Sleeping Jellyfish

As a student, my main priority is to learn. Now many of the folks educated in or studying the “hard sciences” give us Liberal Arts folks some guff because we just read books and the newspaper and then sit around and talk over coffee about whats going on, who was involved, why did it happen, how did they do it, when did it occur. Class dismissed. Now I may not be a math wiz, or understand the intricacies of quantum physics, but I would say that my critical thinking and problem solving skills are top notch. So are my coffee drinking, newspaper and blog reading, and sitting on my duff talking nonsense skills.

I'm a pretty big deal in Japan. 新宿、東京

The one thing that all students should agree on is that we can only make educated decisions based on what we know. This generally falls into two categories: facts we’ve learned (knowledge) and useful experiences (wisdom). As I think back over my travels during the winter holiday I realize that I could have done a few things better, but I didn’t have the proper information at the time to make the right decisions. Two of those stick out quite blatantly at me, and so I’d like to give warning so maybe others won’t make the same mistakes.

1) Don’t use Facebook as an online photo storage site.

This might seem evident to seasoned photographers, but as I’m of the more casual type (in fact when I’m not traveling I never take photos) it didn’t occur to me that some photo hosting sites might change the size and file type of your photo. While I was traveling, I would have to make stops at a net café to upload my photos to the internet and make more space on my memory card. Between this blog (which allows me quite a bit of free upload space!) and Facebook, the later had a faster upload speed, and since I was often paying per 15 minutes I of course used it. Well, it crunched some of my pictures. Crunched them into smaller, lower quality versions of themselves.

Lantern and Light Exhibit near the Imperial Garden, 東京

I’ve talked before about setting up a flickr account as a photo sharing and photo storage page, and since I’ve returned I finally did, after I found out about the Facebook crunching. Check the link at left. So, as far as next time, I hope to be better prepared in two ways. One, use flickr to host photos online, not Facebook, so they don’t get smushed. Two, get a bigger memory card, probably the easiest way to solve the issue. I’m not sure what the price is at home, but 8GB SD cards are about 20$ here. It’s probably not what AJ/Peter/Jordan/Shelli/Word use but it would have solved my problem.

2) Check all transportation options before leaving your house.

Now I had a vague idea of what I was going to do, where I was going to go, and how I was going to get there, but about 10 minutes on the internet would have saved me a considerable amount of money.  I was frugal to be sure, I used strictly night buses all the way to Osaka, the cheapest public transportation in Japan, but I could have done better. I didn’t find out about the 青春十八切符 – seishun juhachi kippu – until I got to Osaka.  For about 23$ a day one can take as many local trains and some buses as they wish, even some night trains. With the two days I spent getting from Akita to Osaka, I could have done it cheaper, in about the same amount of time, and possibly even stopped at a few more places on the way.

I often like to do my traveling on a whim which often leads to exciting and unexpected adventures.  It also frustrates people a lot. Especially planners. Like AJ. But I really wouldn’t have it any other way, and I have absolutely no “regrets” about my winter break adventure, but I learned a few things too, which is good, right?  So, when spring break comes up, instead of going to Cancun, getting drunk, and sleeping with nameless strangers like all the other tools in the States, I think I’ll be going to Hokkaido, and hitch-hiking around the island. But this time I’ll be prepared, with a bigger memory card, my flickr account, and a seishun 18 kippu in my wallet, just in case.

Again, don’t use Facebook to store and share photos. These have been some of the salvaged ones.