My first attempt at a travel blog

I’m not really sure who the intended audience is for this thing. The idea first came to mind as a way to keep family in the loop all at once, but I’m more than happy to share with friends and foes (Jimmy) alike. I suppose this will ultimately serve as a journal for myself at the end of the day. A way to track whatever this journey ends up becoming over the next 4 months. I’ve been in Japan for 2 weeks, and while I’m finally just now getting around to drafting up my first post, I’m hoping to more consistently update this blog on a quasi-weekly basis for the duration of my stay here.

Back to the beginning: I flew out of Philly on the afternoon of Monday, January 6 after a few hours delay due to snow and before a connection in Chicago that eventually dropped me at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. I was originally supposed to transfer in DC, but probably a good city to avoid on J6. The flight from Chicago took roughly 13 hours from takeoff to touchdown and I was graced with an exit aisle seat, allowing me to stretch out and actually catch a few zzz’s along the way. All things considered, immigration and customs here in Japan was an exceptionally smooth process and I was in the wild within an hour of touching down.

Can’t say I’m surprised in any way that I procrastinated just about every aspect of this trip, but one detail that successfully eluded me was acquiring a stable housing situation prior to departure. My first few nights in Tokyo were thus spent in a hostel; in a way, it was maybe the most comfortable way to integrate into this new place due to the sheer volume of nights I’ve spent in similar settings.

Fortunately, I only needed to stay in a hostel for a handful of nights after arriving. I attended orientation for school, toured the campus, met other people in my program here in Tokyo, and then pretty much immediately got back on a plane to fly up to the city of Sapporo on Hokkaido for a snowboard trip, which I’ll highlight in a separate blog post.

My first few days in Tokyo prior to that trip were incredible. I was immediately enamored by this city. On international trips in the past, it’s often been difficult to distinguish if the excitement I feel comes from the experience of being somewhere that isn’t home, or from the place I’m visiting itself. I’ve been left with little doubt that here, it’s anything but the latter. It’s the largest city on earth, and somehow it all just works. There’s beauty in the chaos, and I’ve found myself immediately going with the flow of things and thinking of myself as part of the energy of the city and not just a visitor apart from it.

I feel it would be a disservice for my first blog post to not acknowledge where this journey, as any that I’ve embarked on, ultimately started from in the first place. We Dorsey’s have a family tradition of taking a photo in front of the tree in our front yard before major life events. Traditionally, that has meant first days of school, or things like homecoming or prom dances. But as life has carried on, it has also evolved to document moving out (which I’ve done on more than one occasion lol), or taking off for long extended international trips like this one I’m just starting now.

A few members of the family who shall not be named have kindly vetoed my posting of a few of the photos that we took together due to having just rolled out of bed, and by and large I’m going to honor their wishes. This one was too good to pass up though: