One Two Week Holiday to Japan. Seventeen Years Later I'm Still Here

I was looking at some of my previous posts and I had a quick look at My 2013 Travel Resolutions and I've realised just how much my travel plans have changed. Originally my plans were as follows: 

• Do a ski season in Hakuba, Japan 
• Travel around Japan for one month 
• Meet my travel buddy and go to Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia for one month 
• Finally, move to Australia 

Australia now seems a life time away from my new plans. A few of my friends in Hakuba were planning to work in Okinawa, Japan, which is run by the same company that got me the ski resort job. Getting paid to live on a tropical island seemed pretty perfect so I applied for the job, which put back any other travel plans until after September 2013. However, a few days after I left the ski resort and headed to travel round japan for one month, I found out I didn't get the Okinawa job. This led to me spending longer in Tokyo, as I now had the time, but it also led to the big question of “well what shall I do now?” I couldn't bring my South East Asia plans forward as my friend needed time to book flights and permit time off work. So then I went on a job hunt in Japan.

It turns out if you're a native English speaker with at least a Japanese working holiday visa then you can find English teaching jobs pretty easily in Japan. So now I’m sat here with three English teaching jobs, whilst looking for an apartment in Osaka and thinking just how quickly plans can change. One of my jobs says they will sponsor me until February 2014, therefore keeping me in Japan almost a year longer than I originally planned. This makes half of my 2013 travel resolutions obsolete as Australia won't happen this year, and I doubt South East Asia will unless I get a month off work.

Crazy just how plans can change when you're travelling, which may seem but obvious to plan each day as it comes but it can still be vastly different to what you first though. So my advice is don't plan, or my main bit of advice is if you hate living out of backpack then settle in a place for a bit, even if that 'settle' is for a few weeks. If you're lucky enough to have working holiday visas then I say use them until they expire. You're only going to get them once for each country you apply for, so make the most of the opportunity. So to cut a long story short, this is why most of 2013 travel resolutions won't be completed. Well, for now...