2018: Day 17

Day 17 of the New Year. I remember when I first left for Japan all by myself around three years ago. It was the first time I have left the United States in twenty years and I was sick to my stomach. I wasn't ill, I was unsure of myself and this trip I was going on. Like I said, I was going by myself. I couldn't help but to think of my life until then. I have tried to convince my lady friend to go with me, but she had just started a new job. My parents were dead as my mother had just died a year before. My brother had just sold his house so the place I was staying in was no more. I had nothing, really to anchor me here. So, the last day in August, 2014, after a game convention, I boarded a plane and left. 

Still, I was sick to my stomach. I could sleep on the long trip as I looked out the window at the clouds below that opened up into the vast ocean, like it would swallow me whole and not even notice. However the coastline came into view and at that moment, all my fear and trepidation about going to Japan, about what I will see, who I will meet, vanished. I knew then that it was going to be all right. That no matter what would befall me, that this wasn't the end of my travels, it was the beginning of them.