일본

It’s the night before Thanksgiving day here in Asia. I’ll be spending my Thanksgiving morning in an airplane flying from Busan to Osaka. As anyone who has read the past few entries knows, I’ve signed up to take the GRE there the morning after that. So while people in America are turning off the final NFL game and falling into a tryptophan-induced slumber, I’ll be waking up to take a 4-hour standardized examination. Fun for me.

The good news is that after that, I have four days to explore the Kansai region. I’ve booked five nights total in Osaka. I hoped to base myself in Kyoto, but everything was booked up by the time I got around to planning places to stay. So I will take day trips there and to Nara, if all goes well.

This whole journey has kind of a lonely feeling to it. Part of it is the knowledge that it’s obligatory. It’s not really vacation; I’m going there because I have to. But it’s also the solo travel aspect. I don’t mind traveling alone, but I prefer the company of others. It gives you someone to share experiences with, laugh at absurdities, and discuss options. Soaking up a Blade-Runner-esque nighttime cityscape or a lush, green temple setting is nice to experience solely through one’s own eyes and ears, but it’s also nice at some point to turn to someone and say “cool, huh?”

But I’m excited. I don’t care about the GRE. I’ve studied as much as I care to, and that whole structure can go to hell. I’ll get whatever score I get. But I’m looking forward to the rest of it. I know very little about Japan and didn’t do much research, so I do feel woefully under-prepared for the vacation aspect. The one time I was there was for a Fukuoka visa-run that lasted all of 24 hours. That trip, only two weeks into my Korea experience oh so long ago, felt simply like an extension of Busan. So this feels like my first time. And I’m always up for a first of anything.