On watches and agony
Last year, I bought myself a really nice watch; it had the two features I consider essential: a countdown timer to tell me when the laundry is done, and charging by sunlight so I never have to replace the battery.
However, it’s a resonably expensive watch, which I didn’t feel went with my style of budget travel (ignore the $8000 of camera gear I’m carrying, of course)
Long story short, I bought a cheap $20 watch for the trip.
When I arrived in japan I spun the hands foreward 14 hours to make up the difference from crossing the international date line.
And tonight, when I arrived at the hostel, they told me I had already checked out. “ummm, I’m leaving on the 25th for Nikko.”
“it is the 25th.”
Turns out spinning the hands doesn’t change the date – you have to pull the stem out to a different position to change the date.
Fortunately, they still had a bed available for me. I emailed the hostel in Nikko and told them to charge me for tonight (aka for my stupidity) and asked if I could still show up tomorrow.
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