thecite
Member
From: Adelaide
Registered: 2009-02-05
Posts: 781
Well the day has arrived, I'm backpacking around Japan for 3 months from today.
First up it's 6 days in Okinawa doing who knows what, then wwoofing at a cafe/ animal shelter for 5 days, and then it's on to Kagoshima by ferry. Right now I'm in the Taipei terminal waiting to board my connecting flight. There were Japanese dubbed movies on the Sydney-Taipei flight, which was a pleasant surprise.
I guess I'll update this thread every now and then if I have something interesting to share :p
Anyway, wish me luck.
thecite
Member
From: Adelaide
Registered: 2009-02-05
Posts: 781
It turned out to be a very enjoyable first day in the end.
I had an interesting trip from the terminal to the hostel, walked around in the blistering heat for a few hours looking at Kokusai-dori and the surrounding area, made friends with most of the people at the hostel and had some good chats in Japanese. Then we went to the park and took on a group of 5 middle school students in a game of basketball (I'd run into these kids literally about 4 times around town), which was awesome. Then we came back and made chirashizushi and drank a bit. And the hostel has some shamisen, drums, ukelele and recorder/ keyboard things lying around, so there's often good music going on as well. Anyway, a good first day.
thecite
Member
From: Adelaide
Registered: 2009-02-05
Posts: 781
Well, I'm back now from the best 3 months of my life.
It was such an amazing experience that it really is just awful to be back home.
I made a tonne of new friends, experienced a score of new things, heightened my independence, saw almost every region of the country, improved my Japanese (although I don't even wanna think about the amount of Anki reviews I have built up), lost my virginity, got a girlfriend, went to karaoke for the first time (and subsequently got hooked), worked at a host club, couchsurfed for the first time, wrote a tonne of lyrics which I never had the concentration to do at home, got to Mount Fuji, went to Roppongi on Halloween etc etc.
Now I just have to hold out another 4 or 5 months until I can go back...
Here are the rest of the photos from my trip:
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