Japanese Convenience Store

TOKYO, 2011

 

walking into a japanese convenience store is like stepping into a new world. i remember being so impressed by the sheer amount of choice when it came to drinks, it took me about 10 minutes to decide what to buy. i always chose something new every time to really experience the variety of available drinks.

the stores are also nicely lit, and have a nice atmosphere for exploring, and the products are so attractively labelled it's hard to choose just one.

though i did experiment, my personal favourite is still the read-to-go Royal Milk Tea. it's the perfect cup of tea, in a bottle, and you buy it hot. all the deliciousness of a cuppa prepared at home without even boiling water.

i could really go for a Royal Milk Tea now.

it just makes me want to be back in asia that much more.

big in granada

big skies

big avocados

big trees

big colours

big friendships

Just two days into Granada, Nicaragua with my beautiful travel partner Brenna, I can't help but feel we're at the beginning of something amazing, something life altering, something unforgettable, something big.

This morning over breakfast, we discussed an idea I've wondered about before. Whether you travel for a week or a month or a year, after the travels are over you feel a specific range of feelings when reviewing your photos.

It's easy to think of the pictures from early on in the trip as being less informed and lacking the worldly wisdom of later pictures - your clothes tidy and clean, your skin unworn and not yet blazed by the sun.

Around the middle of the trip, the photos are happy and care-free: the mark of a traveler truly amid the journey, thinking neither of the beginning or the end of the travels. For me, this is where I usually find my favourite travel photos.

When it comes to the final pictures of the trip, they seem to hold the knowledge, sadness, and already nostalgic feeling of a trip coming to an end. Sometimes you even stop taking pictures for days at a time.

Every trip has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And though this trip through central and south America together begins now for us, it's hardly the beginning of our journey as travelers together: we've traveled Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Japan, Thailand, Burma, and South Korea together.

And it's certainly not the end.