Grand Adventure

I still suck at planning, which is weird and a little sad to say since at one point in my life I had imagined making a living from plotting.

In just about a week, I'll embark on what I referred to in my head as The Grand Adventure. When I first thought of this crazy scheme, I planned an entire tour across Asia: Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, etc. Unfortunately, I can't swing that much money or vacation time, or I could but it would really cut down on the time and money spent in each country, or just splurge it all and extend it way past the amount of vacation time available. Plus, I'm not sure how my brain and body will react to not working for that many days in a row as I've basically hit a rhythm of working everyday. So, what The Grand Adventure transformed into is a week in Japan and one week one and a half weeks in South Korea, which seems like enough time to explore both places, if I knew what I was doing.

First off, the number one reason for this trip is for a reunion weekend with some of my dormmates from Plume IS from back when I studied abroad at Keio University

I really feel like I should have a better picture with everyone, but I can't find it

I've seen just about a dozen of them over the past 10 years (either here or abroad) but it's going to be really cool for a lot of us to be in the same place at the same time. I'm assuming from the silent Facebook stalking I've been doing over the years, everyone has something interesting going on with their lives and it'll be fun catching up and hearing all about it. Plus, you know, NOMIHOUDAI! (that is sadly the extent of my Japanese, besides "Toire wa doko desu ka?" and "Tabako wo sutte moo ii desu ka?") Luckily, for the most part, I'll be surrounded by friends whose Japanese is much, much better than mine, and who are also much, much better at planning than I am. I'm sure they've planned enough to the point that all I need to do is show-up and mooch off of their hard work. Thanks again. I guess in the one or two days after everyone leaves and I'm still in Tokyo I'll wander around ... I don't know, I haven't thought up that part yet ... I'll probably just catch pokemon I guess.

And then it's off to Korea ... where I'll ... umm ... I'll be in Korea. Really, the only thing I originally planned on doing in Korea was visiting my cousin who teaches English over there. And then, after setting up the trip, I remembered to ask her if it was okay that I didn't know any Korean. None at all. I managed to get by in Japan with very, very limited skills and some really good friends. Only after I got excited by this idea and booked my flight did I tell myself, "Hey moron, what the hell are you thinking?! You don't know any words, or even letters, and no one is going to be there to hold your hand through this. Are you insane?" Well, she reassured me that I should be okay without knowing anything, though I'm still not sure if it's because most people might speak English, or if she thinks that I survived Japan on some top-notch charade skills. She also dumped on me a load of places to check out in Seoul that I really should get around to looking over just so I can create some semblance of an itinerary, or at least look up activities to do.

If you've been following my newest obsession/addiction, then you may have guessed that I did look if any of my favorite Kpop groups were going to have a concert while I was there. I also checked if Scandal would have anything, but I'm pretty sure all the concerts were after I left Japan. Anyways, at first there weren't any so my cousin set me up with a tour website that'll let you into one of those live music programs on Korean TV that fill up my Youtube feed where you can watch the groups perform their songs. My biggest hope is that Dreamcatcher is still performing their latest song, though I doubt it since they released it about a month ago already. My silver medal hope is that Twice actually does release their new song while I'm there since it might mean that they'll perform that night as well. After getting my tickets to that, my cousin let me know that if I could extend my trip a bit, we could go to the Blackpink concert. I had to turn it down at first: I was already taking the longest vacation I've ever been on; I would need to reschedule 2 different flights and re-book my hostel stay; I would need to clear the extension with work where we are already short-staffed, etc. Then, when the second set of tickets went on sale and after a long, long mental debate, a couple nights of "gentle" encouragement from my friends ("Alan, what are you doing, just go to the concert!", "Quit your job and go to the concert", etc), and suppressing my travel anxiety long enough to make a rational decision it finally clicked, "Alan, this is Blackpink and it's probably going to be your only chance to go!" So, I re-booked everything I dreaded doing, informed work that I was going to be gone another couple days, and asked my cousin to make sure I don't charge the stage. "Alan, you can't reach the stage from our section on the 2nd floor." "I'll find a way." And so, thanks to the generosity of others, I now have one concert ticket, one music show pass, and a folded-up piece of paper with a bunch of words that I assume are places written haphazardly. It's looking like the start of a great trip.

I know I say this every trip, but this time was definitely worse. I really do suck at planning. Procrastination hit hard this trip as I left basically everything to the last minute. As I write this I've still yet to start packing, I still need to look up things to do in both Japan and Korea, and there are probably a bunch of things I'm going to discover I still need to buy. Also, my plane takes off ... tomorrow ... or right now depending whenever I finish writing this. I feel like the biggest reason is that things just tend to work out for me, that even with my poor planning skills (and even worse grasp on reality) nothing truly terrible has yet to befall me. I know that's a horrible way to think about it, but it's kinda true. I managed to survive hiking Mt. Fuji with just a hoodie and 2 t-shirts when I should've packed warmer. When our Spring Break Seattle to San Francisco trip was cut short, we were first in line and managed to get 2 rooms in a hotel and our flights rebooked to come back home. When I lost my passport within an hour of landing in Australia, someone turned it over to the ticket counter and I got it back as quickly as I lost it. When I got lost wandering around New York and Seattle, I randomly stumbled across the right train station, or got on the right bus, to get me where I needed to go. It's almost as if I'm waiting on something really, really bad to happen to me before I change my ways. [*last minute note: apparently the music program tv show audience I was supposed to go to got cancelled earlier this week, so I guess it was lucky I gave in to peer pressure and agreed to go to the Blackpink concert. So like I said, things tend to work out, so far.]

And finally, (you can skip this part if you want, there's nothing about my trip after this) the worst part of this whole thing has been that my anxiety coping mechanism - writing - seems to have been severed from me as I've forgotten how to write. For example, this entire post took me about two weeks to write. Yeah, TWO WEEKS to write about something I've been excited about for a couple months now. That should not happen. Typically, the words should just flow out and I would finish this in a day or two, and just taken extra time to find pictures and videos to link. I discovered this new disability earlier this month and still can't quite get over it. With all the time I've spent on this, I haven't given writing stories a try again, but the last time I did I was trashing everything after a couple sentences, if I could even get it started. It's frustrating and annoying and then I realize I'm wasting time writing anyways since there's other, more important, things to do right now, and then I get annoyed and frustrated all over again.