Preparing For The Trip
Preparing for a trip halfway across the world has it's difficulties, the most important being the language barrier that exists. I'll cover that and also talk about other basic prep things, such as what to pack. I've been catching up with James May's "Our Man In Japan," and he mentions that if you're an english speaker and travel to a country using the Roman Alphabet, even if you're not sure of what the word means, you can at least get a sound in your head and either deduct or just translate. This doesn't work in Japan if you don't know the alphabets, Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. For someone like me, they look real cool, but I honestly can't read anything, and my vocabulary is also tiny, as I really only know how to say, "Hello," "Thank You," and "Ramen." There are plenty of language learning resources that are free and easily accessible: phone apps, libraries, videos on YouTube, etc. There are an equally ...