Snow is Cold

I like some of the photos I take - I think they’re pretty reasonable.

And then I look at flickr’s most interesting, and am severely humbled…

I am still struggling with words and pictures, which are coming at a trickle. The main issue is that I also have to write university applications and job applications.. But maybe I’m just making excuses.

Anyway this was the trip:

Japan
Niseko / ニセコ
Otaru / 小樽
Sapporo / 札幌
Asahikawa / 旭川
Fukiage Onsen / 吹上温泉
Asahidake / 旭岳
Wakkanai / 稚内
Mashu-ko / 摩周湖
Kawayu Onsen / 川湯温泉
Rishiri / 利尻
Kushiro / 釧路
Ikeda / 池田
Muroran / 室蘭
Noboribetsu / 登別
Shikotsu-ko / 支笏湖
Sapporo / 札幌
Hakodate / 函館
Aomori / 青森
Hirosaki / 弘前
Morioka / 盛岡
Tono / 遠野
Hiraizumi / 平泉
Sendai / 仙台
Matsushima / 松島
Yamagata / 山形
Yamadera / 山寺
Yokohama / 横浜
Tokyo / 東京
Yuzawa Onsen / 湯沢温泉
Niigata / 新潟
Sado-ga-shima / 佐渡島
Haguro-san / 羽黒山
Tsuruoka / 鶴岡
Aizu Wakamatsu / 会津若松
Tokyo / 東京
Nikko / 日光
Enoshima / 江ノ島
Izu / 伊豆
Shizuoka / 静岡
Kyoto / 京都
Osaka / 大阪
Tokushima / 徳島
Kochi / 高知
Matsuyama / 松山
Hiroshima / 広島
Yakushima / 屋久島
Kokura / 小倉
Fukuoka / 福岡
Nagasaki / 長崎
Kumamoto / 熊本
Aso-san / 阿蘇山
Kagoshima / 鹿児島
Ishigaki-jima / 石垣島
Hateruma-jima / 波照間島
Taketomi-jima / 竹富島
Iriomote-jima / 西表島

China
Hong Kong
Shanghai
Beijing

US & Canada
San Francisco
Vancouver
New York

Link to the pics is at the top of the page. More words to follow here…

I was writing some sentimental crap yesterday based on thoughts and conversations over the past week or so, and then while I was walking home today in the middle of a thunderstorm (lightning, pissing rain, no umbrella) I came to a couple of realisations.

One is that everything that has happened in the past 18 months to two years has changed me irreversibly. And I have to go forward from here. Sure, I feel empty and unfulfilled a lot of the time, but when one star burns so brightly in your life, and then it becomes a distant flicker no matter how hard you look for it….well there’s nothing you can do. It’s just not coming back. That is hard to come to terms with, and I guess I haven’t, or hadn’t, but recognition is a step forward (maybe?).

The next is that the thing I am most afraid of is myself. I worry about being a “failure”, but my aspirations and success criteria (how very consultant) are self-determined. I put pressure on myself, forces that no-one sees or is aware of except me. I need to let go of my pre-conceptions. I need to free myself from myself. Once I do that, perhaps I will find the inner peace which I have, up until now, been looking for in places and things. Sometimes we have to look in instead of out. Sometimes I feel like I’m on the outside looking in. But such perspective is hard to come by, and keep in mind.

I also feel, for some reason unbeknownst to probably anyone, as it makes no sense, is that I actually feel slightly afraid of just being myself. That smacks of a deep lack of confidence, but I wouldn’t say that about myself. It’s weird where these behaviours come from. And it’s weird how we can end up being or doing the exact opposite of how we want to be.

Who am I trying to please? As long as it is not myself, truly, then how can I be content. I need to think about what I want, rather than what I think I should be doing. Though it’s also possible to think too much, when action is what’s required.

I have been thinking about how defining one’s own reality means you can pretty much live how you want. I.e. the idea that as long as you believe strongly in something, that it’s true, or the “right” way, then it is. As Tim Ferriss says, it’s not enough to simply think outside the box - we have to act outside the box too.

Options are a blessing, not a curse. Time to take positive thinking to the next level?

This is perhaps more candid than I’d usually care to publish, but whatever.

Go with the flow.

I look out of my window and I see Tokyo. It lives and breathes and sleeps. Yet if I am in my room for any length of time, I sometimes need to open the window to convince myself that there is still a world outside the walls.
The gentle rhythm of cicadas - a midnight song suggestive of natural surroundings not to be found in this urban metropolis - ebbs with the constant traffic.
I of all people am a transient. A temporary life; a tree that just as it starts to take root is hoisted from the ground.
I feel the need to connect with people - to be understood.

After a shockingly long time, I’ve posted ONE (yes, one) more entry from my travelogue thus far. It’s not really polished, but hey.

I have been feeling slightly guilty about neglecting updates recently, especially as it seems slightly more people are interested in reading about what I’m up to this time compared with Canada, where I wrote a lot more, ha.

Anyway… for now I am staying in Tokyo and taking a Japanese language course until the end of August. After that, I will probably stick around for an extra two or three weeks as I am also taking a corporate finance course from UCLA extension, and the final exam for that needs to be done by the 10th September. Probably easier to do it while I’m still stationary rather than on the road, though writing university applications for next year is going to prove interesting whilst travelling again, hmm..

The place where I live right now is seven minutes from Shibuya by train, and the rent is 2/3 the price of my place in Balham. The Japanese prime minister’s house is actually just down the road. Well, one of his houses, and apparently his favourite, but who knows! A policeman is permanently stationed outside the building in a mini-police box. This makes the location very easy to find for any would-be ne’er-do-wells. I feel sorry for the policeman who has to man the post, as it’s not the most exciting quiet residential street to be standing around in for hours at a time.

I recently acquired a mamachari (old woman style shopping bike resplendent with basket) from my friends Akemi and Matthieu, which means that in theory I can cycle to school every day, and most places around this side of town. This was a brilliant money-saving idea (although my train fare to Shibuya only costs 75p [for the sake of comparison, the equivalent London fare would be £2.40]), BUT (parents - look away now) I rode to school once and not only was I ridiculously hot by the time I got there, the roads were SCARY. For the most part you can ride along the pavement, but at points it gets too narrow so people dodge out into the road. Into oncoming traffic. On a three-lane road. Hmm. This would also be fine if my back tire wasn’t on the point of perishing completely, which causes a slight wobble with each turn of the back wheel :) still, what can be expected of a freebie?? And it’s pretty damn sexy.

I’m enjoying the language course, and think I am making some progress. My classmates are all Asian, and most of them are probably advantaged in that they can either read and write the Chinese characters (Taiwanese), or understand the grammar structure (Korean). Still, forces me to try hard to keep up. To start with the workload was fairly intense, but it seems to have calmed a little. Though am very wary that might be due to greater slacking off..! Which will bite me very soon when I have to take a test on the entire text book/course content up to this point in a couple of weeks’ time. Eek.

There have been a number of people passing through Tokyo in the past week or so that I know from home. Right now Gurpal is here, and I met up with Jeremy, Rena and Abs in the past week too. It’s great to have some familiar faces around to hang out with. Of course I have met some cool people here too, but old friends are old friends.

Anyway, my current plan is to be here ’til mid-September, then travel through the rest of Japan and around SE Asia, returning to England in mid-December. Plans, as always, subject to spontaneous changes!

Will try to write something more interesting next time round..! For now, I’m sure everyone will be relieved to hear that for the most part I am feeling a lot better about life these days :)