It will come as no surprise that Okinawa holds a very special place in my heart, there’s an opening cliché if ever there was one. Twice before I’ve failed to actually get there — once thanks to Covid (I had a countdown going, it stopped at 7 days, and we all know how that turned out). The second time was when I realised I was sick. No diagnosis yet, and at the time we were “convinced” — and by convinced I mean a doctor told us — it was a bladder issue, while the voice in my head was saying something very different. We know how that whole scenario played out too. If not, I’ll put the backstory in a footnote. So when news of Typhoon 18 arrived, I was, to put it mildly, worried.

I started writing this from a lounge buried away in Shanghai airport. I’ve been through a few times, and it’s funny — the people “in charge” in China just land differently. They also have the most convoluted transit process, involving a full security experience run by men and women who are not, under any circumstances, up for chatting. I have serious respect for anyone in security or policing, but genuinely — why do we not train children to do all this with such ease? Here’s my point: there are about three layers to re-security in Shanghai, and not one smile through the entire thing. The last part is properly mad. By that stage you’ve done passport check, boarding card check, immigration, the lot — and then there’s a wall of doors, where a group of English women were frantically trying to relocate paperwork they’d presented not thirty metres earlier. All sorts came flying out of bags, and — for reasons known only to China — cigarette lighters are not allowed in hand luggage. One woman lost three of them to the enormous bin behind the world’s most solemn security guard.

I’d flown from Gatwick, where everything stays in your bag and goes through the scanner as-is. Not the case in Shanghai. I stood there praying my bag wasn’t about to explode as I wrestled laptop, iPad, and battery pack into trays roughly the size of a shoebox lid. Used three in the end and still had to force everything in. There was a mild stroke moment when, in my haste, my “just in case” underwear went flying across the floor. Before anyone’s mind wanders — this is strictly “luggage goes to Iceland, still need clothes to train in” logic, nothing more.

Through all of this, the scanner guy simply waved his hand for my boarding card, then waved me off to my own scan without so much as an emotional flicker. I was very relieved to land in Osaka. For days I’d been a baby storm chaser, tracking the typhoon’s route with far too much hope that it would take a sudden 90-degree turn and leave Okinawa alone. On the off chance my flight actually ran, I still had a shuttle, immigration, customs, and baggage reclaim to get through — alongside what felt like every tired, grumpy passenger in Japan, all arriving at once. By the time I reached domestic check-in (you have to do this on your first entry into Japan, and recheck your bags), I was warm, wrecked, and running on about two hours of sleep across two flights.

Just happy to be there, I was then cheerfully informed that although the flight would take off — great — it might also turn around. Sorry, what? Apparently we were doing a “look and see”: go to Okinawa, see if we could land, expect turbulence. My check-in agent had beautiful English and followed this news up with, “Can I weigh your hand luggage? It needs to be under 7kg.” It was not. So there I was, mid-airport, doing an emergency repack.

Osaka is beautiful — I’ve flown from there a few times, always at night, always struck by the landscape — but this time I was too busy dreading the “turbulence” to enjoy it. An hour in, coffee in hand, we felt the first rumblings. I’d been given a window seat, usually a treat, but this time it meant a front-row view of what I was fairly sure was going to be my final flight. The fasten-seatbelt sign came on, and I thought: right, here we go.

Three minutes later, the sign went off. That was the entire extent of the turbulence. The pilot brought us in low over the sea and landed without so much as a bump.

There’s a run I like to do in Okinawa, up to Shuri Castle, built on a decent hill and a fair distance from where I was staying. Having just cheated death, I figured, sure, why not. Two hours and nineteen minutes later I made it back — turns out it’s considerably further from Tsubogawa than from where I stayed last time. Normally I’d be bragging about the stats on a run like that, but there were so many traffic lights getting in the way that I’ve decided to say nothing further on the matter. I did sleep well, though.

Getting the first full day of training in felt wonderful, followed by a long walk to Naminoue, then on to the monument for Higaonna and Miyagi Senseis, and — 20,000 steps later — home again, with food, as all good days should end.

Tomorrow I head to mainland Japan for the IOGKF Japan National Gasshuku in Gujo Hachiman, Gifu Prefecture. I’ve looked it up online and the landscape looks incredible. For now, though — I need sleep.

Oh and I had chanpuru!!! I love this stuff.