Just a quick update, our itinerary can now be found on our website or on our Instagram account! You can find it, or the link to the instagram page in the top right of the website!

As I’m sat here in a cosy cottage in Wales nestled in the Wye Valley, admiring the wonder and natural beauty of the landscape around me, I can’t help but reflect on the similar wonders that attracted me to Japan in the first place. Now a question I’ve been asked more times than I can count, whenever I’ve mentioned over the years that I’m planning on travelling to Japan in the foreseeable future, “Why Japan? A simple question at first glance, and yet every time the question has been asked I’ve shrugged it off and mumbled some combination of “The landscape”, “The nerd culture”, “The crazy technology”, never really being able to concisely answer on the spot. So, with some time, thought and discussion with Hannah I’ve tried to pin down the answer and put it on paper.

I remember it clearly, I sat in my desk chair in the bedroom of our university house, no doubt playing some kind of video game rather than completing any coursework. Sun beaming in through the white sheer curtains we’d put up for privacy at the beginning of the year. I was in my third year of University studying Geology, while Hannah was completing her Masters degree in Archaeological Science, the year was 2020 and Wales was still in a semi-lockdown. Hannah could leave the area for educational reasons, to attend Cardiff Uni, while I was bound to the local area, if not ideally the house itself. I remember hearing Hannah come home from morning lectures, calling up the stairs to say she was home, then after some time the bedroom door creaked open, Hannah stepped through the threshold with a smile on her face, saying one sentence that would set a course for the next five years of our lives. “Hey Eddie? What would you think of living in Japan?”