La-nd of the BRAVE, helpful and chubby

Apologies- I didn't get everything sorted before I got on my plane from Narita and there wasn't an internet cafe at LAX. In fact, tbh, L.A Airport was pretty shit.

Last day in Tokyo was good. I bought enough super cute writing paper to last me for life (I will literally be writing gym notes for my kids on this stuff. Don't be surprised if your invite to my funeral is written on Hello Kitty stuff covered in strawberries. A combination of lugging around heavy bags and sleeping on a youth hostel mattress had royally fucked my back and so, after spending 20 minutes establishing that it wasn't a brothel, I went and got a massage. It was HEAVENLY. They make you wear pyjamas and then lay towels over you so they never directly touch your body and then the man got to work pushing my back into alignment and making more cracking noises than a tap dancer in a pile of lolly sticks. He said in very broken English that judging by the state of my back I must be a very hard worker. He then nearly put his own back out getting my suitcase back down the stairs.

They gave me stamps on a loyalty card, so now I HAVE to go back to Tokyo :D

My flight over was fantastic though because I somehow got upgraded to premium economy so I had a chair with lots of interesting adjusting buttons and sat next to an executive of an eco friendly lighting company called Kevin. Kevin gave me a fantastic aerial tour of California ("there's wine country, that's the Hollywood sign, that's Beverly Hills" etc) whilst I sat and acted like a tourist the whole time (asking if the fog was snow). I didn't sleep well though and got to LA having had around 2 hours kip. The sunshine outside the terminal was nice, but I despite my long wait between flights I didn't want to take a cab down to Venice Beach out of fear of drifting out of conciousness and waking up with nothing but my hairclips.

Sajan- Burger King in America is horrible! This country is weird!

I refuse to call the transport I got from LA to Portland a plane. It was a bus with wings from the 70s. But I managed to sleep for another 40minutes on it, and it got in slightly early, so I caught an earlier bus into Corvallis.

And here I am, in a hippy coffee shop in small town America. The only way I can really describe it is that it's like living in a weird mirror. I think I actually understand it less that Tokyo. Although I did see a llama...