Arriving in Tokyo back in March without much of a plan
I like to think of myself as a very organised person. I love lists, notebooks, getting things in order. But that is only one part of my personality. Another part – the bohemian wandering part – has no interest whatsoever in being organised. And that is probably how I came to write in my journal, whilst sat on a plane to Japan at the beginning of this six month trip, that “I have never felt quite so unprepared for a trip in my life as I do for this one.”
The truth is I had focused all my attention on preparing to LEAVE, and none of it on preparing to ARRIVE. I had spent weeks packing up our house, getting things in storage, wrapping up business commitments, informing the local council and the utilities companies, cancelling phone and gym contracts, setting up post forwarding etc. But I had hardly spent any time at all on looking ahead to what was coming. In the end I left the country without a real budget, and no plans other than a place at language school for my man, and a place on a couple of creative workshops for me.
My rucksack was filled with camera equipment, my laptop and iPad, a few clothes and very little else. We arrived in March to a Japan that was still freezing cold. So cold that we had to go out and buy gloves and hats, and wear most of our clothes at once. And then the summer came, and we had to get ourselves some paper fans and suntan lotion to handle the stifling heat.
But we managed. We have been fine. We have bought the stuff we really needed, and gone without the stuff we didn’t.
We have made spontaneous decisions daily, making it all up as we go along, and stumbling into adventures as a result.
Part of me will always want to write lists, but then another part of me will always want to fold them up into a paper aeroplane and send them off on the wind.
Life is more interesting that way.
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How organised are you?
