👋 Greetings from Kyoto! It’s that liminal space between Christmas and the year’s end where I often forget which day it is. Do you feel it too? When traveling, this effect can be magnified. Without routine, daily habits can be harder to stick to, and there’s always something happening, somewhere to go, or someone to meet. This past week in Kyoto was a reminder of how important being social is for me when I travel solo, even at this stage of life. Somewhere in the middle of all the hustle and...

👋 Greetings from Tokyo! It feels like conversations about cost of living are everywhere right now. Housing is more expensive, travel feels harder to justify, and a lot of people are rethinking what’s actually sustainable. Ten years ago, I shared country-specific cost breakdowns during a long-term trip in order to be transparent about what life on the road actually cost me compared to staying in Hawaii. I’ve been getting similar questions again lately, so this time around I’ve been keeping...

👋 Konnichiwa from Tokyo! Late in the evening on Monday, I was jolted awake by the feeling of the room shaking. Having lived in Hawaii and Turkiye, where earthquakes are quite common, I thought I knew what was happening when I felt the shake. I started to hear murmurs of conversation around the usually-silent capsule hotel room. "Was that an earthquake?" I started to hear the word for earthquake in various languages as heads poked out of the capsules. Sure enough, it was! I checked my...