Am I excited, people ask. Well, yes and no. I am looking forward to it, but it’s more like I’ve been waiting a year for a kidney transplant and I’m getting it done in a week. Which is to say, I’ll be glad when it’s actually the day and I can forget about everything. But I’m not hugely excited in a bouncing-around-the-room sense. I’ve still got five looong days of work to go. But after they’re past, and there’s nothing but a stretch of week between me and getting on that A340, I reckon the excitement will mount.

I feel like I should be doing more, but I can’t really. All the planning is done, really, or will be done next week. Just got to survive work until Tuesday. I can’t believe my last stretch of shifts is a seven-day/56-hour marathon, but it is. Luckily I’ve got some time off after. And that’s £270 extra, so it ain’t bad.

I’ll tell you what I am looking forward to. On that first day, Thursday the 4th of October (just two weeks away!), after I check into the hotel room and spend an hour or so unpacking and settling in and writing a quick post on here and uploading my photos from the last whatever hours, I can go outside, camera in hand, with no job and no school and no parents and not even no friends, just me and the rest of the evening and the city of Tokyo. Now that is exciting.