Sayonara

So this is it, the last step on the Japan journey... After a wonderful 12 days traveling with my family, I find myself back in Tokyo again, for the last time, and back at New Koyo with all of it's little eccentricities. There remains little to be accomplished in Japan for me now... I've said most of my goodbyes, mostly tearful ones. The 12 days traveling with my family was really interesting and it was fantastic to see them all again after so long. It was nice to see that they had changed, but in many ways stayed the same. They found all of Japan a bit bewildering, as any new arrival would. It was a real privilege to travel with them. Hearing some of their observations of Japan genuinely surprised me, as some of them I shared but some of them I'd never even considered.

I'm really unhappy about leaving, it's strange that I should feel this way now, as I found the place so intimidating at first, there were times when I wished I could get home as soon as possible. International departure is extremely difficult, leaving home is difficult but it can be tempered by the knowledge that one day you can return, and that there will always be family and people there for you. But leaving Japan, is horrible, because you don't know when you can come back (if you can come back) whether it will still be the same when you come back, you don't know what will happen to the people you left behind. Leaving any place means that you will slowly be forgotten, which again is difficult.

Things may change in the years to come but, I really hope that I can return to teach English in one of the major cities after graduating. So in a way, I'm leaving so that I can come back.

But in the short term, I've got a very exciting trip lined up , I'm sure everyone knows the details already so I won't go on about it. I've trimmed my backpack down to the bare minimums, it preparation for the intense heat of bangkok. It's pretty scary actually as I'm going in 3 days and I still don't have any accommodation sorted for Thailand. It seems best just to head for Khao San Road (allegedly backpacker central) after negotiating the infamous Thai taxis, and finding something there. I'm quite looking forward to going into the chaotic and disorderly metropolis that is Bangkok. One lingering worry is that Thai border control might give me a hard time because I don't have a return flight. This is usually a prerequisite for entering Thailand, but I'm leaving via the Laos border, which I've been told could be interesting...

I do apologise to any regular readers that I haven't managed to update this quite as much as I would have liked. I've intermittent Internet connections and being generally busy and distracted by real life. So I never got around to make that video or post most of those good pictures, But I promise when I get back to the UK in late May I will do a mega post, including stuff from Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, China... In the mean time I will try to continue to update small posts like this from time to time over the next month. But I really can't make any promises there as I don't really have a clue what's going on exactly, or where I'll be. Please mail me if you need to contact and I'll get back to you as soon as I possibly can.

Everyone take care, and thanks a lot mum and dad and Hannah for coming out here, It really made this part of the trip something special.

NOTE: I would like to inform the reader that the spell checker had to make over 75 corrections to this document, which just goes to show how much your spelling suffers when you don't get to see English all the time.