Western Japan 2009: Prologue

This shall be my final trip as a student.. :)

Will be flying off to Kagoshima in less than 10 hours.. Gonna spend about 14 days exploring the west side of Japan.. Didn't manage to include Okinawa, cos it is too far out and much too expensive.. Plus I didn't wanna rush through the cities.. Gonna spend "quality" time in each of them.. Had wanted to visit Hokkaido too, but in Sept nothing special is there to be seen.. yet it is still freaking expensive.. Thus, I have decided to save Okinawa and Hokkaido for future visits... :)

Here is my itinerary for the next fortnight:
Sept 02 & 03 - Kagoshima (Kyushu)
Sept 04 & 05 - Nagasaki (Kyushu)
Sept 06 & 07 - Kumamoto (Kyushu)
Sept 08 & 09 - Hiroshima (Chugoku)
Sept 10 & 11 - Matsuyama (Shikoku)
Sept 12 - Okayama (Kansai)
Sept 13 & 14 - Osaka (Kansai) - Going to Kobe and Himeji

Didn't have much time to thoroughly plan out all the itinerary. And I have learn from so many previous trips that one can only plan so much, as plans ALWAYS change.. for someone who needs to know every single step of the way, I think this is a major change for me.. I have learn to go with the flow and do things spontaneously.. Learned to NOT get frustrated if the plan isn't being followed.. or unexpected things happened.. improvise and move on.. :)

So what I have done so far is to book all the accommodations in those cities and just my flight from Tokyo (Haneda Airport) to Kagoshima. The rest of the traveling between the cities will be done via train, and I shall buy the tickets when I get there.. I have also listed down all the places that I wanna visit and things that I wanna do in each cities too.. I have allocated enough time for most of them.. else I shall pick those MUST-DO items and just do them..

With so many things weighting on my mind these past weeks, I need to get away.. And I owe it to myself to really enjoy this final tour of Japan.. Hopefully, I shall discover more sides of myself in this final solo trip...