As my friends often tease me, my life is full of routine. In fact, I try to live my daily life with a few limited restaurants and bars, rarely try new places. Part of this is because I wish to avoid to make erroneous choices selecting where I eat or drink, but I would rather have places where I feel comfortable. I do not want to bother the restaurant chefs, but I hope them to make slight adjustments to the dishes because I have many dislikes in terms of food ingredients. I also wish to leave them to decide brand of whisky or sake to because it is too much trouble for me.
As for the bars, I visit three bars every week, one each by day (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday). One of the bartenders, who I visit on Saturdays (tentative name: Saturday bartender), was going to visit Nikka Yoichi Distillery, so he would close the bar on Saturday only once in last November.
Visit days in a week are fixed only in my mind, there are no legal or physical restrictions except all three are closed on Sundays. Therefore, it is possible, for example, to swap the bar I go on Friday and on Saturday for one particular week.
However, human beings get caught up in habits. Just because we can theoretically do something about a problem, it does not mean that we actually do it. One usual case is, even though you know that eating breakfast is good for your health, you do not (or cannot) get up even a few minutes early. You may not take the underlying problem seriously, so you may get carried away by the habit.
Similarly, it is difficult for me to visit my Saturday bar on Friday. It could be because the trains are more crowded on Friday than on Saturday, or because there is a chance that more regular customers I know visiting the bar on Saturday, but no concrete reasons. Even though it would be easy to take an action, I am bound by my habit and hard to make even a minor change.
Still, the bar will be closed on a Saturday in November. I can physically go in front of the bar, but its door will be closed, so I have to do something about it although I am now a slave of my habit.
Then, on one of Saturdays, the Saturday bartender asked me if I knew any restaurants in Otaru, nearby city of the distillery. I had visited Yoichi Distillery a few years ago and liked one sushi restaurant in Otaru.
The rest was just a usual story in a bar. As we talked about airline tickets and hotel arrangements, we ended up getting drunk and I said I was going to Otaru and joining him from his 2nd day.
In general, such travel plans are unmaterialized. It is a typical case that just because you can do something theoretically, it does not mean you actually do it.
Yet, I try to take travel seriously. It happened that there were seats available on frequent flyer award ticket from Tokyo Haneda to Sapporo Shin-Chitose and back. If out-of-pocket expense is one-night hotel stay only, I can take it seriously without being so serious.
We have heard that there are several good bars in Otaru, and we planned to visit three if possible. We would surely have sake at the sushi restaurant, so we would have four drinking places in total. As a middle-aged man whose ability to get alcohol out from my system is weaken as getting older, this is theoretically possible, but it is extremely ambitious.
The plan was that we would meet at the first bar in the evening for an aperitif, before going to the sushi restaurant. I was free until then, so I would arrive Otaru by noon on Saturday, and have a piece of cheesecake at LeTAO where is famous for it. If the weather is nice, I would love to see the Otaru Canal and Otaru Port.
I headed for Otaru without much to think, but it was already winter in Hokkaido. With the first strong chill came for the season, the first snow was falling it Sapporo/Otaru area on that day. The temperature was 2 degrees Celsius at the time of arrival and the wind speed was 6 meters per second, effective temperature must have been below zero. Contrary, a few days back, Kanto area had first November “summer day (daytime temperature above 25 degrees Celsius)” in last 44 years.
The unexpected weather did not discourage me. I had a lunch and cake at LeTAO, strolled along the Otaru Canal and Otaru Port despite the freezing cold weather, and enjoyed Otaru night by drinking at one sushi restaurant and three bars all as initially planned.
Putting all other things aside, I can take a travel seriously. When food or drinking plans are added, it is further intense. After all, just because something can be done theoretically, whether or not an action is actually taken depends on one’s perception to the fundamental issues. I am a type of person who try something only what/when I like to do.
Looking back to it, I was told something similar when I was in elementary school. I have not changed in 40 years owing my perception to my own underlying problem.