Start of the journey

I'm starting my backpacking trip tomorrow! I'm going to LA first and spending the night there because it's much cheaper to fly from LAX to Singapore than from Chicago. I've pretty much thrown away everything that I own - furniture, clothes, random gadgets - so that I'm down to 2 cardboard boxes, a backpack, and a guitar. My parents are actually moving back to Japan, going back to their home country, which means that I don't have any family obligation to stay in Chicago. It's a great feeling to have no strings attached.



It's a bit scary right now as I'm beginning to leave my comfortable bubble with my high school/college friends, my family, and throwing myself into a complete unknown. I'm actually kind of homeless now. It's a lot stranger than the time I went backpacking in Central America over winter break because I knew that I had a place to come back to when I was done. But now, I don't really have a place to return. Just like the other trip though, I need to wait until I have that "fu*k it" feeling where I stop caring what happens next. Then, just then, will backpacking be truly exciting.



So I guess this is the first and the last post with my own laptop. I'll frequently update this (hopefully) at internet cafes around Southeast Asia.

- Ryoji