Today is the day to move hostels. I get up at 11:00 in the morning. From then on, I pack my bags and get ready. Yesterday, after getting a lot of inspiration from Sufi, a Malaysian, I decided that today was the day I would start my “real trip” with Booking.com. After checking out, I was watching Atsuhiko Nakata’s Youtube on the couch. While I watched this video, Sufi handed me one journal magazine. Apparently, the articles in the journal looked just like mine, and he told me about it.

The title of that article is “flânerie” in French

This meaning is said to be “to wander around.” In other words, to take a walk. I read the article and found it really interesting. When we travel, we tend to take the major routes. We go to many tourist spots and do sightseeing there. But this article is not about that. We just walked around and did what we wanted to do. If you do that, you will discover many things you didn’t know about and many unknown things. That is what this article taught me. When you walk in a new place, the materials of the road you feel in your feet, the smell of nature, the character of the people, the air of the town, everything is new.

Just wandering around the place as you please. That is the true adventure, and what you encounter there becomes a part of you. You become interested and are led in that direction. That, I think, is the fun of true adventure. I could only sympathize with what he wrote. And I have nothing but gratitude to Sufi for making me read it.

Hanging out makes you creative and takes you to something really different and special.

I found interesting book on the museum souvenir shop

Come to think of it, the book I came across on a recent trip to the museum’s gift shop was also very interesting. The book was very interesting, both in content and design, of course. The content of the book has a kind of darkness that we cannot understand in Japan, but it expresses human beings themselves, and there is beauty in that. It is such a book. I really enjoy encountering such books. I want to buy the book, but I think I will buy it another time because it will become my luggage, so I don’t end up buying it. But I think that’s fate.

Books that caught my attention

This book has a very nice design. It uses a lot of white space, and the materials and fonts feel very sophisticated.

Well, back to Sufi, who worked very hard to teach me a lot about the joys of adventure and true adventure. His home town was in Malaysia, on the lower part of the island where Brunei is located. So very rural.

So he knows a lot about traveling there. And he’s very interested in going to small towns and seeing what it’s really like. So he told me so much about it, and as I listened to him, I was so fascinated by it that I immediately changed my Airbnb plan, searched for a train to Penang, and finally booked 2 flight tickets and 3 hotels to stay at today at Starbucks. I am fast.

But I could have bought them cheaper if I had booked them yesterday. What a surprise, it seems that students are on vacation in Malaysia right now, and because of that, plane tickets are getting more expensive right away. This is bad!

But I could have acted like this! I always think. Even if it is a little expensive, I can only think of the benefits: “I can only feel what I feel when I am 23 years old, and I will have memories for the rest of my life, I can have wonderful experiences, I can know the real journey…” So, even though the money is a little tight, I think it is well worth it. I think this is the greatest investment in oneself. Thank you again Sufi.

I think it’s a great return on investment to have such a wonderful encounter with such a great hostel for about 1000 yen a night. This is what I call a good use of money. I know I’m praising myself, but it all depends on me. I think everything is connected. If I hadn’t studied English, I wouldn’t be here now and I wouldn’t be able to communicate with Sufi.

So I feel again that this is what it means to connect the dots. When you stay in a luxury hotel or a hotel, you are blocked from communicating with other people, so there are no encounters or anything. However, even in a budget hostel like this, where there are always at least three cockroaches in the shower room, communication is born. That’s why I think it’s wonderful.

I get my name wrong a lot at Starbucks.

I don’t know. Maybe my pronunciation is very bad, but I go to Starbucks a lot anyway. So I order a coffee there. Black Americano coffee. It was 8.5 ringgit, so 255 yen. Very cheap. I was surprised that I could get such a cheap coffee at Starbucks. That is why I order it so often, but in Malaysia, I am asked my name every time I order.

KODA lol But “thank you” is very nice.

I answer “Kota,” but they all write “Koda” together lol.

I have no idea why. But it gets written as Koda twice in a row. Besides, there is a smiley face at the end. It’s very cute. But when I put a smiley face on the wrong name, it makes me feel even uncomfortable lol. But I feel it’s very interesting.

But today they finally “asked” me how to spell it, so I explained it to them, one letter at a time, alphabetically. Thanks to that, my name is now firmly “Kota”!