JAPAN!

Yes, Japan! The land of the rising sun! The land of sushi! The land of manga, anime, maid cafés, body pillows, tentacles… yeah it’s a pretty weird country.

Still, Japan has always intrigued me. Already from a young age and heck, my final high school project was all about Japan. Even though if I would dig up the old essay and reread it, I’d probably laugh out loud about how none of it makes any sense. Oh Joriss you stupid, pubertal twat.

The thing that held me back all this time from ever visiting Japan was the mere thought of how scary it all would be. Scary as in that you wouldn’t recognize a single thing from what you are accustom to. You’d be lost. You’d be like:

However, I now know many friends who’ve been to Japan and they’re all like:

And after hearing that from so many people, I was like:

The original idea was to go see Tokyo with some friends but after hearing their responses (which I illustrated as animals, because I’m no good at drawing their beautiful faces)

I’d settled for group trip by Joker, well after my sister convinced me to do it:

And now it’s finally upon us! I’ll be going to Japan from October 7^th until October 22^nd, seeing the highlights that Japan has to offer!

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

Indeed, why should you care about little old Joriss heading to Japan? Other than him basically saying “I’m going to Japan, and you’re not!”. Well since I’ll be seeing a lot of locations in just 2 weeks, my travels will involve a lot of actual traveling. A large part of the journey will be spend inside busses & trains for several hours and I need something to do in that time. And since I’m not the super social kind of person (else I would be constantly cheating on all my several girlfriends that I’ve swayed with my lying words, thus being even unable to go on this bloody trip) I thought it would be nice idea for myself to keep a little journal and write down my experiences.

And after doing my own research to prepare for this journey, I’ve find to highly enjoy the travel blogs I’ve read about Japan, so fuck it why the hell not do it myself? Plus, everyone I’ve mentioned to about this idea, got totally hyped up for it so I got that going for me.

So yeah, after Japan I’ll blog about my experiences there, in a nice Joriss fashion. It may be wacky, it may contain profanity (no shit Sherlock!) but I hope to entertain you all with my stories, illustrations and make you wanna go visit Japan yourself.
To bring you up to speed, here’s where I’ll be heading to.

Despite going with a group, the travel company did imply that you’re free to go wherever you want. I hope to find a nice balance with sticking around the tour guide and discovering things by myself.

I’ve also get some goals to do in Japan that I really, really, really want to do. I’ve narrowed it down for few things to give myself freedom to explore:

• Buy the coolest Japanse fan
• Walk the philosopher’s path in Kyoto
• Visit Super Potato in Tokyo
• Play Street Fighter in an arcade

Again, new blog posts will appear AFTER my trip. I don’t have a laptop to carry around there, nor would I do that if I did. I’d feel the time spend blogging in a Japanese bar is time wasted that I’ve could have spend discovering more things. However…

Do you want more of Joriss…in Japan?

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