Another entry from my life in Tokyo before i leave on my mad adventure. The other week i headed down to Tsukiji fish market on one of the first trains (4:30am wakeup i believe it was) to experience the hectic market for what may be the last time. I never did get around to buying the leopard print gumboots I planned on buying when i moved here and knew that visiting the fish market would be a semi regular occurrence. Another thing I never did was buy a fresh wasabi root and grate my own wasabi to eat with sushi. Strange thing when you’ve lived in a place so long but not done the things you wanted to do in the first week there.
Fish wait for a buyer at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. The largest fish market in the world by a ridiculously wide margin, Tsukiji sells around 450 different types of seafood at any one time, with about 2,200 different types being sold over the course of a year. Approximately 4,000 tonnes of seafood gets sold every day and around 12 million people will eat something sold at Tsukiji every day. They’re mind boggling numbers.
These fish are at one of the 1,500 small wholesale stalls which sell to small retailers and restaurant owners. The whole area is a hive of activity in the early morning, when the people who will eat for lunch the fish sold here are still fast asleep.
Hello world!
So, my first blog entry. This is where I introduce how amazingly interesting and fantabulously adventurous I am I guess… Well actually at the moment I’m feeling neither of the above and rather sheepish about my “grand” travel plans. Mainly after reading about the journeys taken by people like Alistair Humphreys who spent 4 years cycling around the world or his mate Ben Saunders who is the youngest person to ski solo to the North Pole. So yes, just in case there is any doubt I am in no way as adventurous as these two young men. On the other hand, I have a little more planned than the man who “sold his life” on ebay who said, “Once it’s finished and confirmed, I’d like to do some travelling. I’d like to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower, it’s one of a huge list of things I want to achieve”.
My adventure is kind of between those two extremes. The loose plan at the moment is an overland journey from Japan which will start in late March 2009. It seems weird to start my blog this far in advance but I’m slowly working on getting myself ready. In 3 weeks I’m quitting my job in Tokyo and then heading back to Sydney to spend some time at “home” before I leave for at least 2-3 years. I’ve been living overseas since early 2004, about 2.5 years each in China and Japan, with a good dose of round the world trips and random travel in the holidays over the low season from being a small group tour leader. I usually got 3-4 months off over winter and made full use of that time to see as much of the world as I could “before I settle down”. Turns out that’s not going to happen just yet! The travel bug I thought I’d get rid of has only got worse and if this overland odyssey doesn’t fix it I may just resign myself to my nomadic fate.
The plan is to fly back to Japan from Australia then not take another flight for as long as possible. I will go by boat to Korea then China. The plan is to skip most of China (having spent 1.5 years there as a tour leader travelling with groups) but spend time in the western areas (Xinjiang and Tibet), both of which I love and want to spend more time exploring. From there it’s through the ‘stans of Central Asia, down to Iran, across to Europe, into the Middle East and by boat to New York. Some route or other across North America then back to Japan by boat to complete the circuit.
For a travelling companion I have my fiancé/by then husband, Brett, whose feet are possibly even more itchy than mine and who already has many miles under his tevas. He will be continuing to work as we travel but has a great 6 weeks on, 6 weeks off schedule. What this means is that our travel will be a little stop/start as I hang out in Kashgar, Almaty, Baku and other random places while he goes off and earns some casheesh.
So there you have it. The true adventure doesn’t start for another 5 months or so but there’ll be some interesting stuff in the lead up – packing up my life here (ok, so that’s not overly interesting), heading home, a few weeks in the Pacific and all those fun “I want to take everything but fit it all in this small backpack” dilemmas you have just before a long trip.
That’s all for now :o)