The Month Of Sakura: March 2025 Recap

And with that, March 2025 is over and 1/4 of 2025 is complete. Literally, how dare time 🙂 ? But I feel like I complain about how fast time seems to be flying every month instead of focusing on the fact that it’s partially doing that because I’m having so much fun. So let’s see what fun things I did in March and focus on the positives instead.

I Went Back To Japan🇯🇵! 

I talked in my last recap about how this weird travel plan came about, so feel free to check that out below if you’re curious, but the point is that I’m back baby!

• The Month Of Auckland: February 2025 Recap

And this time instead of freezing my non-existent balls off in Japan, the country has not only entered spring, but also Cherry Blossom (Sakura) blooming season! So I got to see that wonderful phenomenon in Tokyo and Osaka during the days after they bloomed. I had no idea that they only bloom for about two weeks per year so I’m feeling fortunate that my travel plans accidentally overlapped those days.

Anyway, I had a wonderful time going back to Japan and this time exploring it with my college friends and Partner. It’s definitely a trip I’ll remember for a long time.

I ‘Fought’ Against AI

That’s a bit of a dramatic sub-title, but that’s what it felt like. I watched the below video from one of my favorite new-to-me YouTubers, Pinely and learned that I can add “before:2022” to a Google Image Search to make sure I don’t get AI garbage.

Similarly, a commenter on this video changed my life by saying if you start your query with a curse word, the dumb AI summary doesn’t come up. Sensational!

So now I’m out here searching “fuck what is a granadilla”, laughing my ass off and finding what I’m looking for without that annoying and often inaccurate AI summary. Fantastic all around!

I Played Video Games

I got the urge to play a lot of video games this month. One reason for that was the release of the new Businesses & Hobbies Expansion Pack for Sims 4. Basically, this:

So yes, I ruined my unintentional streak and finally bought a pack for full price. I watched all of my SimTubers having a blast with the pack and then my friends who were supposed to support me waiting also loved it so I dove in.

And I have no regrets 🙂 . In retrospect, an unintentional streak isn’t a good enough reason to not buy something I want, but in my defense, Sims expansion packs have been disappointing and not worth their $40 price point for years now. I’m just glad that wasn’t the case this time.

Besides having a blast running my own Sims businesses, I also started my first Klepto Challenge and had a fantastic time. I also wanted to continue exploring parts of other packs that I’ve never used and that included becoming a Mechanical Engineer and creating a Servo Robot, which was a bit creepy but very helpful.

In other news, Cities Skylines had a weird bug when I opened it for the first time in months. Apparently the latest Mac update broke the game and gives the error “Cities is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Trash.” So that sucks, but luckily the Reddit community came to the rescue.

Apparently you can force-load the game by trying to open the program, then when macOS gripes, you can go to System Settings > Privacy & Security, then scroll to the bottom and you’ll have the option to force macOS to allow you to open Cities Skylines with an “Open” button. Sweet! So I enjoyed playing that this month as well.

I Hung Out With People

This month involved some of my usual virtual meetups, such as that weekly call with my Mom and Weekly Movie Nights where we watched the below. If you’re curious about my ratings of movies, I have a Letterboxd account here.

1. Flow
2. Heretic
3. The Double
4. Lake Placid: Legacy
5. Morbius
6. Knives Out
7. Quiz Lady
8. Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle
9. San Andreas

TV Shows

1. Top Chef (S22)
2. Severance (S2)

Ugh I love Severance so much. My Partner had never seen it and finally gave in to my bothering to watch it, so I rewatched Season 1 with him last month and was both happy for him and furious for myself that he got to wait literally 60 seconds between Season 1 and 2 while I waited with bated breath over that cliffhanger for 3 years.

Anyway, that jealousy aside, I loved Severance Season 2. Severance is one of those shows that I spend more than the runtime of an episode online on Reddit and YouTube video essay channels reading and watching to learn about the tiny clues I missed. And it’s so much fun!

It feels like a lovely little community while watching this show week to week and coming up with theories together. Severance is definitely the best mystery show I’ve watched since Westworld Season 1. It’s just so well done.

Despite my complaining, I’m really glad the creators took the time to make Season 2 awesome. It was worth it! I also heard that they’ve already started writing Season 3 so we don’t have to wait as long between seasons and I appreciate that. The show is gorgeous, horrifying and surprisingly hilarious at times. I love it so much!

I Read 15 Books

Here were my favorite reads this month:

1. A Dumb Birds Field Guide To The Worst Birds Ever by Matt Kracht
2. Devoted by Lark Taylor
3. 10 Ways To Accidentally Fall In Love by Emmy Sanders

To see the other books I read this month and my ratings of them, I have a Goodreads account here. Overall I didn’t think I would have time to read much at all while fast traveling, but luckily I did during some of my sparse downtime. I’m excited to get back to my usual slow travel ways so I can read more next month.

I Wrote 4 Posts

In case you missed it, this month I published the below posts:

1. The Month Of Auckland: February 2025 Recap
2. Review: Singapore Air Business Class – LA to Tokyo, Japan For $5
3. TripIt: The Best Travel App (To Replace TripCase)
4. Review: Mt. Fuji & Hakone Full-Day Tour From Tokyo, Japan

In addition to those posts, I also met up with two readers this month! One in Auckland, New Zealand and one in Tokyo, Japan. It’s still wild to me that people on the other side of the world read my words and I hope I never take that for granted.

And in this month’s episode of ‘who offered me money for weird things I declined’ there were these gems:

• A life insurance company
• I was offered $500 to post on my socials about a homeowner pest fence spray (literally, what in the world?)

Physical

Sleep

Napping is back! I have had some lovely naps this month. I think the return of my napping habit is related to me trying to get up at 5:45am to support my Partner when he was working those hours, but my napping continued even after that!

I’m hoping this trend continues because I love naps so much. Besides that, my sleep this month was really good. I seem to have finally gotten rid of any residual stuffiness from when I was sick at the beginning of this year, and being able to breathe more easily definitely helps me get more restful sleep 🙂 .

Food

Food this month has been amazing. I ate keto for 54% of the month and took 14 days off keto. A lot of what I wanted to explore in Japan revolved around food and very little of that was keto so I have no regrets. It was a delicious time. Feel free to enjoy this example of some delicious food from when I was still in New Zealand this month:

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Exercise

I’ve still been running this month, but I’ve discovered some interesting things. One is that when I was still in New Zealand, Strava seemed to do a horrible job tracking my runs.

I don’t know if the satellites they use aren’t over NZ or what, but their tracking was quite inaccurate and I could tell from the maps of my runs that somehow it thought I teleported from one street to another. Sadly I don’t have that ability.

So I thought – maybe another app would do a better job. So I tried MapMyRun, which I had previously tried while in the US and found that it was very inconsistent and inaccurate compared to Strava so I deleted it, but for a hot second it was more accurate than Strava in NZ…and then somehow, it was way worse 🙂 .

So I went back to Strava and through all of that, put basically no stake in my ‘supposed’ pace and time and just ran when I felt like it. Curiously I didn’t feel like it very often despite the perfect, cool and sunny weather in New Zealand.

However, when I felt like running I really did. I just kept going and had a lovely time. I’m also still trying to weigh not exacerbating the injury I gave myself by running too far, fast and hard last year so it’s been a bit of a struggle doing what I enjoy and not making my aging body worse 😉 .

But once I got to Japan, I expected that I would plan a few runs around the cities I was visiting, but I haven’t yet and instead I’ve been walking 20,000 steps (8-10 miles) a day and ending each day with screaming legs, so there hasn’t been a moment to think “I should also run a few miles.”

And that’s where I am currently 🙂 . Working my legs out quite hard, but not in the way I usually do. My legs as my main mode of transportation have been working hard, but running has declined, as has my PT exercises and yoga.

So I’ve gotta get back on track after this section of fast travel. And I’m excited to do so. I had no idea I liked routine, but apparently I do 🙂 .

Mental

Learning

So it’s time for my favorite segment: Fun Facts Nobody Asked For! Here’s what I learned and explored this month:

Japan

• Apparently in Japanese culture, the blooming of the Cherry Blossom Trees symbolizes the fleeting nature of human life so they’re cherished during the short period they’re around. That’s poetic 🙂
• I also didn’t know that there are entire Cherry Blossom Forecasts to show when each part of Japan will see the best blooms:

• Also while I was in Tokyo, I saw a super cool bridge/tunnel while flying over it – it’s the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line, which is 15 miles long and the 4th longest underwater tunnel in the world!
• This month I also visited Osaka for the first time, which is a city a bit southwest of Kyoto with a population of 2.7 million people

Birds

These are the birds I saw in Japan this month:

Green-Winged Teal, Little Grebe, Common Pochard, Eurasian Coot, Large-Billed Crow, Oriental Turtle-Dove, Brown-Eared Bulbul, Eurasian Tree Sparrow, Rock Pigeon, Eastern Spot-Billed Duck, Pale Thrush, Carrion Crow, White Wagtail, Eurasian Wigeon, Tufted Duck, Mallard

I also learned some really cool bird-adjacent facts relating to Bullet Trains! Apparently some bullet train designs were inspired by the beak of the Kingfisher bird (which I saw in New Zealand last month)! Bullet trains have that long nose design to reduce sonic boom when they go through tunnels – that’s so cool!

Creativity

My creativity this month was a challenge, but I expected that. However, what I didn’t expect was that I hadn’t planned in advance for that fact. After my time in Japan in January happened without a hitch, I just continued about my business without internalizing WHY that worked – I had written in advance every moment I felt inspiration.

I didn’t do that while in Japan this second time – and it bit me in the ass a little 🙂 . I found myself finishing a post 48 hours before it was set to go live, which is very late for me. As a result, I’ve now put reminders on my calendar for when I need to lean into my creativity in advance of fast travel.

So basically my OG plan of writing in advance of fast travel was so successful that I forgot about it and then shot myself in the foot a little 😉 , but luckily I realized that and have now corrected it.

Emotional

My emotions this month were good! I was calm and happy for most of it, but I did have a small depressive episode. However, it was so small that I didn’t recognize what it was for a bit. I just thought it was a result of tiredness from fast travel, but nope – that sadly wasn’t the case.

It obviously didn’t help that my usual wellness routine and extensive downtime required for my happiness wasn’t able to be achieved while traveling quickly and that understandably just exacerbated the problem. So once I realized what was happening, I pressed the reset button.

I started putting my routines back in my day, such as stretching and making sure I chased my creative rabbit holes. I also gave myself more down time. I was almost running on empty for a second there and I’m not used to fast travel after almost 5 years of traveling slowly, so I think I overdid it a bit before correcting.

Money

I’m planning to post one of my spending reviews on Insta of a few cities in Japan, but in the meantime I realize that I really do spend money without thinking about it these days. If I want something  or it’s more convenient I just pay for it.

Booking a car from the train station so I don’t have to deal with variable taxi pricing during rush hour? Sure. Taking a taxi somewhere instead of the subway because I’m worried about my Partner carrying all of his bags easily? Let’s do it! I’ve come a long way from my early 20s when I did everything in my power to save a dollar, damn my comfort.

And in overall money news, here’s where I netted out at the end of March:

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Conclusion

And that’s what I got up to in March! It was a complete whirlwind that once again showed me a perfect example of why I prefer slow travel. Going quickly is exhausting 🙂 .

However, I’m very happy I got to experience this trip with my college friend and that I got to see Japan during two different seasons including the elusive two weeks when the Cherry Blossoms bloom.

Next up I’m heading back to the US for the first time since January. I’ll be visiting my most recent home of Seattle, WA and seeing all of my friends there and exploring how the city has changed since I left there 5 years ago to become a full-time nomad. Until next time!

If you’re interested in the other weekly and monthly retirement updates I’ve written, they’re all here: