Trains, Travel, Lacrosse, and Love in Japan

Laidback Log: April 13, 2025

Two things you can control in life are attitude and effort. I forgot that. It’s easy to forget about a lot of things in life until something reminds you about it.

0600 A Step Away From Existence

I woke up with the guilt of feeling like I had wasted the night before. The feeling of not walking toward or building any skills that might lead to a better life ate away at me as I lay in my loft bed. The muffled sounds of my neighbors getting ready for their day leaked through the paper-thin ceilings and walls. That familiar irritation crept in—I’ve been living in this apartment for two years now. One of the things I long for is a place to call my own. I once dreamed up a minimalist, industrial-modern-meets-Japanese aesthetic for a future home, complete with a fully functioning bath and sauna. These days, homeownership feels more like a mirage than a goal. Sighing, I rolled over and tried to ignore the day beginning without me.

The house in my head also had a garage, a yard, a home studio, a garden, and a koi pond. All inspired by my years in Japan. Another thing they had in common: they were imaginary, ethereal, unreal. I sighed again. What was the point?

0830 Finishing Yesterday’s Extra-Credit

I got around two more hours of sleep before I woke up and started to work on my ideas. What was yesterday’s work has piled up to become today’s work items. On top of the regular tour guiding work, I was challenged to meet that demand while also trying to grow an Online Presence of sorts. There are reports that young people are feeling burned out because they’ve been working towards a goal with ever-moving posts. Peering at my phone, it was now 0830. I was tempted to keep sleeping, but I realized I would never get to that goal if I didn’t try.

I slothfully climbed down the ladder to my computer chair to finish editing a video about my way home from Kobe yesterday. After editing a video I knew would get a small amount of views, I turned towards writing a blog post. After sorting out another post, I looked over at the clock, and my “free time” away from work had evaporated. Sighing, I had spent all my free time chasing dreams, ghosts, and skill acquisition. This is something I have been doing since my college days, giving up time to draw, produce music, or work on my online presence.

When I wasn’t playing games, I was grinding towards that dream… I didn’t feel any closer.

1130 Budget Sensory Deprivation Chamber

Thirty minutes of peace. I stepped into the shower just big enough to stand in without bumping my elbows on the walls. At least with the hot water running down my body, I could forget everything. Like a budget sensory deprivation tank, it was a time where I could just simply be. The hot water washed away all the invasive thoughts.

With eczema, on a fundamental level, you lack control. At least it feels that way. It seems that the universe is falling into entropy. If you can’t even control your body, what weight does my will have on the cosmos? It feels as if you are a trapped, limitless soul condemned to a frail and failing body. A body that seems to have major design flaws. What kind of body fails to regulate its epidermal barrier?

Doubts

The quiet peace of the shower is only a temporary haven in a busy world like ours. Although water goes down a drain, intrusive thoughts clog our minds easily. A mirror amplifies any small signals of self-consciousness. With modern society’s reliance on social media, smartphones, and videoconferencing, mirrors are omnipresent. The millennial generation is said to be narcissistic, but I fear even greater for Gen-Z. It would be better if I didn’t have to look at my face every morning—to gaze at the red, enflamed, cracking skin now worn with age.

But the most accurate way to put medication on oneself is using Narcissus’s tool of demise. Eczema is a life-defining disease over which you have little control. In a way, maybe that’s why I fell in love with Zen. With eczema, you are forced to give up the belief that you are in control. Instead of clinging to a moment so tightly, you can let go. Perhaps it’s a healthy mindset when it comes to eczema, aging, relationships, and sometimes even life itself.

I’ve never understood why we keep old people imprisoned in beds tied to machine lungs and hearts. Wouldn’t it be better to go out in my fifties in an epic rally crash… unless I live long enough to get that cyborg catgirl body.

Ain’t no Rest for the Wicked

At this point, my morning routine is muscle memory: shower, meds, clothes. I keep telling myself to add stretching. I’m realizing mobility fades faster than you’d expect. Touring with guests over 55 has shown me that. Health habits are slow to show consequences. I patted my stomach, grabbed my suitcase—still packed from the last tour—and left. It didn’t make sense to unpack when I was hitting the road again.

Everything was folded and clean in my decade-old suitcase. I wheeled it out and sighed.

Rockstar life without the money and fame.

LaidbackMarco

1200 A Train to Nowhere and Everywhere

Trains are dangerous that way. They let your mind wander. My trip was only 50 kilometers, but it felt like I was going nowhere and everywhere.

Back on the bus to the station, rain gently sprinkled down on my hood as I stood waiting. I found myself at the nearby train platform. Lugging all my belongings around, I stared listlessly until I noticed a familiar-shaped bag. There was a group of college girls laughing and chatting away, their hair tied in tight buns—it looked like they were on their way to practice. It had been years since I had seen a lacrosse stick. Just the shape of it brought back a flood of emotions. The memories were nearly two decades ago at this point. The first time I played lacrosse was when my friend David invited me to try it out after failing to make the U12 baseball team.

Sometimes it’s better when things don’t go to plan. I picked up the stick and never looked back.

Trying every position, I found my niche as a Middie, and Lacrosse became much of my identity moving forward into my formative years.

Flashbacks Chronobreak

When I think about lacrosse, there’s a part of me that wishes I could go back and redo a lot of things. It wasn’t that I didn’t give maximum effort during my games, practices, or conditioning drills; rather, I’d like to savor every game. Unlike my varsity letter for playing football, where I was a premier tackling dummy/benchwarmer. I had felt I earned a varsity letter playing lacrosse, making it to varsity in my freshman year. Lacrosse wasn’t officially recognized as a sport when I was a Freshman; our parents and coach had to fight our school hard for the right to be recognized as such. If I were to go back in time, I would have asked my coach to let me develop in Junior Varsity before putting me in the senior team. When I became a Sophomore, I came into my own as a middie before being assigned to the LSM for my defensive grit and tenacity.

By the time I was a Senior, Lacrosse had become fully recognized as a sport, and that year I had even earned an award, which, unlike the stupid letterman jacket or multiple varsity letters earned for warming up metal in football, I was proud of. Although I had earned a Varsity letter, I stuck with my admittedly uniform code-violating lacrosse penny, thigh-high socks, and moccasins. While not playing lacrosse, it was the unofficial uniform for those on the team.

A varsity jacket represented everything I disliked: exclusivity, ego, and the same football seniors who used to bully me. Meanwhile, our lacrosse team was struggling to recruit new players. . who wouldn’t want to be in a stylish lacrosse penny?

Still, I was proud of my award. A slip of paper I still keep above the fireplace at my childhood home.

The Unsung Hero: Two Controllables Attitude and Effort

The last time I saw my entire lacrosse team together was at our celebration dinner. I don’t think I realized how important all these little events were when I was growing up. The last thing I expected was to receive an award. . . Although it was just a Slip of Paper, it’s one of my most prized possessions, still sitting above my fireplace in my childhood bedroom(I stole the downstairs living room).

Our Lacrosse team was strong for three years. By the time I was a Senior, I was hoping to make lacrosse captain like the upperclassman who was kind enough to not only teach me about lacrosse and football, but drive me to practice and let me relax at his house before it. That promotion never came for me, it’s only writing about it now that I’ve come to realize how painful that was for me.

Still, I had an almost delusional will to never quit and a positive attitude. Fighting hard in physical therapy, I trained hard after tearing my ACL junior year to be ready for lacrosse season. My knee was never the same after that, one of the reasons I’d rather have that cyborg body, but two of the things that you could always control were your attitude and effort. No matter how far down we were in any game, I always fought until the last horn.

Perhaps I Lacked The Leadership the Team Needed

I’ve always been taught that it’s better to lead by example. Our Lacrosse team was really strong in the first two years we played. After they went on to graduate, we were still strong, but after my junior year, we lost some strong players again. Not that we didn’t have good players, but I think every team goes through a cycle of rebuilding. To this day, I feel like I wasn’t strong enough. We had a tank of a player, who left a void I couldn’t fill. I wonder what I was missing. Even to my other peers and seniors that year, I felt like I was lacking that magical spark. That spark is something I’ve written about before, the magic, the reality distortion field.

Despite not carrying “it”, I still try. Similar to my blog, YouTube, music, and art. . . I don’t know what else to do but to try, while attempting to control my attitude and effort.

A Partner to Play Catch With

My first long-term relationship was with a Japanese girl from Nagano who played Lacrosse. We had met because she was standing outside of a ramen shop with her lacrosse stick. Shortly after, we were going on dinner dates, coffee dates, and playing catch in the park. We had met over our mutual love for the sport. Looking back, I regret not going all in. She was kind, smart, and hardworking. Unlike the girls in Tokyo, she wasn’t high maintenance, she could cook, and she wasn’t afraid to show me her silly side. Life and lacrosse are lonely without someone to play catch with.

Love in Different Forms

I found myself sitting across the train from the two girls who were happily chatting away. Unlike when I met my ex in Nagano, I was no longer a young, college graduate. At thirty, I found myself in “creepy old man” territory. . . Just don’t be creepy, I thought to myself as I held my phone in my hands. One thing I still don’t understand very well, but am trying to get my head around, is the different forms of love that can take place on earth. When I looked over at the girls, there wasn’t any romantic love, but rather just the excitement of seeing two fellow lacrosse players. It took me a couple of minutes to build up the courage, but I waved over to them and gestured to my phone.

“This was fifteen years ago, but I love Lacrosse.”

They exchanged a couple of surprised looks, some smiles, and words before they got off at Kawasaki Station. In a world as small as Lacrosse, I think you’re just happy to see and talk to someone else who plays.

When they left, I thought back to all the opportunities I had missed when I was younger. What are some things I could have done differently? I then thought of something more useful. What are some things I can do differently now? When I was young, naive, and optimistic, there were some things I was better at. At that time, I still had hope for the future. How could I learn from my younger self in some ways?

The two things you can control are your attitude and effort. There is no giving up until the final buzzer. At that time in my life, I was relatively happy. . . Was happiness a choice after all?

1300 Crunchy Katsu Lunch

I had planned to go all the way through to my destination of Asakusa, but my pangs of hunger got the best of me. During the long two-week tours, I get meal stipends. The smell of the tonkatsu captured me like chumming the waters attracts sharks. The number of restaurants, shops, and other services offered at Tokyo Station is amazing. It would be one thing if the food was there, but mid, like in a shopping mall, surprisingly, there are genuinely good restaurants.

1430 Buying More Storage Memory

When traveling, I juggle logistics, work, reporting, and taking multimedia evidence of my travels. This comes in the form of pictures, videos, pamphlets, and tickets. What people don’t realize is that sharing these stories, even with the help of the Terminator, takes a lot of time, mental energy, and resources. Similar to my Unsung Hero story above, the medium I’ve chosen, blogging, doesn’t get much attention, recognition, or results for my career or my bank account. Still pursuing my dreams and passions is something that would cause me more pain than trying and failing does.

You’re a great storyteller

My Aunt

Cool. Still broke.

One resource that you end up using a lot of as a videographer and photographer is long-term memory storage. For my tech-illiterate out there, your devices, computers, phones, and tablets have two types of memory. Random Access Memory (RAM) and long-term storage space (Hard disks or Solid State). You can think of RAM like your working memory and Storage space as your long term memory.

My aging laptop, which needs to be replaced soon, is running low on storage so I went to one of the biggest electronic stores in tokyo to get a 512 GB memory stick. This should help with editing and photo storage on the go.

1600 Checking into Hotel

On the first day of these large group tours, your job is to review information, check into the hotel, and then sit in the lobby like an NPC with a quest marker over your head. . . I even sound like an NPC

Hello Weary Traveler

The Hotel that we were staying at this time has free beer that you can pour in the Lobby. So I put my tour-branded items on and sat in the lobby while confirming restaurants, names, and who had and hadn’t arrived yet.

In the lobby I actually had a really great conversation with some of the guests before the tour even started. There was also a really interesting Canadian weeb there. . .weebs come in all sorts of ages and sizes believe it. . .and most foreigners who move to Japan have been a weeb at one point in time.

For those trying to understand Japan from a distance, books and TikToks help, but they’re not the whole picture. You have to be in the water to learn how to swim. In my post about taking a newer car enthusiast around Japan, I’ve talked about how sometimes it’s better not to burst people’s bubbles or curb their enthusiasm. (I need to watch that show)

1930 Eat Dinner At Shogun Burger

When I’m not eating with my guests, I don’t always eat Japanese food. When you live here, sometimes you want something on your palette that’s not nice, cabbage, or miso soup. While there are different types of Japanese food I regularly enjoy, when I get a good meal allowance (2000 yen), I sometimes spring for non-Japanese food. Shogun Burger is a good mix of Japanese meets American fusion as they are technically using Wagyu beef. The best point is that they have craft beer, wifi, and a nice hip aesthetic with warm lights instead of bright white fluorescent commercial lighting.

2130 Follow the White Rabbit

I returned to the Hotel for work reports, emails, expense reports, and more review. I had a little routine of checking all of my company communication platforms and LinkedIn for updates. There’s also a little bit of time for what I call Rabbit Hole Research. Often as I’m researching about the same thing, sometimes I’ll see something interesting that grabs my eye and I allow myself to follow that thread.

Example

• Review differing Shinkansen Speeds
  • What model of Shinkansen is it?
    • Kawasaki helped to create the Shinkansen
      • Kawasaki’s headquarters is in Shin-Kobe

Thus my library of little interesting facts about Japan grows.

2230 To Do Lists

I’m trying to get back to making to do lists and productivity Applications. For someone as scattered as I am, it’s not optional. It’s survival.

2300 Blog

Do you think these blogs write themselves?? But as I log, review, and reflect, I get closer to understanding where the gaps in my life, thinking, and routines are.

Much Love 🦥🩵🩷💖

LaidbackMarco