The Sad Ending To My Japan Solo Trip

My solo trip didn’t exactly end on the high I was expecting, but looking back at it now, I’m kind of happy it didn’t…

This is part 2 of 2 of this series🇯🇵

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We’re Oskar🧔🏻 and Dan👱🏻‍♂️, and we believe that anyone regardless of who they are deserves to live their dreams! For the past nine years, we’ve continued pushing boundaries by traveling and living all across the world, including places like Uganda, Brunei, and Saudi Arabia. In 2022, we reached a huge milestone by visiting 100 countries and we’re now on a mission to keep sharing our journey and hopefully make the world a little more open, compassionate, and peaceful along the way❤️

Thank you for being a part of the journey!

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– Instagram: www.instagram.com/oskaranddan

– Music: http://share.epidemicsound.com/nqD7H

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Japan was country 38🌍 (first visited in 2018)

I started out my trip in Narita city, the namesake of Narita airport but with so much more to offer than that. I then drove through Tokyo to the west, making my way to the Mount Fuji area and the towns of Yamanakako and Fujiyoshida.

0:00 Something didn’t go as planned…
0:57 Climbing giant stairs to 13th Century temple
2:27 British people
2:52 Checking in with Dan
3:14 My special place in Japan…
6:23 My room
7:17 The disappointment rolls in…
8:23 Up on the mountain
10:30 Solo trip thoughts so far?
11:48 Being sad
13:30 Going to the northern coast (Itoigawa)
15:35 Time to leave Hakuba
16:38 Quick stop in Nagano for Oyaki (best food)
18:25 Summary and reflections from Yokohama
22:25 Full road trip route map

Thank you for watching!🙏😍

I’m Oscar and today it’s just me [Music] after a good night’s sleep at the temple guest house I woke up ready for the final stage of my Japan trip and perhaps the thing I’d been looking forward to the most however things didn’t really turn out the way I’d hoped I guess for better or worse and in the end it became a painful but important story about growing up okay getting out first rain of the trip it’s actually kind of refreshing so given the rain uh I don’t think I’m going to be staying here too long I’m quickly going to do the steps I think and just like see a little bit more of this Village and then I’ll be off to hakaba [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so this Temple is called quanji and it was founded in the year 1281 that’s a long time ago and also the temple grounds are huge like a lot bigger than what you first see when you come up the stairs beautiful and this is where they would have had uh the morning meditation this morning but I skipped at [Music] on it’s not until now that I’m going down the stairs that I’m realizing how insanely steep they are going up it was just like powering through it but now I don’t really want to look down so funny I’ve spoken to two British people this morning the first one was a guy who actually worked at the temple and he said he was there with work away so apparently you can go there uh as a work awayer so if anyone is interested in that that is a possibility and the second one was this woman who was standing by this temple in the rain and I felt so bad I stopped the car and I offered her a ride she was very happy about that rits are always so nice before we move on let’s just quickly check in with Dan and see what he and his friends are up to on their trip which probably couldn’t have been more different than mine hello from Vietnam we’re toward the end of our trip now and uh yeah it’s been a very different trip from the normal trips that all can I [Music] take and so it was time to drive north into the Japanese Alps to hakaba so why is this place special to me well it’s 2018 Dan and I are still in our first year of University and this really amazing opportunity comes up to apply for an internship at a startup incubator in Japan most of these startups were of course based in Tokyo so a lot of people ended up going there but I saw the job posting for this kind of different job where I was like hm this sounds like something for me so while all the other job postings were like exciting Tech startup in the heart of Tokyo my eyes were fixated on this one posting that said International School startup in a Tiny Village in the Japanese MST and long story short I applied did the interview and thankfully I was accepted to come here to hakaba a tiny village of about I think 7,000 people who live here permanently and it was by and large one of the most transformative experiences of my [Music] life also this town was part of hosting the 1998 Winter Olympics and I’m not even going to mention the fact that I hadn’t even turned one years old yet at that point not going to mention that it feels so weird to be back like I I have to admit that because in a way it feels like I never left which is crazy cuz it wasn’t even like that long of an experience it was just about 3 months but just the impact it had on me personally was just so immense that it feels like such a milestone this is also where I could post and recorded my very first piano album so a lot of things happen here and uh it feels almost like a spiritual place but really the biggest reason why I wanted to come back here was just to be able to have that reflection because a lot can happen in 6 years and I was definitely a different person back then and I do think it’s healthy to come back to places that we’ve been in before that have sort of stuck out in our lives or that have been very very transform transformative I think it’s easy to be blinded sometimes by the desire for more and never feeling satisfied or impressed with what you have but I think it’s in moments like these when you come back to a place like this and kind of going back to a past version of yourself and being able to look as that version of you on the current you this is getting very philosophical but then all of a sudden feels a lot better because you come at it with a more innocent frame of mind or one that hasn’t been jaded or all these things right and quite frankly I wasn’t entirely prepared for how cold it was still going to be here it’s now it’s around 10° it’s not that bad but it’s definitely not July temperatures that I had last time I was here all right this is my well unexcusable messy room after just one night that I’m kind of unpacking a little bit so that I can um repack better I guess so incredibly generous of uh my old boss to let me stay here and uh I even have a kitchen in the room so I can make whatever food I want um cuz the vegan offerings in this town are I mean okay there are some restaurants most of them are only open during the winter season and now we’re sort of on the cusp I think a lot of places seem to have closed on the 31st of March and today it’s April 4th so it’s uh we’re right on the cusp if you’re coming to hakaba and especially if you’re a group of people I think staying here at Nomad would be perfect it’s really well located and it has everything you [Music] need I’m kind of feeling like the way you’d feel if you met your favorite teacher from like middle school or high school and maybe you see them like in a bar or like doing something very not teacher like and your perception of them like just changing immediately it’s a little bit like that feeling and I’m not saying that that’s necessarily bad it’s just that now I’m getting the perspective that this is just another place it will always have a special place in my heart but I think now I’m coming back to it as an almost 27y old back then I was only 21 so my perspective is obviously a lot wider now and a lot different but I think that rather than trying to recreate what I once experienced here just have to keep that as a beautiful time capsule to look back at and uh not try to yeah redo it cuz that’s just not going to [Music] happen okay I’ve decided I’m going to go up in the gondola uh to the not the top of the mountain but to sort of the station where the Gonda goes to I think I went like three times maybe while living here and it was always so amazing to go up there I’m scared it’s going to be a lot cold everyone else here is skiing or snowboarding so I feel a little out of place but all right we’re inside let’s [Music] go I think right now there might be some clouds surrounding the station maybe I’ll have to wait a little bit to get a view but yeah oh gosh it is cold up [Music] here I’ll insert some pictures here of what it looked like in like pretty much this exact same spot in the summer and uh let’s just say it couldn’t be more different it’s almost like jarring when you’re not in a place to sort of experience the changing of the seasons you’ve been there for only one season and you go in a completely different season and you’re like what is this place like you don’t recognize it at all there is a surprising amount of skiers here still though like even Europeans not just uh Japanese people like there are people from all over the world I guess right now it’s a lot cheaper than it would be during a high season I mean up here there’s still a lot of snow but once you get down in the valdi it’s brown so [Music] almost got being here really makes me want to go skiing again it’s been how how many years has it been about as long as Dad and I have known each other a little less but yeah about 9 years since I skied last and I would ski every year I mean coming from Sweden you know it’s like a natural thing to do I need to do it again I’m I’m really getting the feels for it next year hopefully we’ll do it somewhere all right so it’s day six of solo travel and I must say that I get it I get it now before this trip I I really didn’t understand I was like what is the point of traveling if you’re not sharing it with someone else but I’m really learning that this is amazing too and it really really does have its advantages the freedom of just being able to call all the shots completely independently like I have no one else to answer to I’m not completely opposed to doing another solo trip in the [Music] future so the more I keep trying to do it seems like I absolutely could not have come at a worst time cuz it’s really like the cusp or like the end of the skiing season so so many restaurants or places in general are just Clos like this is kind of like the lowest point where people take some time off because there’s not a lot of skiers anymore which is great for them but not very great timing for me yeah like I’ve been driving around now trying to find any open restaurant but pretty much everything is [Music] closed so I feel like this might be a little much but I don’t know I just feel like I need to say what I’m feeling right now and honestly this whole day I’ve been close to tears and I think it’s just that I’m grieving the image and memory I had of this place and it’s not that it’s not an incredible place it really is but it’s just not what it was when I was here last time it’s not the same context I’m not in the same place in my life and I’m not with the same people that I was with back then and it’s really interesting I don’t think I’ve ever experienced this before to this extent where I’m coming back to a place that I had such a strong positive perception of and I had such incredible memories here I don’t know I guess I’m sad because I know that I will never get that back yeah I mean that’s kind of the pathway of life I guess and I think what I’m realizing is sometimes it’s good to just kind of allow those incredible past experiences that you had to kind of just let them sit and be what they were so yeah it’s weird I think I’ll be very happy that I came when I leave but now that I’m here I do feel a bit sad it feels crazy that like I feel this strongly about it but you know I was 21 years old I was in a very kind of Carefree mental state back then and this is definitely a valuable lesson to learn I think um but yeah it sucks a little bit in the moment [Music] good morning finally the weather is spectacular and uh I’m going to head up to the northern coast today cuz that’s something I never actually did when I was living here and it’s only really like an hour away so I’m excited today to finally check out what that’s like it’s been so gloomy the past few days so finally getting to see hakua like this again in the sun now all of a sudden it feels a lot more like the hakaba I [Music] know after about an hour and a half of driving I made it to the northern coastal city of itawa as you’ll see if you look at a map of Japan most big cities are located on the southern coast the northern stretch is a lot more Barren and remote and it was honestly so cool to be up here where the mountains meet the sea [Music] it is windy the city itself wasn’t too interesting but I spent a few hours exploring the coastline sitting by the shrine on a rock in the ocean for over an hour [Music] I can’t believe this is a city by the ocean and it has mountains like this what a dream honestly to have both that’s [Music] [Music] incredible that evening I had dinner at my favorite restaurant in hakoba with a girl currently working at the school I interned at before taking a bath at a local [Music] [Applause] onome and just like that with very mixed feelings it was time to [Music] leave at least I yet to leave hakaba on the most beautiful day this is the image that I’m going to keep of this [Music] place looking back at this now I’m honestly so happy I got to experience these very weird and confusing feelings it taught me to treasure certain special memories and not give the desire to recreate them but also to keep expectations realistic especially when revisiting something that really stood out in the [Music] past so I’ve started the drive back down south uh with the first stop in Nagano which is um a pretty big city just like 45 minutes away from hakuba when I lived there uh I used to come here quite a lot and there is this specialty for the prefecture Nagano prefecture called Yaki which I absolutely fell in love with and there’s this place that has all vegan oyaki so whenever I came to the city I would always like just Stack Up on tons of those they’re so delicious I just got some like probably even more delicious than I remember them to be to be honest there’s all this miso inside so it’s super Umami it’s super salty and then sort of the outside of the dough has been fried somehow I think or maybe not fried in oil but like at least pan fried or something I don’t know whatever they do it’s delicious this one is spring onions and me so there’s so much flavor it’s [Music] insane okay this is the craziest ever because I was so bummed cuz I asked the guy at the oyaki place if you know I could keep them for a few days uh since I’m traveling back and I wanted to give some to Dan cuz he also loves these and I was so bummed cuz he was like no you can you need to eat them today they’re only fresh for one day I’m sorry I was like H okay well that’s it as I’m driving all of a sudden I see this oaki farm and it’s the same company I think the sort of production facility is here and here they had Frozen ones that I got and uh I’m not going to tell Dan until we meet and then I’m going to give these to him hopefully it will be an nice Sur price if I can actually manage to keep these the whole time until we see each other in a few [Music] days many hours of driving later I made it back down to the Tokyo area where I’d spend my final two nights in Yokohama and funabashi and the question remained would I ever consider doing another solo trip all right hello you guys from the hayatt Regency Yokohama the only reason I came here is because Dan and I had like a Hiatt voucher like a free one night voucher expiring in like 2 weeks so we were frantically searching for like anywhere we’d be in the next few weeks where there was like an eligible Hiatt property we could use it at and this was like one of the only ones or pretty much the only one so that’s the only reason I came here but I’m so happy I came to Yokohama because I’m loving the vibe here it’s so so nice and I love the way they’ve used the Waterfront I feel like that’s one of the things that’s kind of missing in Tokyo anyway as this trip is coming to an end I thought I’d just summarize a little bit I think one of the biggest realizations has really been that having experiences alone doesn’t diminish them at all and that can actually make them even more special and especially I think when it comes to meeting people on the road like I’ve been so open to talking to other people and it’s not that we don’t talk to people when we travel together it’s just that I think when you’re alone you’re kind of more open to it and I think especially when you’re traveling as a couple or as two people together and you’re so close and tight and knit you kind of become like one unit I think you’re also more approachable as a single person maybe one of the most difficult things has actually been eating at restaurants like dining alone I don’t know like I don’t love it cuz what I usually end up doing is like sitting on my phone scrolling and I’ve been trying to not do that and just like sit and maybe think a little bit more use it as like contemplative time and on occasion there’s also been other people in the restaurant that I’ve talked to so that’s been really nice as well another really incredible thing I think is just having been able to make decisions on a whim without consulting literally anyone else that has been such a freeing experience for me cuz I quite literally have not felt that in years since we are always together we always make decisions together as well we’re always Consulting the other person but like now when I was sitting in the car and all of a sudden I saw something I would like in a split second just make the decision of I’m going to turn like get off the road here and go there or whatever like there were so many of those moments there had been some downsides like I have felt very lonely especially at night like I’m so used to having a bedtime routine where like we’re getting ready for bed together and we kind of hold ourselves accountable a little bit for like actually getting in bed and especially like I don’t really love sleeping Dan loves to sleep so like like he is always the one to sort of you know make us actually go to bed and turn off the lights and I’ve kind of had a hard time doing that on my own so I’ve been going to bed quite late like a lot later than I would want to and it’s not that I’m not like ready to go to bed it’s just that like I’m literally procrastinating turning off the lights like doing anything to just stay awake so I think something that this trip has really taught me is like it’s really pointed out what I’m good at what I do and sort of what Dan maybe helps me do better that um I don’t necessarily do so well on my own or I’m not really inclined to doing on my own so I think it’s just really nice to get that perspective would I do a solo trip again definitely and I think I’m even going to encourage Dan to take a real solo trip I feel like this is something i’ want to do maybe like on a year yearly basis maybe not for 10 days it doesn’t have to be that long every time but I think having a few days just on your own I think it’s really healthy I’m just happy to see that it wasn’t as scary as I initially thought it would be so overall I’m really happy I’m very grateful and thank you guys for coming along on this uh trip with me my first ever solo Vlog and until both of us are back in the next video see you around the world [Music]