Grand Travels of a Raconteur

A public journal of my adventures traveling the world. Sometimes I will have advice for others, other times I will have personal reflections on my experiences. Feel free to ask me any questions you have! If you have any suggestions for more places I could go or locations I should visit in the cities I am in, feel free to send them my way.

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Found Ultraman, too! At the Sky Tower mall.

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Cherry blossoms and a couple of beautiful, perfect looking roses.

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We happened to stumble on the Godzilla statue in Godzilla Square, right outside the Toho Studios building, on our way to find a train to take us near the Godzilla store. I think my favorite part about it is that it seems to be designed so that you can take pictures of him where, perspective wise, it looks like he is attacking the city. I could be wrong, but man does it line up perfectly for that illusion.

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Some of my loot from Donguri Republic. Got pretty excited about fulfilling a childhood wish of having Jiji merch. The puzzle is super cool, by the way. It is slightly transparent and designed to look like a stain glass window, so you can set it up in a window for that stain glass effect. They had one already solved heir and it was really pretty.

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As a side note, Canada is already fighting with Ireland for nicest country I have been to. I had two employees stop to ask me if I knew where I was going in the 5-10 minutes it took to walk between gates. Possibly this is due to me looking frazzled from my first flight, plus about 5 hours of sleep and a great deal of frenzied packing.

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I am going to choose to believe that this is how Canada always greets its visitors at the airport: opera.

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    My name is Julia, and I’m 26 years old, and (at the time of writing this) about a month from graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in history. I’m a creative writer and an amateur researcher, and generally excited to learn as much as I can about as much as I can. I’m a bookworm, a pirate enthusiast (my specialty in history), and a great lover of Shakespeare. I’m also, if the title of this blog hasn’t given it away, a lover of travel.

    I don’t believe there is a purpose to life. I’m far from a nihilist, though. To me, the concept of no purpose to life is incredibly freeing. This idea means that the purpose of life is to make it what you will, and to fill it up with whatever it is that makes you happy. And the way I feel is the best way to approach this is to experience everything with a childlike sense of joy, wonder, and enthusiasm.

   That’s part of why I’m taking this trip. I feel that, in many ways, the better part of my twenties has been taken up by existing, not living. College for me has not been the kind of living experience I know it is for others; I love learning, but don’t get excited by the actual work (except in a few circumstances). I do enjoy socializing, but I’ve struggled to maintain any kind of friend group in my years in academia, as I don’t live on campus and I tend to be pretty studious.

   Now that I’m finally finishing up my degree, I want to start this new chapter of my life with a bit of an adventure. Two of my dearest friends happen to live abroad at this time: one in Japan and the other in Australia. I can visit with them, and explore two different countries that I’ve never had the opportunity to see before, and I can do that before Life gets in the way.

[adventuring-raconteur]

Introduction

    Let me get this out first: I am terrible at blogging.

    It isn’t necessarily that I’m bad at keeping up with it the way I am with my journal, though I can be. It’s more that I have never quite understood the point of talking about myself in a public sphere. I don’t think my life is particularly interesting, nor do I feel a need for attention, or sharing my little random thoughts. I’m not sure if any of those are the primary reason for most people to blog, but those are the only reasons I could come up with for myself when I got into social media eight years ago or so.  

    Things have changed a bit in recent years.

    See, as I alluded to, I’m not so good at keeping a journal. I never felt a reason to write down my personal feelings, even though I’m a writer at heart. However, last year I participated in a study abroad program in Ireland, and I attempted to keep a journal of my experiences. Unfortunately, I sucked at it. I think I have about three entries in it, which isn’t much for a 6 week trip. I did, however, discover two things about how I remember my travels through this experience.

    First, I seem to do well with taking photographs every day. I have pictures from every single day in Ireland which document it really well. Secondly, what I remember best about that trip are the experiences I had with the people I met. I spent a lot of time on my own, too, and had fun exploring on my own. But it was a lot more fun sharing these experiences with people.

   So I’ve decided to use what I learned to document this next trip better. I’ll be going to Japan and then Australia, and in both cases I have a friend that I’ll be staying with. But I’ll l also be sharing it with any of you that decide to read this blog. My hope is that I’ll be able to document my thoughts leading up to leaving on March 28th (including a few posts and several photographs from my trip to Ireland), and my photos and perhaps a few thoughts from my current trip on a daily basis (or hopefully close to it). I figure if I make it something simple, it shouldn’t be difficult for me to keep this up.

    So if you enjoy photographs, and you like hearing random thoughts on what it is to travel, then you may enjoy this space. And I hope I can help to inspire anyone that might be worried about traveling themselves.