Victoria Upon arriving in Victoria, I went through the familiar checklist of entering a new country: immigration, customs, cash. Actually, customs was non-existent and the ferry landing was so small it didn’t have an ATM or currency exchange, so once
After another gorgeous train ride up the coast, I checked into my Seattle Airbnb in the neighborhood of Hillman City, which is quite far south of downtown. My time in Seattle was split into two distinct halves; I would alternate
After saying goodbye to friends in SF and Oakland, I left the bay area by hopping on a late night train to Oregon. Okay, that’s a lie, because the train was over four hours late, so it didn’t leave until
Knowing that I wanted to be in the bay area for about a month, I had hunted for a sublet on Craigslist before leaving my brother’s place in Delaware. Among my findings were a studio flat in Normandy Village, a
Philadelphia Just as my time in Delaware was winding down, my brother and his wife left on a trip to Europe, so I spent the last few days housesitting, catsitting, finishing up some tasks, and watching a lot of World
Given the welcome screening I had received in Japan, I was expecting a long wait and a moderate amount of questioning when I returned to the States. Instead… nothing. No questions from immigration and I walked right through customs without
I’ve been putting this post off for a while because I’m not quite sure what to say here. Maybe to get things rolling, I’ll talk about boring logistics and what resources I used, if only because this could be useful
Taking the train back to Tokyo on a Friday afternoon was a great feeling; while it was certainly pleasant to spend some time in the countryside, there’s nothing quite like traveling to a major cultural city (especially Tokyo) for the
While Andrew and I had very much enjoyed our time in Kyoto and Tokyo, we wanted to get out of the cities a bit, experience some more relaxed Japanese culture, and maybe even catch a glimpse of Mt. Fuji. We
Armed with a bit more boots-on-the-ground knowledge of Japan, Tokyo got off to a much smoother start than Kyoto. After exiting from the shinkansen, we switched to one of the local rail systems (there are several in Tokyo) and rode