Japan - Mountains 02/24/08 - 02/26/08 We wanted to end our stay in Japan by visiting some of its mountainous regions. First stop was Kanazawa. The station at Kanazawa is gorgeous with a glass dome and intricate wooden support structures. Also, there is a clock made from a water fountain that was novel. It was snowing when we arrived and they had these sprinklers activated all over the streets, apparently to keep the roads from freezing over. I'm not sure what comes out of the sprinklers but I doubt that it's water (since that would freeze into ice, right?). There is [View Full Entry]

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Kyoto 02/20/08 - 02/23/08 If Tokyo is the business center of Japan, then Kyoto is the metropolitan center. I likened it to Madrid (as the business hub) being similar to Tokyo, and Barcelona (as the metropolitan sister city) being like Kyoto. As we were looking for our ryoken (a Japanese inn) a friendly lady went out of her way and walked us to the hotel. This was the type of hospitality we were to experience throughout our stay in Japan. Hannah thanked her by offering a trinket from California. Our ryoken was awesome! It was basically a big room with tatami [View Full Entry]

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Tokyo 02/18/08 - 02/20/08 To start off our authentic, do it like the locals adventure, we were served Japanese style meals in the All Nippal Airlines flight we took. Luckily, the lady next to us showed us which sauces and spices to put in which of the food compartments. This was a prelude to what was in store for us in Japan. In Tokyo, we stayed in an area called Shinjuku. My first impressions of Tokyo (Shinjuku in particular) was that of Manhattan in NYC. Some differences to note versus Manhattan: Tokyo only has one race of people; the people are [View Full Entry]

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You may be wondering what it's like to try and pack for a year long trip. Both Hannah and I are dedicated to packing as lightly as possible in an effort to be as mobile as possible. After all, who wants to carry the kitchen sink on their shoulders for a year! Also, with the exception of Japan and a few other countries, the majority of the trip will be in warm climates. For this reason, we are packing a few extra clothes specifically for Japan, that we will donate once we leave. The rest we'll wing it! So, here's a [View Full Entry]

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On Monday, 02/04/08, we jumped in to Hannah's car and began the trip up to Northern California. The purpose of the trip was to drop off her car at her dad's place up in Paradise, California (right next to Chico) and to also get our Indian visa from the consulate in San Francisco. Also, Hannah had never made the 'touristy' drive up the coast so we took the scenic 1 highway up through the Monterey area. And, I've always wanted to do some wine tasting in the Paso Robles so we threw that on the docket. Finally, this was our last [View Full Entry]

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On Friday, January 25th we hosted one last going away party at my apartment. And what a turn out it was!! I had an absolute blast seeing all of my friends for (possibly) the last time before Hannah and I depart on our journey. We must have exceeded the maximum occupancy with how many people turned up. Luckily I hooked up my camera on the gorilla pod and set up a photo station to capture some pics of the night. I am sure that when I'm home sick in some third world country a few months from now, I will look [View Full Entry]

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Itinerary (last update: 04/17/09) Already occurred... * Depart from San Diego……………....02/17/08 * Japan……………………………….............02/18/08 - 02/27/08 * Thailand……………………………............02/27/08 - 03/05/08 * Malaysia…………………………..............03/05/08 - 03/19/08 * Singapore……………& [View Full Entry]

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