I have left Japan! Now back home in the bay area, California.

Next big international destination will most likely be Berlin, Germany in early 2017. I’ll make a short return to NYC and Boston before that, to experience their winters. There may be some smaller trips before both of those.

My ultimate goal with all this traveling is to find a place I’d like to live permanently. Tokyo, NYC, and Boston all remain possibilities - we’ll see how I feel about East coast winters, and how Tokyo’s language barrier compares with other countries. Each new place I visit still teaches me a lot about my own preferences, which tells me it’s too early to choose one yet. One thing’s certain: I’m not going to live in Silicon Valley/California’s south bay area again. Sorry, Mom and Dad.

View from the roof of my building. You can see one of Tokyo’s big downtown areas (Shinjuku) from the roof; tall buildings in photo 3.

One day after I left Tokyo, there was an earthquake. (No one I know harmed.) Two days after I left Tokyo, there’s snow - a housemate took photos 4 and 5. Clearly this is all some Japanese god’s way of saying “I miss Evan.”

A shared nabe (hot pot) dinner with my housemates. I didn’t take many photos of group stuff, but we got together a few times a month like this and went out afterward; always a good time.

Being on the other side of the planet is not an excuse.

(Still in Japan, by the way - haven’t had many photos to share lately.)

Japanese baseball game, Nagoya Dome

Visited my cousin in Nagoya (neither of us knew the other would be in Japan when deciding to travel!), and went with a small group to a Japanese baseball game.

Fans seemed far more enthusiastic than the American games I’ve been to. (Admittedly, most games I went to were minor league.) Flags, marching band, loud cheers, scantily clad cheerleaders, the works. This is Japan’s football, I guess!

Team names are in English, not Japanese - today was dragons vs tigers, not りゅう vs とら. (Neither was crouching nor hidden.) Google says this is because baseball’s a foreign thing, and in this context foreign is “cool”. Hear that, everyone? I’m cool now!

I’m amazed I’ve never seen vendors with beer-keg backpacks at American games