A timelapse video of me packing up my stuff taken around the corner from where I saw the monkeys
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Who's the Boss?
Here’s a selection of the some of the drinks I tried in Japan. LINK
These treats I bought from 7/11s and the countless vending machines found along the way. I tried mostly coffee, chasing that high I got from the perfect Hokkaido Iced Coffee I tried back in 2006, but unfortunately the drinks varied between barely drinkable to diabetes inducing sweetness.
Pop on some headphones, click the HQ button, crank up the volume and see (and hear) what it was like to ride through the tunnels of Japan.
In Tokyo
Admittedly when a friend of mine first suggested I use couchsurfing while travelling back in 2006-7, my immediate reaction was from a tight-arse, frugal side, which saw CS as a way to save money on accommodation. And yes, this is one of the perks of CS, but after my first couple of experiences with the system, the cost factor took a back seat to the diverse social connections and intimate cultural interactions the service opened up to me as a traveller. Sure, I was going to all these wonderful places around the world, taking photos of the attractions, eating the food, buying the souvenirs, writing the postcards and drinking with other travellers chatting about what adventure clothing we had purchased in our respective countries. But without the service, knowing how the locals lived would have been somewhat of a mystery. Guide books don’t tend to tell you how Japanese people warm their legs while watching TV or what Czech nannas think of communism. Getaway isn’t going to do a feature on how a family of Mexican taco stand owners throw a birthday party or why Russian’s re-dub movies like Rambo 3. And a Harvey World Travel brochure is going to teach you how to build an amphitheatre out of old car parts in San Francisco or how to cook an Austrian apfel strudel.
Being a guest in people’s home has been a privilege while travelling and has provided exciting, unusual and unexpected insights into foreign cultures for me. But seeing the different way people went about normal life only further reinforced how people everywhere have basic and fundamental similarities. No matter what religion, language, colour, dress, food, architecture, government, etc, they all shared the need to feel secure in life, to have shelter, to have good health, for their children to have a good future, to have something to eat and to have passion in life.
Experiences such as the one I had with the family in Shimogo rate a little differently to the ones I’ve had through CS. The family didn’t sign up for something. I didn’t write to them in advance. We didn’t meet at a designated time at a train station. I simply rolled up to them on my bike and asked if I could camp on their land and within a couple of hours, I was sitting down to dinner with them as the guest of honour, learning about their lives and sharing my impressions of Japan. Awesome. I mulled this over while I rode out of the little village of Shimogo and was reminded of something I heard an astronaut say when he was taking a space walk back in the 1970s: “As I stare out into the starry sky with the Earth below me, watching the glow of a new day track across the land, I feel an urge that’s fundamental to our nature: We must explore”
Explore the world and enjoy our differences by connecting with our similarities.
