🚇🚆🚃🚋🚌🚌🚋🚃🚆🚇🚅🚍🚍🗻🚍🚌🚌🚊🚋🚡🚡🚢🚌🚌🚅🚇🚅

Let's see, where did we leave off... Oh the really really sad part when I got really really sad!!!

I promise that from now on, the only tears I shed on a bullet train will be tears of joy about the fact that I'M ON A FREAKING BULLET TRAIN. Also my friends have suggested that I name my memoir "Crying on the Bullet Train: A Japan Boy's Story" which is why I love my friends and also need to give them a very firm 🖕

I also promise that this next week was so amazing and cool and awesome and I went to so many places and rode SO many forms of transportation (the title of this post is an accurate portrayal of each method I took in just one week. And also a mountain. Which is, technically speaking, not actually a form of transportation).

July 7-8: Mt. Koya, Fujikawaguchiko

Mt. Koya is a small mountain that sits about two hours outside of Osaka. It was first settled in 819 and is the world headquarters of the Koyasan Shingon sect of Japanese Buddhism. It contains a university and over 120 temples and is beautiful, ancient, and quite remote.

To reach it, I had to take the subway 🚇 to a commuter train 🚆 to a 2-car train 🚃 to a cable car 🚋 to a bus 🚌. Starting off a day with that much public transit is always a good sign—especially when it's going through beautiful rural villages, mountains, and stunning scenery.

I checked into my lodging, which is a monastery/temple that also functions as a ryokan (inn), so the monks work as the hotel staff in addition to performing their daily rituals.

I was welcomed in by Gunnar, a monk who is originally from Germany and so speaks perfect English (in addition to Japanese and German and probably six other languages because that's just how Europeans are). It will never stop being hilarious to me how amazed and excited foreigners get when I (as an American) say that I can speak Spanish—even after they've just rattled off the four languages they're fluent in and the three that they can understand.

I dropped my bags and headed off to see Okunoin. This is a cemetery spanning 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) through the woods, and there are ancient, moss-covered monuments surrounding the path.

It is beautiful and peaceful and enormous—the monuments stretch out hundreds of feet to either side of the path throughout the entire walk, which takes around a half hour in one direction. Do NOT tell the influencers about this place because the vibes are immaculate and I want to be the only one who has ever experienced them. Yes, I'm aware it's been around for over 1200 years.

At one point, there's an ancient well, where legend says that if someone looks inside and does not see their reflection, they will die in the next three years. It doesn't say that you won't die within three years if you do see your reflection, so the only possible outcome is bad, and so the smart thing is probably not to look inside the well... Anyways, I saw my reflection! So at least I'm not guaranteed death in the next three years—although with the way I have been treating my body and sleep schedule for the last few months it's very possible.

The path ends at the Toro-do, the main temple, which sits directly in front of the Gobyo, the mausoleum for Kukai, the founder of this sect of Buddhism and of Mt. Koya as a religious center. According to legend, Kukai has not died, but sits in an eternal meditative trance here, awaiting the appearance of Maitreya, the Buddha of the future.

If Kukai can meditate for almost 1200 years, I figured I can do it for 40 minutes, so I returned to the monastery where Gunnar led a guided meditation for English-speakers visiting Mt. Koya. The goal of meditation is to clear one's mind completely—if you've been reading this blog for long enough, you can probably tell that based on the way my brain works, meditation for me has always been like trying to muffle a symphony orchestra with a single throw pillow. But I appreciated the class, and it did help me find a sense of calm—although not as much as the lady next to me who was loudly snoring within 15 minutes. She must already be enlightened or something.

I returned to my room, where the monks had prepared a traditional vegetarian meal for me to eat. I expected this to be relatively simple, but it was 15 different dishes and took up three separate trays, which seems contrary to the spirit eliminating one's desires, but I was not going to complain.

This was also one of the only vegetarian meals I had in Japan. Back in the states, I eat meat pretty infrequently, so the sheer amount of meat I've been consuming in Japan has been a big adjustment, and a bit surprising because Japanese people and cuisine have the reputation of being so healthy. I'm not complaining, it's been delicious, but also finding non-pickled/non-fried vegetables is unbelievably difficult and usually requires going to a western (i.e. Italian) restaurant. Keep in mind an American is saying that it's difficult to find vegetables, when our government literally once officially classified cheese pizza as a vegetable. Seriously.

Before bed, I went to use the baths—the monastery has a private onsen, by which they mean communal baths separated by gender. Sorta like SPA WORLD but if it were run by monks (i.e. in a 400 square foot room instead of an 8-story hotel complex). So I took a shower sitting on a stool next to a Japanese monk and a Northern European man and it felt weirdly normal considering how not normal of a sentence that is for me.

The next morning, I woke up at dawn along with everyone else at the monastery to attend their morning prayers and a Goma fire ritual. The morning prayers were in the main temple and featured four monks in traditional clothing droning a very repetitive song—no shade, but like, throw a bridge in there or something—for as long as they could while each of the guests would one-by-one get up, bow, and add a pinch of incense to the incense-holder-thingy (this is the technical term for it trust me).

The fire ritual took place in a smaller altar, where one of the monks lit a fire in the central altar, said prayers, and burned many different oils, woods, and gomaki—small pieces of wood with characters painted on them. You could either purchase these, or you could follow the monastery on Instagram in exchange for a free one which I think is a very funny thing. You were supposed to write your name on it and a wish, and I'm not sure if it's the same rule as birthday candle wishes but just to be safe I won't tell you what mine was... Other than to say that if there's a big announcement in the US about a certain type of high speed transportation sometime in the next few years, you know I'm taking at LEAST partial credit.

I then had to make my way to Fujikawaguchiko (say that 5 times fast—no really do it, it's not actually that hard it just seems like it would be). This is a town near the base of Mt. Fuji, and the next day I was going to hike up Fuji and stay at the top, so wanted to be as close to the starting point as possible to give myself an easy morning before a hard hike. With that idea of preparing oneself for a difficult hike in mind, I think it's time to introduce my hiking partner, who we'll call Todd.

Hostelworld, which is the most popular app/website for booking hostels, has added a new feature where you'll automatically be added to a groupchat of all the people in the same city as you who have booked a stay using Hostelworld. This is very convenient for meeting other travelers and making plans, and I've had a lot of fun with a lot of people I've met through the app. I had posted in the "Tokyo" chat asking if anybody had flexible travel plans and wanted to hike Mt. Fuji, since I had 2 spots booked at a lodge along the mountain trail near the top. These are hard reservations to get because they allow you to easily reach the summit by sunrise, so I figured somebody would be keen to join. Todd was the only one who responded.

Todd—some of this was apparent from the get-go, some of this I learned as we talked later on—was a 42 year old man from Chicago who had quit his job to travel the world. His plans were very flexible and he said he was potentially looking for a place to settle down long-term, and thought he would check out Japan first because "anime and stuff." He was also trying to become a content creator for travel and singing and comedy and general lifestyle because "so many other people do it, I figure I can probably do it too."

I had been trying to figure out when we were going to meet up to begin hiking together, since he wouldn't be able to get onto the trail without the passes I had, and he said that he wanted to go to the beach on Thursday morning before the hike so he needed to look into transportation options. I tried to politely explain to him that WE WERE HIKING THE TALLEST MOUNTAIN IN JAPAN SO YOU PROBABLY CAN'T GO TO THE BEACH ON THE SAME DAY and that we needed to be on the trail by noon in order to reach our hut before sunset. To which he said "okay yeah I'll look into that" and then stopped responding for 24 hours which immediately undid all of the brain relaxation that Gunnar's meditation class had done.

Anyways, I texted Todd throughout the day as I made my way from Koyasan to Fujikawaguchiko—which required a bus 🚌 to a cable car 🚋 to a 2-car train 🚃 to a commuter train 🚆 to a subway 🚇 to a bullet train 🚅 (WOOO) to a shuttle bus 🚍 and took around seven hours total. When I finally reached my hostel and was about to go to sleep, Todd informed me that he'd figured out a shuttle and so would be able to meet me at the 5th station—where the hike begins—at 10 AM, which was perfect since you're supposed to take at least an hour to acclimatize to the altitude before beginning the hike. I spent the rest of the day carefully packing all my gear and went to bed early to prepare my body for the challenge.

July 9-10: Fuji

I woke up, checked out of the hostel, and made my way to Kawaguchiko station to get a shuttle bus 🚍 to the 5th station. This is when Todd texted me that he'd missed his train and so the earliest he'd be able to get to Fuji was noon, so the earliest we'd be able to be on the trail was 1 PM.

Look, I am aware that I'm a type-A person. I am also a patient person, though, and so even though my head was screaming and screaming and screaming I said "okay that should be fine!" even though THIS IS A VERY CHALLENGING HIKE and I've done enough hiking to know that for safety reasons this is the last place you want to be cutting corners.

Regardless, I got to the 5th station where I rented some gear—the rangers inspect your pack to make sure you have proper shoes, warm layers, and full rain gear before allowing you on the trail, and I also wanted a headlamp since the sunrise summit hike would be in darkness (since it was before the sun rose, which is like, yeah, of course, obviously).

READING COMPREHENSION QUESTION

Do you think Todd rented a headlamp? Why or why not? Explain using 3 or more vocabulary words from the previous chapter.

I also bought a kongozue, a traditional walking stick, which are a very common Fuji souvenir and you will see tons of people using them on Fuji. They're 8-sided and made of a light Japanese cedar, and as you hike up, each hut along the trail will burn a different stamp into the pole for you. So you start off with a completely blank stick, and you end up with one completely covered in various patterns, each of which represents a different stop. It's very cool!!! At least I think so!!!

After a couple hours of waiting at the 5th station, Todd arrived! He was so lovely. A very, very kind man with a good heart and an open, adventurous spirit and I am so glad that I got to know him. His 23 year old daughter called him to make sure he was sure he was okay and wanted to do this and that he knew what he was doing, and he told me about his new idea about becoming a content creator and traveling the world in search of somewhere to live for a while—I didn't bother to ask what he planned to do about a visa. I very quickly got a sense of how this guy's brain worked and why his daughter would be concerned for him and realized that maybe I should also be a bit concerned, which is not exactly how you want to feel with someone you're about to embark on a mountain climb with. But we were locked in and after waiting an hour for him to acclimatize, it was time to get going.

The Yoshida trail, which is the easiest/most popular trail and the only one that was open at this time of year, consists of five stations numbered 5-9 (stations 1-4 are historic and not in use anymore). Our lodge, Ganso Muro, was a little bit past the 8th station, and typical guidance says it should take four hours to reach it from the 5th station. I think I probably could have done it in three or four, but it quickly became clear that it was going to take Todd a lot longer than that. He had never hiked at altitude before, and by the time we had reached the 6th station, he was panting pretty hard.

I took a 10 minute rest with him, and he turned to me and said "I'll be honest—I knew this was going to be hard, but I did not think it would be this hard" at which point it was hard for me not to go "WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S LITERALLY CLIMBING THE COUNTRY'S TALLEST MOUNTAIN" and also not respond that for me it had actually been feeling much easier than I had been expecting and also that we were only about 20% of the way there. Look, it definitely wasn't an easy hike, but I've struggled with altitude and altitude sickness in the past, and my lungs and body had felt totally fine so far, partly because I'd been steadily building elevation over the last few days in Koyasan and Fujikawaguchiko instead of the beach, which is presumably at sea level.

We'd stop at each hut so that I could get my stamp on my walking stick and so that Todd could take a rest, although I'd usually end up at the hut 15-20 minutes before him. The mountain trail was packed—mostly large Japanese/Chinese/Taiwanese tour groups who looked like they were in their 60s, and I was weaving around them while Todd trudged along with them. Eventually it was looking unclear if we'd reach our lodge before sunset (and also in time to get dinner). I gave Todd my headlamp—he DIDNT BRING A HEADLAMP FOR A SUNRISE CLIMB because he "couldn't find one" at the beach.

If you answered "no" up above, good job!!

I made it to our lodge at around 7, just as the sun began to set.

It was gorgeous, and reminded me of my favorite paintings—Georgia O'Keefe's "Above The Clouds" series. I'd later learn that Japanese has a dedicated word for "sea of clouds", Unkai, because this is something they have historically experienced so often. That's so cool and I am so jealous.

45 minutes later, just before dinner stopped being served, Todd arrived. He was ecstatic and exhausted, and the curry they served us was a perfect victory meal.

We went to bed as early as possible, since the lodge woke everyone up at 2 AM to begin hiking so that they could reach the top before sunrise at 4. The bunks were tiny and stuffy and you were inches away from the people sleeping next to you. I got a couple of hours of sleep, although was woken up around midnight because one of the large tour groups of seniors had gotten up then to begin their hike, since they knew it would take them much longer than two hours to reach the summit.

The last two hours of the hike felt like being on a crowded escalator that you have to power yourself and that you're only allowed to take a step on every 20 seconds. Oof, that might be the most convoluted simile I've used in this blog yet—but I'm sure I can do worse. Basically, you could barely move and were walking in a single-file line for pretty much the entire last hour of the hike.

I reached the top 30 minutes before the sun actually reached the horizon, and I got to sit and watch the sky slowly get brighter and brighter until eventually the sun hit the horizon, at which point everyone cheered.

This is actually what Japan's flag is based on—the view of the sun rising from Fuji. It's also the name of the country—"Nippon", which is "Japan" in Japanese, literally translates to "land of the rising sun". After seeing this, I get why you'd want to name an entire country after it.

It was absolutely freezing at the top, and you could see a little ways into the volcanic crater, although not too far for obvious reasons.

But watching the sunrise from Fuji is one of the most amazing and memorable experiences of my entire life, and probably the highlight of Japan for me. I took a few photos of some Chinese guys and asked them to take a photo of me and I cannot believe that I ended up with roughly 10 of these:

After around an hour hanging out up at the top, I was unbearably cold and I knew that I had a fairly long journey ahead of me—both the hike down and then getting from Fuji to Hakone, where I'd be spending the weekend recovering. I texted Todd telling him that I had to get a move on, wishing him all the best with everything, and started the slide/hike down.

The trail down is different from the way up—the way up features a lot of scrambling over large rocks, and the way down is pretty much entirely volcanic ash (hence the slide/hike). My exercise-tracker said "cross country skiing detected" once I had reached the bottom, which was actually a pretty good guess.

When I was about halfway down the mountain, Todd texted me to say that he had reached the summit.

Look, I'm well aware that so many of you reading this are fully team Todd. I am 200% aware of the fact that I have a kongozue up my butt and that different people operate in different ways and everything was totally fine in the end so chill the f out, Jamie!!!! And you are absolutely correct. Todd is a delightful human being, I am so glad I got to meet him and that we both got to have this unbelievable once-in-a-lifetime experience. And I am honestly so proud of him for doing something that pushed him so hard and absolutely conquering it and persevering through—it's such a testament to him. But I also have saved in my notes "Todd is going to give me an aneurysm", and that's before we had even met in person. This is a problem with me, it's not a problem with Todd!!! Or maybe it's a problem with the two of us as a unit!!! Just let this serve as a warning to anybody who—for god knows what reason—thinks that I am capable of being a chill person when it comes to making serious plans. I am not!! And despite the facade I may keep up and the "oh, no worries, you're so fine"s that come out of my mouth, my brain will be screaming and screaming and screaming and I promise I love you but I'm screaming and screaming and

After reaching the 5th station again, I took the shuttle bus 🚍 back to Fujikawaguchiko, where I went to the post office to mail my kongozue back home—this was actually very easy and cheap, especially compared with the previous week's nightmare of mailing a suitcase with 35 different things inside. I hopped on two more buses 🚌🚌 and arrived safely at Hakone, exhausted. Then I got a call from Todd who was stuck on the mountain because he'd lost his wristband—the one the rangers had said we'd need to have in order to leave—and so the rangers weren't letting him leave. I texted him the QR code of the reservation so that he could exit the mountain and then arrived at my hotel.

Hakone is a famous spa town due to the many natural hot springs in the area—it lies directly on top of an active volcano. I did a small splurge on my lodging and stayed at a hotel for a night, which included two private natural hot-spring onsens. I figured this would be the perfect way to decompress after Fuji, and was so excited to try out one of the hot spring baths, only to discover that I could not put my foot inside of it without actively burning it and since my feet were hurting enough already, I didn't want to add 2nd degree burns to them.

The hotel had a "make your own takoyaki" event. I was the only one who signed up, so I hung out with the very friendly hotel staff/bartenders and fried some octopus balls which was a lot easier than I would have expected but also a lot harder than the street vendors who make 200 at a time make it look.

I decided to try out the second private onsen before bed, and thankfully this one felt like I was in a sous vide instead of actively boiling, so I was able to get a nice long (five minutes tops) soak until I started sweating and since the whole point of bathing was to clean off my sweat, I headed to bed and passed out instantly.

July 11: Hakone

Caro, my new friend working in Japan for 3 months, happened to be coming to Hakone this weekend along with a bunch of her coworkers, so I met up with them to do the "Hakone loop." This is a path through Hakone through the major sightseeing spots that involves taking a tram 🚊 to a cable car 🚋 to a skywalk (aka gondola/🚡🚡🚡AERIAL TRAMWAYYY🚡🚡🚡) to a PIRATE SHIP 🏴‍☠️🚢 to a bus.

We met up at the Hakone Open Air Museum—a very cool museum featuring a huge outdoor sculpture area, as well as several indoor exhibits.

We walked through the whole museum, and stopped at their massive Picasso collection which was pretty easy to find.

While the collection was impressive, we probably spent more time looking at the family tree that was painted on the wall than we did looking at the art because JESUS CHRIST PABLO KEEP IT IN YOUR PANTS.

From there, we got on the tram 🚊 and then the cable car 🚋. We made a brief stop in the beautiful Gora park halfway up the cable car route, and then transferred to the 🚡🚡🚡AERIAL TRAMWAYYYY🚡🚡🚡 which gave us great views of Mt. Fuji as well as the side of the Hakone volcano which was actively spewing smoke and sulfur from its side.

The stop in between the two aerial tramway lines, Owakudani, is also famous for its black eggs. These are chicken eggs that are boiled and steamed in the natural hot springs of Owakudani, and the sulfur and iron in the water causes them to become black. There are massive statues of the black eggs, an enormous gift shop featuring black egg merch (including plushies of living black-egg related mascots), and even the benches/chairs are shaped like black eggs.

Legend says that eating the eggs will add 7 years to your life, so obviously I had to give them a try and they were... Hard-boiled eggs. Like, no different from any other hard-boiled egg I've ever had.

You could also only buy them in a set of four and so I ate four hard-boiled eggs in a row which may sound like a lot but also this was my go-to breakfast for literal months at my office job because they had free hard-boiled eggs every morning so to me it was just business as usual. And also if we assume that all hard-boiled eggs give you an extra 7 years of life—since they taste literally the exact same regardless of if they're black or not—then I think I'm probably borderline immortal at this point. The REAL question is what would happen if someone simultaneously ate a Owakudani black egg while staring into the Okunoin Cemetery's well where they didn't see their reflection. Any philosophers out there?

We took the second 🚡🚡🚡AERIAL TRAMWAYYYY🚡🚡🚡 to Lake Ashi, a beautiful crater lake on top of Mount Hakone.

Caro and her friends split off since they had to run to their ryokan for the evening dinner/ceremonies, and I continued onto the pirate ship alone. It was a beautiful ride across the water, but we didn't even pillage anything so I'm not sure if it actually really counts as a pirate ship.

I took the bus 🚌 back to Hakone for the night, where I stayed in the only actual hostel in town (Hakone tends to be for boujie spa trips and so mostly has fancier ryokans and hotels), where the owner was one of the most kind and lovely people I've ever met and I had a delightful restful evening eating peaches—Japanese peaches are unbelievably good and I hadn't had one yet—and chatting with her, since almost nobody else was staying in the hostel. The only downside was that she said Japanese people don't eat the skin of peaches because of the fuzz and so I had to skin it which resulted in me being absolutely covered in juice and so sticky. At least this time I did it to myself and I didn't end up with acid in my eyeball.

July 12: Nagoya

The next morning, I took a bus 🚌 to a BULLET TRAIN 🚅 to the subway 🚇 to reach Nagoya. While it's one of the most populous cities in Japan, it's also not a popular tourist destination, I was just heading there because I had bought a guided ticket to the first day of the sumo tournament happening there.

The tournament takes place over 15 days, each wrestler only has a single match each day, and each match lasts an average of 5 seconds. The rules are very simple: only your feet can touch the ground, and you have to stay in the ring. There are a few illegal moves—obvious stuff like biting, gouging, and hitting the crotch—but pretty much anything else is fair-game.

Much of the set-up of the sport is due to its connections with the Shinto religion. The ring is set up under a fake temple roof, the referrees are dressed as Shinto priests, and there are many different ceremonies to welcome the spirits into the ring throughout the night.

Sumo is a very hierarchical, rank-based sport with many different levels and lots of rules about promotion/relegation. There are six major tournaments a year to determine these ranks, and this was one of them. The highest rank, Yokozuna, is a lifelong title that is incredibly difficult to earn—there are currently only two who are still active. Each level of wrestler had a different entrance ceremony where all of the wrestlers at the level come forward and present themselves, and the types of outfits/colors that they are allowed to wear correspond with their level, getting more intricate the higher their ranking/level is.

Throughout the dozens of matches we saw, our guide would message us to let us know "this guy needs to win 8 times in this tournament in order to maintain his rank. Let's cheer for him." Some people clearly came for specific wrestlers, as right before their match would begin, they would scream their name over and over again—it seems like this is the main way of cheering, other than the polite clapping and cheering after the match was over.

I got to try a traditional sumo wrestler meal, chinko-nabe, which is pretty much just chicken soup. The wrestlers keep themselves as heavy as possible (clearly), so they eat nearly 10000 calories a day, mostly of this soup. It's sort of like a reverse Oliver Twist situation where asking for more and more gruel is necessary instead of frowned upon.

All in all, this tournament was a very cool thing to get to watch live and while I'm sure that if I got invested enough in the sport to understand different wrestlers' stories and what each win means to each of them, I'm sure it could be an amazing sport to follow. However, I absolutely will not be doing this because I have 0 interest and also I AM NOT A JAPAN BOY and any white boy who knows the world of professional sumo on a more-than-surface level is absolutely 200% guaranteed to be a Japan Boy.

If you don't really know what's happening, after you've seen five sumo matches, you've kinda seen them all, so the four hours I spent there felt like a pretty long four hours—especially when you consider that most matches are five seconds long so there was literally only about five minutes of actual sport throughout the whole day.

Instead of getting on the crowded subway afterwards, I decided to walk to my hostel to see more of Nagoya, including the central park. I discovered that there was an Oktoberfest event happening there because nobody had explained to the Nagoyans that Oktoberfest happens in October—I literally looked it up and there is no explanation anywhere as to why they do this event annually in July—and so I dropped my bag at my hostel and immediately went there for dinner.

Look, as an American, the combination of German and Japanese cultures does not exactly scream "safe environment" based on historical precedence... However, this was the most fun I had all week. A band played traditional German songs, each of which seemed to have an associated dance. There were almost no tourists there because tourists rarely go to Nagoya, and so I spent hours dancing and toasting with very drunk Japanese people who were so happy to take me under their wing and teach me all about German culture.

One piece of travel advice: if you can walk there, walk there. You never know what you're going to stumble upon, and maybe someday you'll be able to tell people about the amazing night you had at Mongolian Mardi Gras.

July 13: Last Day!!

30 days in Japan were over!!! Just like that! After grabbing some Hitsumabushi—a form of eel bowl that Nagoya is famous for and involves you eating it in four different ways—I hopped on the BULLET TRAIN 🚅 to Osaka so I could easily catch my flight the next day.

To make it the most perfect last day in Japan ever, I did the most perfect Japan things.

I took a bullet train 🚅 in the morning.

Upon arrival, I immediately went back to SPA WORLD. This time, I actually got a massage there because I figured I had earned it after Fuji—yes I earned the private onsen and the enormous amount of junk food I ate afterwards and the massage I deserved it all for being such a good brave boy who hiked Fuji. However, the SPA WORLD massage experience features lying on a spa table that is covered in a thick layer of plastic, so I have to say that it felt less like a comfortable relaxing experience and more like being on Dexter Morgan's table if instead of stabbing you he scrubbed you as roughly as he could and then poured bucket after bucket of water on your head. Better than grapefruit juice, though.

For dinner, I ate Sushiro.

And at night, I went to Round One: Spocha with a group from the hostel. This time, Shohei Ohtani possessed my body and I actually managed to hit a few dingers in the batting cages.

It was a very Japan day for a very NOT JAPAN BOY who would soon become a boy in Korea but NOT A KOREA BOY.

AAAAAAGH I KNOW I KNOW I'M SO FAR BEHIND!!! If I keep at this rate I could very well be writing this blog about my 2026 travels in the year of our lord 2962—which I now know that I will live to see because of my penchant for hard-boiled eggs.

Actually, you know what? Let's do some analysis:

Okay, so if we extrapolate, then we get the following:

Which, based on the fact that I'll be traveling for 210 days means that by the time I finish traveling...

I will be 82 days behind. To all of you who said my math degree was useless—not a single person said this to me even though while writing a travel blog it quite literally is entirely completely useless—Ha!

And yes, I realize the irony of spending several hours making these charts and doing this math instead of just PUBLISHING THE BLOG JAMIE.

But I've been out of Japan for two weeks now and it is truly such an amazing beautiful country. There is so much to see and the fact that I spent a whole month there is crazy because it went so so so fast. Part of that is because I booked myself like crazy because I wanted to see and do literally everything and there is so so so much to see and do that I still missed a few things that I wanted to do! Like the north! I miiiiiiight just have to make a quick stopover for a ski trip on my way home.... Maybe.....

And also, I've been too busy LIVING to be WRITING!!!! By which I mean that since leaving Japan, I've discovered that they are quite buttoned up in comparison to Koreans and Europeans and so I've been going somewhat completely absolutely feral. Oh well. I'll tell you about that next time. See you in Korea :)