Down, but not out

It has been a while!

Some time ago—in December I think—the Japanese government shot down the possibility of offering free flight tickets to tourists. Being a young blue-collar worker, this hurt my plans and made me consider backing out.

After months of serious consideration, I have come to this conclusion: everyone has a dream of some sort, but not everyone realizes that you can't just wait for it to come and slap you in the face, like I thought was happening to me. No one is going to make you dream come true for you, if you won't help yourself.

Naturally, my progress has been severely hindered by my hesitation, and I will have to recalculate my required expenses now that I have no hope of getting a free flight. It's possible that I won't make my November deadline, but I will move ahead all the same.

So, that's that! I won't be adding money to my fund for a couple of weeks, since I had ceased to be as frugal as I had been when I was actively contributing to it, and I now need to play catch-up with my income. I don't expect to be able to contribute $200 weekly again for some time, if ever.

Christmas Cake: The Results!

So, Christmas has come and gone. Whatever happened to that cake I promised to make? How did all of my hopes and dreams of becoming a master sponge-cake chef resolve? The drama? The intrigue? The whipped cream and strawberries?!

Find out about all this and more after the jump! Well, maybe not all that stuff about drama and intrigue...

(Note to RSS readers: You may or may not have to visit the blog to see the rest of the article.)

Recent news (最近のニュース)

Note: This image of my favorite punctuation mark is irrelevant. However, I thought that I'd take this opportunity to say that every picture in every article here is set to display a description or some other sort of message when highlighted by the cursor. Now, moving on...

I'm sorry for having gone so long without posting — I'm trying not to give my first readers too much to catch up on.


First off, let me say that I updated my funds again. I managed to add another $200 this week, bringing me to $600. However, I think that this is the last consecutive week that I'll be able to add so much. I'll have to slow down considerably in order to have enough left to live on before the trip!


A week ago or so, I subscribed to all news articles with the keywords "free tickets Japan" through Google News. Since then, I've received two relevant email updates. Let's see what we have:


PR Newswire: American Airlines and Japan National Tourism Organization Offer Tips for Making the Most of Travel to Japan

Traveller: Room at the inns 

The first includes good tips for a Japanese vacation, but it seems to be targeted more at people coming this winter whereas I intend to visit in the spring or fall. The second shows the devastating effects of March's disaster on Japanese businesses, especially the traditional ryokan inns.


These, together, show just how badly Japan not only wants, but needs tourists. They need to dispel the fear that outsiders have of earthquakes, tsunamis and radiation. This is why they are planning to pay for the flights of ten thousand visitors — they need people like us to tell the world that Japan is a great place to visit.

First image retrieved from The Realm of Ryan. I wouldn't want to steal credit for his hard work!


Second image retrieved from My Rooms Japan.