Watching similarities and differencesMy son and his cousin. He is 21, she is 17, both full grown but one is considerably larger and taller. I took the picture and am always amazed at how different relatives can be.One of the things I like to do when travelling is to look for the things that are the most similar and the things that are the most different. When I went through so many different countries in such a short time it was very easy to see a lot of things very quickly. I would also probably say that I saw too much too quickly and suffered from a lot of overload.

Reading, Writing and ArithmeticIlliteracy sucks.As of about 8 hours ago I'm back in Canada. However, yesterday I was in Japan and it was a beautiful country but awfully rough to get around. You see I do not understand how to read Japanese nor do I speak the language. So yesterday I was walking through the pathway to the subway station thinking...being illiterate must suck. I mean never knowing if a sign is important like "Beware of live electrical wires" or mundane like "Parking $150 / month". Now I'm not truly illiterate as I am fluent in English but in Japan I feel lost and out of place.

Some days seem longer than others but today was an exception, it actually was longer than others. A lot longer. Now you might say that every day is only 24 hours long and you would be right, except today is likely about 40 hours long.

Well I've enjoyed my trip to Asia and there I am enjoying ramen in Japan. Yummy. But the thing about vacations... If you spend too much time on vacation it stops getting a vacation and turns into regular life so I think it's time to go home. Traveling is tiring.

Well my son left us today to go to Hokkaido. I'm proud he can function alone far from home. However sad because it was much easier getting around with him. However we didn't just sit around and do nothing. We went shopping in a local mall.

All good things must come to an endI've been away from home for almost 3 months now. I left on February 9th and it is now May 6th. I've seen The Philippines, Indonesia, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Japan. All are absolutely Asian in nature and all of them are totally different places. Of particular interest is how strikingly different their economies and people are even though many of the places have strong ties between them.