Mission: Japan.

I have my first 2 nights lined up with a host via a site called couchsurfing.com. It's basically a useful version of myspace, facebook, etc. Travelers and those who have couches and are interested in hosting those who are traveling meet up online, make arrangements, and then the traveler comes and crashes at that very generous person's home. It's a pretty sweet deal for the traveler, and the host gets some interesting company and makes contacts around the world.

So, the first two nights, I am crashing at Doug's place, a CSer, as they call themselves. The next nights, Saturday, I'll be camping somewhere outside of Tokyo with another group of CSers, and then, ideally, staying Sunday and Monday night with one of the campers. Eventually, I'll need to transition into a hostel and I'm also looking at apartments, but, in the meantime, couchsurfing will provide me with some friends and acquaintances who are, largely, also travelers, whether expatriates like myself or native Japanese.

Camping sounds like a really ideal way to decompress from the trip and the culture shock. I'm also hoping that there will be onsen, natural Japanese hot springs, involved in the trip. Japan is a volcanic country, and they're pretty much all over the place.

So. Excited.