Amidst the rush of worldly comings and goings,

observe how endings become beginnings.

Lao Tzu, “Tao Te Ching”

Summary of My Trip

How to sum up fourteen months of traveling?

It will take time that I don’t have. As an Australian friend I met in Japan told me in July, “Traveling is a microcosmos for life. Everything happens so fast, it’s all the more intense.”

I have done on this trip more than I have in all my previous years. What should I highlight?

• Seeing snow for the first time in fifteen years.
• Jumping on ice and falling into freezing water in the Sea of Okhotsk, which borders Siberia and Hokkaido.
• Driving on a frozen lake and soaking in snowy hot springs.
• TV reporters filming me hiking to a frozen waterfall on my birthday in minus twenty degrees.
• Going on a digital detox at an onsen ryokan without Wi-Fi or electricity in the mountains near the snowiest city on Earth, getting stuck in a snowstorm, shoveling the bus with one of the guests, and falling in love with him.

This was just 9-19 February 2023, the first ten days of my trip. Every week was as turbulent as this. I got to experience everything the Far East has up its sleeve.

• Sleeping in ryokans, gassho-zukuris, minshukus, temples, capsule hotels, hanoks, monasteries, internet cafés, buses, airplanes, tents, ships; luxury hotels and filthy hostels; in strangers’ homes, in futons, or on the floor, in mountain cabins.
• Eating animals again for the first time since my early twenties, and bizarre dishes whose contents remain a mystery.
• Being recognized from a TV interview… while naked at an onsen.
• Being stared at as a foreigner walking down Asian streets on a daily basis.
• Standing stark naked on a rooftop onsen in a city on a winter night.
• Feeling spiritual highs in rash escapades that left me injured, alone in nature at dusk, and fearing for my life.
• Venturing into Japan’s most remote valley, failing to camp by myself near a river, and seeing monkeys.
• Rushing to check into accommodations in the countryside at dark with no battery and no one walking outside.
• Meeting people who made me drop all my plans just to spend time with them.
• Going to bars and clubs for the first time, dancing, cheering drag queens, and partying until sick.
• Attending Pride for the first time, dating so much that it became a daily carousel, finding myself friend-zoned, and, on multiple occasions, discussing marriage.
• Getting caught in the act by the police and being searched for drugs.
• Resting on walls of snow, beholding firefly squids glow in the dark, attending enormous flower festivals, taking cauldron baths, screaming at waterfalls and in cave temples.
• Watching sumos wrestle, monks pray, demons parade, fireworks detonate, strippers perform burlesque, and men balance 50-meter lanterns on their butts.
• Learning how to use chopsticks.
• Opening up to people I’d just met, and them opening up to me.
• Kissing while crying inside the world’s busiest train station.
• Learning how to live in the present, flying to countries with minimal knowledge about them, and changing my plans on a whim.
• Finding people willing to open their house to me for free, and those who lie about staying in touch.
• Losing years-long friendships, not knowing anymore who to trust.
• Losing so much weight that clothes no longer fit me.
• Nearly passing out from spicy food and scalding onsens.
• Mediating, prostrating, crawling through caves, wielding katana swords, riding bullet trains and cable cars, hitchhiking, slipping on icy roads, destroying my sleep in favor of more experiences.
• Clubbing until 4 am, sleeping 3 hours, then hiking the tallest mountain in Seoul.
• Volunteering in exchange for accommodation, changing beds, mopping floors, cleaning blood and vomit, working at a cabbage farm, teaching English.
• Calling an ambulance for a drunk, passed out friend.
• Camping on the roof of a building.
• Visiting castles, palaces, galleries, farms, volcanic ruins, hell valleys, salt fields, cemeteries, lantern festivals, abandoned poison gas storehouses, and abandoned sex museums.
• Developing the courage to hit on people out of my league.
• Crossing cities alone at night after rejections at bars and pangs of inferiority.
• Petting meerkats, feeding bunnies roaming free on an island, playing with an animal skull found in a village.
• Flying through clouds, sailing through an ocean at night, cycling on bridges between islands, racing through cities on a motorcycle.
• Hopping for days from one festival to another, treading on ancient poems carved into stone.
• Searching for a crush around Japan for six months, getting his contact details after returning to the digital detox ryokan, yet failing to reach him in the end.
• Sweating so much during the Asian summer that all my shirts got stained.
• Marveling at the most sacred Shinto shrines in Japan, which defied all my expectations.
• Breathing poisonous gases, taking a radioactive rock bath, and scratching bug bites until they bled at the most acidic onsen in Japan.
• Working as an itinerary planner for tourists in Japan.
• Sneaking into hotel backdoors at 3 AM, going on road trips, attending Tokyo Pride, Seoul Pride, and Sapporo Pride.
• Moving in with a romantic interest three days after meeting.
• Getting stuck in Japan after the war in Israel started.
• Driving on the opposite side of the road for the first time.
• Cycling on a wire in the air, vomiting on a ship sailing close to Russia through a stormy sea, circling craters of dormant volcanoes, drinking too much alcohol, sniffing at sulfuric vents, receiving job offers in Japan.
• Shooting arrows inside the crater of a dormant volcano until my arm became inflamed.
• Seeing peak cherry blossoms for the first time, every day for a month, followed by autumn leaves for the first time, every day for a month. (Also, seeing autumn leaves and snow at the same time, on top of a mountain.)
• Marathoning to visit twenty temples in six days for Kyoto’s maple leaves.
• Moaning with pleasure at sushi in Hokkaido and katsuo no tataki in Kochi.
• Being surrounded only by Japanese, or Koreans, or Taiwanese, in the countryside, for days at a time. (My record is 6 days in the Korean east coast.)
• Finding myself without accommodation in the countryside at midnight.
• Risking hypothermia at a blustery desert by the sea during snowfall.
• Throwing a Ghibli movie night at a temple with other volunteers.
• Participating in pilgrimages, straddling edges of cliffs, playing with snakes, listening to strangers’ heartbeats, exploring dark rooms, collecting colorfully radioactive stones, journaling until my arm hurt, picking marimo from a lake, releasing lanterns, beating taiko drums, volunteering to get hit by firecrackers.
• Reinventing my style and becoming an extrovert who likes to party.
• Dressing more traditionally than locals.
• Worrying too much about who liked me and who didn’t, overthinking text messages and gestures, getting my heart broken, becoming consumed by unrequited longing.
• Bleeding, sweating, crying myself to sleep, kissing strangers, hugging tightly with emotion, making out with a go-go boy on a wet stage.
• Celebrating the Chinese new year with a traditional Taoist family in the countryside.
• Hiking for the first time and surmounting Japan’s, Taiwan’s, and Korea’s tallest, hardest peaks.
• Watching the sunset, the stars, and the sunrise from mountaintops.
• Suffering multiple injuries, bleeding from my head, limping, running to the emergency room, trembling with fever.
• Vowing to never let anyone hurt me again, then learning to embrace pain.
• Getting kicked out of a monastery after a heated argument.
• Sharing traumas, revealing secrets, discussing suicide, depression, and fears.
• Befriending people from dozens of countries.
• Sucking on raw marinated crabs, choking on duck blood, and spitting out firefly squids.
• Eating plain rice three times a day and growing addicted to fermentation: nattou, kimchi, choudoufu.
• Falling in love for the first time. And the second. And third. And fourth, fifth, sixth… 
• Finding people who cared about me so much that they chased me, and chasing those who ignored me.
• Getting told “I love you” for the first time.
• Understanding, and feeling, the meaning of love.
• Losing clothes, cables, sentimental items, friends, and lovers.
• Dedicating all my free time from traveling and socializing to writing, to the point of documenting every single thing I’ve done in the past 14 months.

I estimate around 100 hot springs; 300 shrines and temples; 50 museums; and 20 festivals. Maybe when I go over my posts, I’ll fix these statistics.

As for the number of people I befriended and want to see again: 40 from 3 months in Japan; 60 from 3 months in Korea; 70 from six months in Japan; and 30 from Taiwan. Their countries include Japan, Singapore, England, Hong Kong, Australia, US, Poland, Germany, Switzerland, France, Canada, Norway, Ukraine, Netherlands, Taiwan, Mexico, Italy, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, China, Brazil, Israel, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Romania, Mongolia, South Africa, Costa Rica, and Palestine.

There is a myriad of things I forget to mention. They’re all documented, somewhere in the 1,100 pages, or 550,000 words, that I’ve written here. This past year, I didn’t just grow as a person. Daily journalling has also improved my writing skill.

Summary of the Taiwanese Leg of My Trip

List of favorite places in Taiwan:

• Ximen, Taipei
• Sun Moon Lake
• Taroko Gorge
• Yushan
• Alishan
• Guanzihling
• Tainan

List of unique experiences in Taiwan:

• (9 February 2024) Donggang: Chinese New Year festivities in the countryside
• (12 February 2024) Wuji Tianyuan temple: cherry blossoms and a unique pagoda
• (16 February 2024) Beitou: sulfuric valleys and Japanese-style hot springs
• (17 February 2024) Pingxi: climbing crags, visiting Shifen waterfall, and participating in the Sky Lantern festival
• (24 February 2024) Yanshui: Beehive Fireworks Festival
• (26 February 2024) Tainan: Cicao Green Tunnel
• (27 February 2024) Tainan: the best food in Taiwan and the Lantern Festival
• (29 February 2024) Tainan: salt mountain and fields
• (4-5 March 2024) Fo Guang Shan: staying at Taiwan’s largest monastery
• (9 March 2024) Guanzihling: mud hot springs
• (11 March 2024) Alishan: colossal, misty woods and local specialties
• (12-13 March 2024) Yushan: climbing East Asia’s highest peak
• (18 March 2024) Changhua: Nantien temple
• (19 March 2024) Taichung: Baishatun Mazu Pilgrimage
• (27 March 2024) Taroko gorge: the most beautiful place in Taiwan
• (2 April 2024) Yehliu: Martian rocks and an abandoned UFO village

Every leg of my trip hurt like my hiking injuries. But the Taiwanese ending twinges the most, because it is the final. This morning, I returned to the country I happened to be born in. The last time I was here, fourteen months ago on 8 February 2023, I had planned the ending.

How Japan and South Korea Predicted Taiwan

At this juncture, one moment from Japan comes to mind.

For the final song, the staff turned off the lights, until one light bulb shone alone in the middle of the hall. As we sang 旅の終わり (“end of trip”), dancing and clapping inside a dimly lit wooden structure by an ocean so blustery and ferocious that the crashing of waves from outside was just as loud as our voices, I understood the gist of the lyrics. (Amateur translation by me)

山高くして夢があり
山高くして歌がある
ここ最果ての利尻よ礼文
君を訪ねて姫沼悲し
我ら島を愛して旅を行く




桃岩たどる君の手に
エーデルワイス花ひらく
ここ最果ての利尻よ礼文
花に口づけ峰ふりあおぎ
我ら島を愛して唄う歌



岬に今日も鳥が鳴き
しぶきに嘆くトドの島
ここ最果ての利尻よ礼文
何を語るかあのカラ松よ
我ら島を愛して北を行く

Where mountains are tall, there are reams
Where mountains are tall, there are songs
Here in the farthest ends of Rebun and Rishiri
I'm sad to visit you, Himenuma Pond
To love the islands, we’ll go on a trip

In hands that trace the Peach Rock
Edelweiss bloom
Here in the farthest ends of Rebun and Rishiri
Kiss the flowers, behold the peaks
To love the islands, we’ll sing 

Even today, birds chirp on capes
Islands where sea lions mourn in the splash
Here in the farthest reaches of Rebun and Rishiri
What do those larches speak of?
To love the islands, we’ll go north

The dim light, the loud waves, the louder singing. Deep in nature, frenzy and camaraderie. No internet, no skyscrapers, no outsiders. Just the hostel staff and guests.

It was such an unexpectedly moving moment, in conjunction with the above lyrics, and the inescapable notion of being forced to bring this trip to a close.

I was exhausted from 4.5 hours of sleep, 1.5 hours of vomiting, 3 hours of hiking, and nearly fainting in an onsen. I was exhausted from a 3-hour rambunctious meeting. I was exhausted from 7.5 months of minimizing my sleep in favour of sightseeing. I was exhausted from worrying about the end of this exhaustion, and this trip.

Yet at this moment, in this location, nothing mattered, apart from the current scene. Somewhere on the northernmost island in Japan, closer to Russia than to Tokyo, on an isolated cliff, a party took place, in tones and decibels all too fanatic, in a dark, wooden hall, in vigorous spirits and infectious joy. I was the only foreigner in the bunch – of all the faces I’d seen today, not one belonged to a non-Japanese – and I wanted to keep it this way, to stay on this island, and in this country.

This moment instantly became one of my highlights in Japan.

Then it was over. End of meeting; end of trip.

“Somewhere on the Northernmost Island in Japan” (20 September 2023)

Another moment, from Korea, also predicted Taiwan.

I mark the end of the Korean leg of my trip with my favourite Korean song: Waiting by Younha. The original version is fantastic (I’ve been listening to it for weeks on repeat), but it’s the acoustic version that I heard first, while feeling lonely in Jeju Island, that captures my feelings.

“I took the bus back to my hostel, where I ate my pastries for dinner. The staff was throwing their daily, lively dinner party. A sad Korean song was playing. I looked up a translation of the lyrics to English. It was about unrequited love. I wondered if I’d experience it someday.”

This is what I wrote in “A Blue Day”. The unofficial English translation I found online was so poignant, that I decided, back then, to make it my last song.

How did I fall in love with you
How can it hurt like this
I have never wanted anyone like this
I miss you about a thousand times
If I tell you, will it reach me?
If I cry and throw a tantrum, will you know how I feel

Should I hate that name 10,000 times?
Should I just count the disappointing things?
Already my love has grown so much
Because you are not me
You can't feel the same as me
That's right, I liked you more

Even if my heart gets hurt nine times
Once I like smiling
Because I'm happy when I'm by your side
I never even made an unpleasant face
I never felt comfortable
I felt like I would do anything if you said it

Even the long wait that felt like a thousand years
Seeing you I like it
A day, a month, a year like that
Knowing you won't come
And tossing and turning endlessly
Waiting, waiting, falling asleep

What didn’t go as planned, however, was the song gaining a new meaning for me. A couple of lines from the lyrics – I feel them now. I would like to understand the original version someday.

“Annyeonghi Gyeseyo” (2 August 2023)

Now, I mark the end of my trip with my favourite Taiwanese song: Moonlight Serenade by Tsai Chin. The original version is great (I’ve been listening to it for days on repeat), but it’s the acoustic version that I heard first, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, that captures my feelings.

Then I heard a song playing on a screen. “Moonlight Serenade” was the name of this adaptation of a classic film song called “Sayon Bell”. It was a sad torch song about a person confused by the emotions in their heart, unable to tell love and nervousness apart. It moved me so much, that I recalled a key moment from Korea […] I wondered if I’d get to understand the serenade someday.

“The Taiwanese Roll” (3 February 2024)

The official English translation at the museum sounded so unfamiliar, so recognizable, that I decided, back then, to make it my last song. I have always understood the first verse well. Ten days later, I came the closest I’d been to understanding the second.

The moon lingers in front of my window
Casting its radiant light of love
I bow my head and quietly ponder
Unable to fathom your heart's intentions

Like the moon tonight
It shines, dims, and shines again
Ah, is it love or restlessness?
Ah, moonlight

I can finally answer the singer’s question.

It brings me a deep sense of fulfilment to write this. I have grown from a misfit robot to a sociable romantic. My heart used to thump in timidity around people. Now, it beats in ardour.

I couldn’t have accomplished this without leaving the West and finding my tribe in the East. Nor could I have done it without writing on a daily basis and documenting every single date I’d gone out to on this trip. My biggest passions in life married and gave birth to a new mentality.

I finish this trip proud and penniless. My words have never produced me any money. Yet they have developed my psyche, even when read by no one but me.

My mission from the past year is complete. I feel restless as I realize: it is over.