This week I took a week off from the internet and all the connections it gives me. I love the internet to no end – recently my life has become more and more internet based, which is both awesome and troublesome for my upcoming travels: awesome because I can maintain communication with a lot of awesome people, and troublesome because I’m always gonna be jonesing for an internet connection, which will most likely be hard to find in a lot of the places I’ll visit.
I took the week to do a fast as well, making it an overall exercise in self-discipline in a number of different respects.

I wish I could say that it was an extremely effective exercise, but to be honest, living and working in such a bustling place as Tokyo, it’s really hard to obtain true silence. But I always think it’s good to discipline yourself a little bit every once in a while. There’s a lot more than just one part to all of us – we’re made up of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and all kinds of other elements. Somehow starving the physical self tends to give more focus to the other parts of you.
One thing I’ve learned from 5 days of not eating: eating good food is REALLY important to me.

Nah – but seriously, things are moving quickly towards my departure in August. As you know from the last post, I have my ticket now, and the wheels have been set in motion. I’ve recently purchased a couple new bits to add to the bag: a Steripen water purifying UV lamp and a ultralight 3-season sleeping bag are the main ones. I didn’t really want to take a sleeping bag, and I’m still a little torn on that one, but something tells me that staying warm at night will be really important, even though I’m going to mostly hot, tropical countries. They won’t all be so hot, and some of them might be straight cold. Also, I hope to get into the mountains a little bit sometimes, and a sleeping bag will definitely come in handy there. There’s still a chance that I’ll just turn around and re-sell it before leaving, but I’m glad that I got it, so I at least have that choice. I might just try to fit it in the bag, and if it isn’t coming in useful at all, I’ll sell it somewhere along the way.
The Steripen water purifier was a toughie. I read LOTS of reviews on it and a lot of people had extremely bad things to say about it. But at the same time, there were even more people that sung its praises, and many of them had reviews that said things like, “I couldn’t get it to work at first, but then I read the instructions carefully, and I’ve been using it with no problems for months now.” Those kinds of reviews made me think it’s worth at least giving it a chance. Again, if it’s a failed purchase, it’s just a mistake along the way to learn from. I’ll update more after I’ve got it and used it a bit – maybe even make a video if I think it deserves it.

Very soon I’m gonna start up my “RTWsoon vlog”, a video log of the final couple months before leaving. I’ll start with talking about the things I plan to take in my pack, and you can join me through the process of learning/changing/growing/frustrating/simplifying…and whatever other “~ing” I’ll go through along the way. I’m gonna try to start having a blog entry to go with most videos I put up. I know that not everyone is used to the video medium, especially travelers because of inaccessibility, and it’ll be a good way to rebuild my blog. Please interact here, on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube and let me know what medium works best for you! I’m also probably gonna take another page out of TravelsofAdam‘s book soon and start up an email newsletter. If anyone has experience with that, I’d love to hear!

In such a loud place as Tokyo, it’s hard to find a bit of silence, even when you turn off the usual noises around you. But a little bit of self-discipline never hurt anyone.
…except I kinda got a stomachache ever since I started eating again. Oh well – my emotional self sees the beauty of the sun shining through the rain outside me, and the pain disappears for a bit. Maybe it worked afterall!

Here’s a video from today – the rains came suddenly and wiped away any chance of shooting normally outdoors, so I took the chance to shoot video of some of the locals (and promo the blog a little ^^;)