Adventure Time.

 

I've discussed my love for travel in previous blog postings, but I don't think that I've discussed how much it scares me.  My family didn't travel at all when I was a child, and as such I had to teach myself how to go on trips, an experience which took me completely out of my comfort zone.  I've done enough travel now that I've become competent at the various mechanics involved, booking plane tickets and hotels, going through airport security, finding my luggage, that kind of thing, but it's still very much an adventure for me.

2013's trip to Scotland proved to be an excellent source of blog content:  visits to Monty Python castles, found objects like police boxes and Tron churches, and of course a winsome geek or two.  2014 was a much less ambitious year for travel, but 2015 should turn out to be far more interesting, with travel destinations that will combine both the past and the future.

In April, my friend Colin and I are heading to Florida for a week in the sun, with the Kennedy Space Center prominently featured on my list of requested site visits.  This is where it all happened, this where they made history: the Saturn rocket, the Mercury and Gemini missions, Apollo, Skylab, the space shuttle, the ISS, and now that NASA is returning to a more active role with the new Orion rocket, it's going to be a central part of the next stage of space exploration.

My friend Terry is moving to Japan in a few weeks, and I've decided to pay him a visit in September.  In my mind, Japan is an idealized window into the future, with Tokyo in particular a Gibsonesque silicon metropolis that's just a little bit ahead of the rest of the world.  In addition, Japanese geek culture, in the form of manga and animé, has become a strong alternative to the Western superhero and Disney-dominated approaches to comics and animation. 

 

As an example, the life-sized* Mobile Suit Gundam statue and theme site located in Tokyo's Odaiba district has become a popular geek pilgrimage, but I also plan to make the more traditional pilgrimage to Kyoto, Japan's cultural and spiritual centre. Visiting Kyoto is like a trip into Japan's past, a glimpse of a time and a place which is almost the opposite of Tokyo's fast-forward vibe.

I have to admit that I'm a bit nervous about Japan, even nine months in advance.  I managed to survive a week in Paris in 2011 with my limited French, but travelling in a country where I can't even read the street signs** is going to be a real challenge, even with a locally based tour guide. But what would life be without an adventure now and then?

- Sid

* "Life-sized" is perhaps an odd way to describe a 60 foot tall recreation of a giant battle robot from an animated series, but you know what I mean.

**  This is a joke - apparently there are no street signs.