Happy New Year!　╰(*´︶`*)╯♡

This is how it starts.

With a pretty blank journal, a pen, and a dream — a daunting, thrilling, not-fully-thought-out-at-all dream. But the thing has been there noodling around in my head for awhile and has recently been more a lot more boisterous, begging for my attention. At some point late last year I just thought: Screw it, I’m going to do it.

I sometimes tell people that one of my dreams is to travel around Japan in some variety of camping vehicle and just truly enjoy, study, and appreciate the country. Experience, learn, and totally get the hell out of my comfort zone. I especially want to visit little known places, because sure I’ve lived in Japan for over thirty years/over half my life, but there is so much I just don’t know about and haven’t seen.

But also, I’m getting older. That thing that happens to all of us every minute of every day, but we (or I, at least, I can’t speak for anyone else) do a very good job at forgetting.

My son is in Hokkaido at the moment,1,700 kilometers/1,056 miles away, so why the heck not visit him? Right now my income is from supporters of my podcast Uncanny Japan on Patreon. So I can do that from the road. Even better, I can gather all kinds of extra content (photos, videos, research, stories, soundscapes) while on the road to share with them. Win! Win!

The loose plan is to spend several weeks (a month?) driving up the west coast of Japan, hanging out in Hokkaido for awhile, then drive down the east coast. I know I’m going to have to avoid the rainy season, summer, and winter…so that leaves early spring or fall.

And there you go, that’s all I got so far. But I do have a notebook and a pen!

I’m going to start the planning, and *gasp* blogging about that planning, as well as blogging about other random things, kind of bring my Living-in-Japan identity and my Writer identity together in one place. Because social media platforms … *hard eye roll*

So here we go. Blog post number 1 checked off my To Do List. Does anyone else have any challenging, scary, or seemingly impossible goals for the New Year?