My very first solo trip! Well... with my amazing brother, if that counts. This is the first location of a three part trip, being UK-JPN-Hawaii. Going from Houston to London, I had a connection flight in MIA, which I must say was one of the most poorly designed airports I had ever experienced. This location was mainly planned to visit my brother's long time friends, so the locations were not as touristy as one would expect. We went through London, Luton, Oxford, Nottingham, and well some random town in between I quite frankly can't remember the name of. The UK was a pleasant experience overall, with wonderful people and memories. From drinking cider at a pub, to rock climbing, it was an unforgettable experience where I met many wonderful people and had a lovely time. I sent my regards to everyone who let me stay at their place during the trip.

After the UK, I headed to Japan. I visited Japan many years ago when I was a toddler, however since I couldn't recall very much of the trip other than a surprise earthquake, I'd alway wanted to revisit it. The original itinerary of this journey was Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka-Takayama-Kanazawa. The idea was to take a train to Tokyo to Kyoto, and then bike all the way from Kyoto to Osaka, where we would meet some family friends of ours, however unfortunately my brother fell to illness and was bedridden for a few days, so we had to cut out Kyoto and Osaka, but the trip was still incredible nonetheless. Being the sole planner of this trip, it was a stressful time, as my family had expectations for me to plan things out on this trip however I wanted to take it on a more whimsical level, however being not a true solo trip of mine with my brother there and him not being a well accustomed traveler, it was not possible. I visited so many places in Japan in such a short amount of time, and crossed various bucket lists of mine. Being able to navigate the intricacies of public transportation in Japan was an incredible thing to experience, coming from the USA where such a thing is nearly in-existent. Could you imagine having a single transportation IC card that works for nearly every single method of transportation in the country? Amazing if you ask me. Although we couldn't visit the family friends in Osaka, we were still able to meet up with a very close friend whom we hosted back in the USA for a year since they were studying at their university in Tokyo. I was able to experience amazing foods and sights throughout the trip, and wish to go back someday truly solo. One day I walked for nearly over six hour straight in Tokyo; I stopped to take a short break, and when I got back up I felt sharp pain, turns out I had humongous blisters at the bottom of my feet, making it almost impossible to walk. In the name of adventure though, I persevere through this pain and continued the amazing trip that I had.

Originally I had not really planned to visit Hawaii, but since it was on the way back to Houston from Japan, we decided to stay there for a bit as we were also offered free lodging in Honolulu by a friend (Thank you). Hawaii was very interesting, I noticed that all the dirt or soil was red when I arrived, which was an unusual sight to see. In this trip I mostly went hiking and enjoyed the conveniences of American life once again, such as fast food... I also went out to sea on a sailboat snorkeling tour where we got to see live sea turtles in action under the sea. During this time I read an intensive amount of historical literature over the history of Hawai'i itself, from the overthrow of the Kingdom by the Dole farm owners, to the submission to the U.S.A. It is quite interesting how quickly governments and kingdoms can fall very rapidly. Oh yeah, I took a surfing class in Waikiki beach with a very interesting instructor, and landed my very own surfs with the incoming waves. I went swimming in one of the beaches more north of the island, and I made friends with some locals who taught me how to dive into the barrels of giant incoming waves, which was a very interesting activity that the locals really enjoy, myself included.