Build your foundation. Connect with empathy. The digital diary of a solo traveler.
Kobe --> Hiroshima. As an Iranian-American, born and raised in the United States, I felt it essential that I visit Hiroshima while in Japan. I needed to see the city that my country demolished...where for the first time in human history a nuclear bomb was dropped. I arrived in the evening and went straight to... Continue Reading →
Following Osaka, I decided to take advantage of my JR Pass and made the short train trip to Kobe (pronounced koh-bay). I'm not an incredibly carnivorous person, but I'll admit, I only stopped here for the beef. I dropped $90 on one meal but there is no other time (at least for a long time) in... Continue Reading →
Following Hiroshima, this would be my last stop in Japan, and happened to serve as more of a pit stop than a last "hoorah." I arrived late in the evening, and the most exciting part of my night, post check-in, was my visit to the Japanese laundromat. An excerpt from my phone notes during my... Continue Reading →
The Nara to Osaka ride was smooth. We made one slip up (it's typical) and passed our train stop but we managed to switch to a new train easily and get to our destination...Spadio!! With all sincerity, this is one of the weirdest but coolest nights of sleep of my life. Scratch the sleep part,... Continue Reading →
Nara was a simple and extremely amusing stop. As I mentioned in my Kyoto post, I took the train with two new friends from my hostel. Matcha ice cream for breakfast wasn't enough for our bellies so finding food was the first priority. We spent a couple of hours trying new 7-11 beer flavors with... Continue Reading →
Traveling all afternoon from Mt. Fuji, I arrived in Kyoto in the evening and had just enough time to walk to Nuji castle and see the sakura light display. In the morning I walked all over town, starting with the Nishiki market. There I bought my first set of chopsticks and had them engraved with... Continue Reading →
*disclosure...I'm finally writing this post months after I've left Japan. But I need to catch up at some point so here we go. From Tokyo I took the Romancecar (an old train that winds through the mountains) to Hakone, the city near to Mt. Fuji. I stayed at a hostel that had an onsen (japanese... Continue Reading →
After Hakodate I took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Tokyo. When I take long train or bus rides I like to watch my blue bubble on the Google Maps GPS inch across the country I am traveling. Opening maps on the Shinkansen put "high speed" in perspective; I've never seen myself move from "A" to... Continue Reading →
Niseko --> Hakodate...a.k.a. hako-not-today! I was too sore and too tired to do anything. I had one night in Hakodate and in that time I... tried salt ramen, a specialty of the area. I saw a “live band” at my hostel. I don't know why but I was expecting something youthful and amplified. It ended... Continue Reading →
I'll walk you through how my unplanned Japanese journey unfolded. Select "Japan" under the "countries" tab and you will find posts for each city I visited.
Bridge Over Distance 