YouTube video by Scrapcraftastic

YouTube video by Memo Garrido XP

An end of afternoon treat ### I’ve had quite the productive Saturday. After a 6km run this morning, we spent some time planning next week’s trip to Japan, deciding on some ‘must see’ and some ‘might do’ places and activities. We’re mostly planning around some fixed plans and reservations and it’ll all depend on the weather. Right now, Tokyo seems to be very hot, and very wet. _sad face_. I also collapsed my two blogs into this one, single online home. I’d been attempting to maintain a separate travel blog for the last year, but it sort of withered on the vine. So I’ve spent a few evenings manually transferring posts from there to here (made infinitely easier by the fact they’re both hosted on Pika, so it was mostly just copy and paste). As a result, I have a new Travel page, linking to my various travel adventures, including a log of my travel plans for this year. I also spent some time setting up my Traveler’s notebook to bring with me. I’d previously thought about bringing a B6 notebook, but there’s something about the leather and accessories of the Traveler’s notebook that means I can’t leave it behind. So I’ve stripped it down to some bare essentials to minimise the weight and now it’s going on my packing list. It’s perfect for on-the-go journalling, collecting stamps in train stations and museums, and the zipped leather pocket is just the thing for ticket stubs, receipts, cards and other ephemera I pick up along the way. Going through old notebooks, saved from other trips, was a lovely distraction. Seeing all my reflections, boarding passes, receipts and maps took me right back. Some of them go all the way back to 2013! A reminder of why it’s always a good idea to write about the journey while it’s fresh - even the smallest details were fun to re-read years later. (And yes, it appears I’ve been complaining about the lousy service on British Airways for all this time…) So yes - lots of things ticked off my task list for today. All that’s left is to demolish the Japanese curry my husband is preparing for us, and finish this refreshing sprint!