I was considering going to Japan in July, on my miles, just for a short week or so. The idea popped into my head in bed last night, and I got so excited about the whole idea that I couldn’t sleep and had to get out of bed to explore whether it were possible or not.
It is possible, although now it has become a toss-up between going to Japan and using the miles to redeem a one-way flight to London, from which I can fly to Belfast after a short stopover. The latter will result in savings of about 1K, even including the cost of London-Belfast via Aer Lingus, while the former will mean about 1.5K in expenditure.
At the moment, the latter option is winning. It has been 6 years since I was last in London, and I do miss it very much. It would mean meeting up with a different group of people, and getting reacquainted with a city that has undergone much change in the years that I was away.
At the same time, I was very much looking forward to Japan again. It would have meant touching base with some people whom I’d spent a lot of time with in my two years there, and I had already planned out all the people and places I would go – Momodani, Sakuya, BOE, the new Osaka station, my hairdresser, the ballet studio, etc. I would have enjoyed the time that I had planned to spend sitting in Marylebone, enjoying the soup bowl-sized coffee and cake, reading the Japanese book on the homeless that I haven’t touched in the longest time. I was looking forward to speaking Japanese again, just being in that country, in the city that was home.
