In about three weeks my brother and I will embark on yet another journey to the Far East. The itinerary so far includes Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia then Hasuda, Kamakura, Kyoto and Tokyo in Japan and finally Bangkok and Phuket in Thailand.

I am particularly excited about Kyoto, the former imperial capital of Japan. I have never been there and apparently when firebombing took place all over Japan during World War II, Kyoto and its 1600 Buddhist temples, 400 Shinto shrines, palaces, gardens and architecture were spared, leaving it one of the best preserved cities in the country.

On the other hand however, I am anxious about Hasuda. My brother and I will be grading for our third Dan (degree) in the style of Japanese martial arts that we practice and compete in its world championships. While there we will train everyday for a week from 8am to 10pm Monday to Friday with Japanese students and foreigners from different parts of the world. On the Saturday we will have our final examination and Sunday the style’s world championships. This of course makes me nervous about the entire trip, but we have been training hard for the last couple of months and hopefully I will be prepared. I hope that both of us will sport the new title of Sensei when we return.

I am very excited about the entire journey despite the anxiety. I haven’t had a proper break from work for three years and have become quite despondent. I hope to find a little direction or vision of what I plan to do to enrich the value of my life in my little escape from western society.

Update May 26th, 2006: And now for some semantics… This month long escapade will cost me a total of R55 000. I will be flying… err… I will depart on the 16^th of June and return on the 16^th of July. Here are some dates- June 17^th, arrive at Kuala Lumpur; June 18^th, arrive at Tokyo and take bus to Hasuda; June 28^th, take train to Kyoto; July 2^nd, take train to Tokyo; July 6^th, depart to Bangkok via Kuala Lumpur; July 9^th, take flight to Phuket; July 16^th, return flight to South Africa. These dates are set to change and will be updated within this section.

Image courtesy of nakae

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 at 11:15 am and is filed under General, Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.