Progress at-a-glance
End of
day 4*
- Mental alertness: 8
- Physical energy level: 7
- Quality of sleep: 3
*On this
scale, 10 represents my original state prior to beginning this experiment.
Detailed comments
So today
was the first day spent all outdoors with friends since beginning experiment
2.0. It has meant that I've had to do my 12pm, 4pm and 8pm naps outside, away
from my comfortable bed, and oftentimes while sitting up. It appears I have
great difficulty sleeping anywhere except in my bed. As a result, my sleep
quality suffered greatly today. In terms of as a sleep experience, today was
horrible, but it has taught me more about my limits of sleeping while outdoors.
Both at
12am and 4am today, I fell asleep quickly but I felt really sleepy when I woke
up from them both. I tried to do some blogging after waking up both times, but
I nodded off so many times, and my brain was working so slowly, that it wasn't
very productive at all. My typing also had significantly more mistakes than
usual. It appears that the possible reason I struggled to wake up is because of
sleep deficiency.
The rest
of my sleep times today were in actuality different from my scheduled times.
The main reason for the time disparity is because of circumstances.
So it
begins with my 8am scheduled nap, which I took at 7:40am since a group of
friends and I have decided to visit the emperor at the Imperial palace and our
departure time was 8:20. Since I didn't have time to eat after I woke up, I ate
my yoghurt, rice and natto breakfast before my 8am nap, at about 7:00am.
We
expected there to be a line to see the emperor, but the number of people on the
day far exceeded our expectations. We arrived at the entrance to the imperial
palace at about 9:50am, and was ushered into a line by the coordinators. Our
line spent a good 40 minutes waiting just standing there, waiting for lines of
people before us to enter. Once inside, some members of our group needed to go
to the toilet, and the queue for that was also really long. We waited close to
another 40 minutes just for the bathroom. After having refreshed ourselves, it
was a matter of following the crowd to where the emperor was. Although we set
off this morning with the intention of coming to make the 10:10 session, we
ended up watching it at 11:50am. A much longer delay than I'd anticipated.
Also, there were so many people that it was a hard enough challenge catching a
glimpse of the emperor himself. See if you can spot him in the photo.
Because
the emperor's speech didn't finish till 12pm, I had no choice but to delay my
sleep time, while looking for a good place to get some shut eye. It meant
placing extra burden on my friends, who were kind enough to understand and to
even rest with me for half an hour at the nearby park. But it was 1:40 before
we found it, so I had my noon nap at 1:40pm. I brought an eyemask and earplugs
out, which helped a lot. The quality wasn't too bad, but I don't think I
actually fell asleep. My brain was more in a relaxed mode, while still awake.
It at least served as rest for my brain and preparation for the next four hours
of use. After the nap, at about 2:20, we had lunch, and I bought some yakisoba.
After
that, we made our way to Shinjuku for some post-new year's shopping. I've heard
many rumours of heavy discounts during this period, so we went to check it out
for ourselves. Unfortunately that left me with no choice for my sleep than to
find somewhere reasonably quiet probably in a building where we are doing the
shopping. In the end we went to a café, and I tried to grab some shut eye while
my friends patiently sat with me and passed the time having tea and cake.
Because it took some time to get to the first shop we wanted to check out, and
to get to the café there, we ended up sitting down and getting comfortable
closer to 4:30om, which needless to say delayed my sleep once again. I'm pretty
sure I didn't actually get to sleep once again. My brain felt rested, but I was
far from getting much needed REM sleep. After my nap, we walked around heaps
and did some serious clothes shopping. Didn't buy much though, expect for a
'fukubukuro
' (福袋 happy bag). These bags are the iconic
sale item for this period of shopping, and it's the shop's way of getting rid
of old stock quickly to make room for the new. They prepackage clothing sets,
and by purchasing one of these prepackaged sets, you make heavy savings. The
only catch is, the colour matchhup of the clothes varies from bag to bag, and
you're not allowed to see inside before you purchase.
I bought a five item clothes set containing a coat, two shirts, a jumper and a
scarf, apparently costing over 40,000 yen originally, for 10,000 yen. The
existence of bargains like this during this time is why this sale period is so
lively.
After
visiting numerous other stores, we decided to eat out for dinner before
finishing up. My 12pm nap was spent at a park under a statue, my 4pm nap was
spent hunched over a café table, and for my 8pm nap, we went inside the
restaurant, I took a seat near the wall, and slept sitting up leaning against
the wall with earplugs and eyemask for half an hour before eating my dinner.
I'm afraid to say that for the third sleep in a row, I'm pretty sure I didn't
actually fall asleep, and I had to settle for just resting my eyes and letting
my brain simply relax for half an hour. What I found interesting though, was
that during both my 4pm and 8pm naps, I was not looking at the time nor
intentionally waiting for the half an hour to be up or anything, yet somehow
knew when that half hour was up. I got up of my own accord after figuring I
probably wasn't going to fall asleep and deciding I had enough of a break, and
it turned out to be four minutes before my alarm went off. Similarly at 8pm, I
decided to terminate my attempt to fall asleep 30 seconds before my 30 minute
timer went off.
I ended
up arriving home at about 11:30pm. I merely changed my clothes, got into bed,
set my timer, and that wraps up my account of day 4 of experiment 2.0.
The
greatest benefit I gained for my sleep experiment from today's outing is
insight into how much of a social issue this sleep cycle presents itself to be.
Once semester begins, and our timings for the day get fixed for us, I'd
anticipate to have more regularity and better ability to stick to my sleep
routine. But it's during holiday time, when there are no preset times to do any
certain task, that makes it socially difficult to just quickly run off every
four hours to take a nap, and especially so when you're out. I've always been
the kind of person who finds it difficult to fall asleep anywhere except in a
bed, and I have no better sleep quality than in my own bed back home. It looks
like I'll either need to keep working on conditioning myself to sleep anywhere,
or else this polyphasic sleep cycle regime will fall through each time we go
out. Well, I'll be going out clothes shopping once again tomorrow, and to the
movies the day after, and to Disneyland with family the day after that, so this
will give me plenty of opportunity to conclusively establish whether I am able
to adapt in such a way, or whether I really am incompatible with sleep
conditions outside my own bed.
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