I’m here. In Tokyo. Finally. During my idle time on the flight over I kept on thinking, “what am I going to write to everyone once I finally get to Japan?” Most of you already […]
Picture yourself looking up at a blue sky peeking through a huge canopy of leaves on a perfectly clear day in Kyoto. As the faint sound of Japanese flutes recedes softly into the background, it’s […]
You know how I’m always seeking out new and interesting experiences? Well last weekend I went drift racing. One of my coworkers, Miki, is extremely into cars. He has a Limited Edition Impreza (one of […]
KaZantip 2011: Black Sea Paradise
Warning: This post contains a few NSFW photos. View only in good company 🙂 The Republic of KaZantip, the legendary Eastern European Shangri La of parties, lasts for just one month a year in a […]
The following is not actually a single narrative of one continuous evening, but a composite of many. It’s written as a representative summary of my average night out in Kyoto. Nothing is exaggerated. It’s Saturday […]
At long last, I made it to Petra.
Petra is a place that’s intrigued me since before I even knew its name – since I first saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as a young child. Could a place so magnificent really exist? Nah, couldn’t be – it must just be a fake Hollywood set.
Oh, take my word for it. It exists. And it’s…incredible.
Let me try to describe what it feels like to approach Petra for the first time. Continue reading »
At last, Peder and I were in Jordan and on our way to Petra, one of the highest items on both of our “must-see” lists. Now we just had to figure out how to get there from the border.
Because of our strict time limitations, city buses didn’t seem to be an option. We started by trying to convince one of the organized tour buses in the parking lot to allow us to hitch a ride, but a mess of passport control for the droves of tourists looked like that would take longer than it would be worth.
Taxi it is.
We hopped in and started off, realizing somewhere along the way that a much more efficient route would be to travel first to Wadi Rum, continuing to Petra that afternoon or the following morning. Wadi Rum is apparently one of Jordan’s other must-see destinations, holding “some of the most extraordinary desert scenery you’ll ever see.” It’s the area made famous by the Arab Revolt and TE Lawrence in the early 20th century, as well as the film Lawrence of Arabia (which I’ve yet to actually watch).
Continue reading »
Less than a week before leaving for this trip, Peder sent me an e-mail from Norway.
“Dude, I can get a two-week all expense paid trip to Turkey but I have to leave NOW…wanna come?”
Unfortunately I couldn’t join him on account of the Birthright trip so he invited another Norwegian friend instead. Still, this meant that he’d be in the Middle East at the same time as myself. And at the last possible second, he managed to arrange a flight from Turkey to Israel.
Japan, Brazil, and now Israel. The world is our oyster. Continue reading »
My thirteen-day Birthright was finally over, but the adventure through the Middle East had only just begun. As most of the trip’s 26 participants boarded their flight back to New York, Mike, Sammy, Robbie, and myself proceeded to the El-Al Airlines ticket counter and changed our return tickets home. One more month ought to be enough to get us started.
It was then a quick train ride back into Tel Aviv, along with Idan – one of the soldiers who came to the airport to see the others off – and Sara – who intended to join up with her family in Jerusalem the following day. Still exhausted from the nonstop activities, we zombied into town, plunked down our stuff at the first hostel we could find, and knocked out. For the first time in two weeks we were on our own: no pre-set itineraries and no luxury buses to take us from place to place. Continue reading »
A reader posted such an interesting pair of links in a recent comment that I just had to copy them here, for all to see. These…
http://www.oniazuma.com/2008/01/are-japanese-actually-jewish-looking-at.html
http://www5.ocn.ne.jp/~magi9/isracame.htm
…discuss some pretty convincing studies about how the Japanese may in fact be descendants of one of the missing tribes of ancient Israel. I know, it sounds a bit far-fetched. But check out these videos (mirrored from the first link).
WEIRD stuff: Continue reading »
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