tomorrow marks the first part of a new day.
it also happens to be a day off that i'm committed to having off. whatever that means. work has been busy and various other commitments seem to crop up everywhere. but not tomorrow. nope. no one is going to interfere with my thursday. mokuyobi is mine, baby.
so tomorrow i have to finish cleaning the apartment and do the laundry and i promised i'd meet dave at the gym and maybe attempt to record a song without actually knowing anything about music. yasumi. sweet. wait -- where did my day off go?
the apartment itself is freezing. while not canada-cold in japan, it certainly is vicious in its own right. is it a moist cold? some cruel joke of winter humidity? i don't know, but it rarely snows in himeji and yet i feel colder moment to moment than i ever really did in canada. i have decided in a non-committal way that this has a lot to do with the form of transport i use here. maybe more to do with the fact that i take the train or bus everywhere than it does with the climate itself. and to get to their respective platforms i use a bicycle. the population density here in japan gives the country an infrastructure to support an incredible public transport system and so i am rarely in a car. i am often outside, waiting my life away until the next train arrives. that being said, i rarely have to wait very long.
but the apartment is cold. this remains an issue, no matter how fast i can get to where i'm going when not in the apartment. large windows. thin (though incredibly soundproof) walls. cold faux-wood vinyl floors. no central heating. one large room. it's not all that winter-friendly.
ahh, so yes. the southeast-asian adventure planning is underway. jacob and i had our longest-to-date conversation on the telephone a week ago at a staggering (and approximate) 215 minutes in length. i decided i never wanted to speak with him again, and certainly not spend five months rocking the shores of southeast. he talked some sense into me, which took and additional 35 minutes and now i am ready for the adventure with a renewed vigor. above i have posted the maps to the countries we will be traveling through as well as our proposed route.
we start in thailand, move around a lot. check it out. it all begins in bangkok and we travel back and forth around northwestern thailand before moving to laos, for a landlocked stint, and then a long journey through the length of vietnam. from there we will be entering cambodia before moving back into thailand from the east border. you'll then see the long blue (bus) or green (train) line as we head south to malaysia and eventually indonesia. these are the plans tentatively, and jacob has been breaking his back checking out all the destinations and researching the places we are looking at going to. sometime i'll post a more finalized itinerary, but for now you just need to know how our colour-coding system works:
*dotted/checkered route lines indicate a return journey along the same path
red - air route
blue - bus
green - train
yellow - taxi (obviously)
pink - ferry (not intended as a joke but rather something i just realized was an inherent pun.)
the dots on the maps along each route are places where we're definitely stopping for more than just a night. so try to figure out what we're doing as best you can. if you've been to any or all of these places, jacob and i would love to hear your input, so leave a comment or send me an email. australia is still very much a part of this trip for me if the funding is right. i've heard of people living and working in australia on organic farms, which would be a good way for me to earn a bit more cash while i attempt to become a professional surfer/rock star/movie star/diplomat/philanthropist, or whatever it is i plan on doing down there before heading back to canada.
i've also posted a few pictures from a staff meeting i was at earlier this month and i think i managed to get a picture of just about everyone i work with at my company, at least while they were all in the same room. enjoy.
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