First post jitters

Okay, here I go - my first post.

Well, let's begin with a bit about me. At the moment, I'm 29 years old. I was born in Newcastle and lived there (more or less) until I was 22, when I moved to Sydney with my girlfriend. We lived there for five or so years until we both decided we didn't really like Sydney, which is when we moved to Melbourne - that was almost three years ago now.

We broke up about four or five months ago. I don't really want to delve into that too much right now, only to say that we're still good friends and the split was amicable. I'm not exactly sure what she'd think of me divulging too much information about her in this journal, but I have a pretty good idea. For this reason, I'll keep her name and any other incriminating details a secret.

Anyway, not long after I'd moved out on my own I was sent an email by an old friend of mine who is currently living and working over in London. Basically, he mentioned that he had a spare room for visitors to stay and I was welcome to be one of those visitors.

Talk about timing! Here I am: 29 years old; I've just broken up with my girlfriend of eight years; I've not left the country since I was about five or so; I've not been on a proper holiday in years, and I've been offered somewhere to stay in a country I've always wanted to visit. I think it took me a day to decide to take up his offer.

The thing is, I figured if I'm going overseas I should dedicate a proper amount of time to it, otherwise it's not going to be really worth it. Two months at the minimum was my initial thought, maybe three. I definitely had enough money to last for that long. Better yet, my 30th birthday was coming up in March and the thought of entering my thirties in a different country held a huge amount of appeal to me.

It was around this time I discovered I was eligible for a UK Ancestry visa, which means I can live and work with no restrictions in the UK for up to five years. A new thought suddenly occurred to me: after I've finished having a holiday, why don't I stay?

So basically, my progress until now is as follows: I've started to sell off my unwanted possessions, I've quit my band (which is one of my few regrets about leaving), I've applied for my visa and I've quit my job. The lease on my flat expires around the middle of February, which is when I plan to drive up to Newcastle and stay with my parents until it's time to fly away. Everything's starting to fall into place quite nicely.

To add to the fun, I've also decided to spend a week in Japan - another country I've always wanted to visit. This idea came about when I went to enquire about flights one day: the girl who was helping me told me I could stop over in any Asian country I liked. As a joke, I suggested Japan - almost everyone I know tells me they always stop over in Singapore, I figured this was the standard stop over point and Japan would be too far out of the way. Nope, turns out that's perfectly fine. Better yet, she told me that if there were no connecting flights that day, the airline would put me up in a hotel for the night so I could get the next flight out the next day.

Once again, the cogs started to turn and I realised it would be really nice to actually spend a few days in Japan, not just the one night. After discussing it with my friend Alex, I've decided a week would be just the right amount of time for my "stop over". This leads me quite neatly to tonight: researching my brief Japanese visit. I've been looking up accommodation mostly - Al has advised me to stay in ryokan inns instead of hotels, so I've been reading up on them.

I think that's enough for one night. I might as well add that I've also set up accounts on Flickr, del.icio.us and YouTube, so hopefully I'll get a chance to make the most of them while I'm away.