brain: udon noodles topped with cheese and eggs, smothered in a rich sauce.

On paper, it sounds like a “trust the process” moment gone wrong.

In reality, it was one of those travel wins you can’t engineer.

It was warm, comforting, and exactly what you want after a long travel day: food that makes your nervous system unclench.

There’s a lesson in that: sometimes the best parts of a trip happen when the plan fails gently.

The transition: from city intensity to home base

After the meal, we headed to our Airbnb — several stations north of Tokyo Station.

That moment—leaving the neon bloodstream of the city and moving toward your “home base”—is where travel starts to feel real. You shift from tourist mode to living mode.

And that’s where I felt something I don’t always get during work travel:

a reset.

Not the fantasy “I’m a new person now” kind.

The quieter kind, where your brain stops looping on the usual patterns for long enough that you can hear yourself think again.

What this week reminded me about wellness

This is a wellness blog, so here’s the honest part:

Travel can wreck your habits. But it can also reveal which habits are real.

On trips, you lose your normal routine. You lose your familiar foods. You lose your usual bed. Your schedule is different. Your body is confused. Your stress can spike even when you’re doing something amazing.

Which means the question becomes:

Do you have a system, or do you only have ideal conditions?

This week, my “system” wasn’t about being perfect. It was about keeping a few simple anchors:

• Move a little (even if it’s just walking through stations and neighborhoods)
• Eat something warm and grounding
• Don’t rush the first day (travel fatigue is real)
• Let the place be the point

That last one matters more than people admit.

When your life is busy, “rest” often becomes another task to do correctly. But sometimes recovery is simply being present somewhere unfamiliar and letting your attention move outward instead of inward.

Tokyo made that easy.

Tiny experiment for next week (under 2 minutes to start)

Each travel day, I’ll choose one “anchor” before we land:

• One place we’ll experience without rushing (even if it’s chaotic),
• and one simple comfort meal (warm, filling, not complicated).

Not because it’s optimized — because it keeps the trip human.