How to make travel harder

Don’t buy a suitcase. Don’t even buy a hold-all. Just carry your stuff around in paper carrier bags instead.

I saw a tourist doing this in Shikoku last month. He confessed to me that he didn’t even know what was inside his bags because he couldn’t get to the bottom of them.

He left the bags on the bus one day saying he didn’t need them. An hour later he realised he could neither shave or clean his teeth.

So, maybe a suitcase is important. We can at least then see all the crap that we possess.

My hold-all is full. I can’t see what’s in it without emptying the contents onto the floor of the rabbit-hutch sized hotel rooms. And that’s a bad idea. The rooms here are so small just the presence of a bin turns it into a dangerous obstacle course. Anything else on the floor would present a clear and present danger to life.

But I refuse to buy a new suitcase. I have a new one at home I should have brought with me. I don’t want to buy another new one.

So I spent my precious day off yesterday searching recycle shops for a suitcase. It was hopeless though. A Cornish pasty would have been easier to come by.

I ended up taking a one hour train ride across Tokyo to the only 2nd hand suitcase specialist on Google Maps. The small shop was on the 3rd floor of a Zakkyo-Biru (multi-tenant building). The opening hours were short, from 12-5, and even then the manager was an hour late opening up. I lurked on the stairway outside like a criminal waiting for an accomplice.

The moment I got inside I knew my mission had failed. There were only 10 suitcases in the shop, all with the brand name Rimowa. Their cheapest case was 60,000 yen (400 pounds), and it looked like it had just fallen out the back of an aeroplane and rolled down the side of Mount Everest. Ten times over. You wouldn’t store your gardening tools in it.

So I’m still stuck with paper carrier bags for now.