The idea of traveling to Australia...

I got the idea of traveling to Australia from a friend that I met on my travels in Japan. It was an evening in Tokyo, walking around with my brother, I think we were trying to find some brewery at that time which we never found. Later that night we were gonna meet up with some folks I met along my travels, we were gonna have dinner and some beers or sake at a local izakaya which is some kind of combination between a bar and a restaurant. While we were walking around I felt the urge to smoke a cigarette, in Tokyo you can't just smoke anywhere you want on the streets and they had a spot outlined on the corner of a crossroad where you were allowed to smoke. While lighting my cigarette I noticed a foreign guy standing there as well, as social as I am when traveling abroad I didn't hesitate to start talking to him. Apparently he had just arrived that day in Tokyo, he told me he was from France but he had been traveling for the last year or some.

Some of the people we were meeting with were French so i told him he could tag along if he would like, he agreed and we started heading towards the place we had all agreed to go to. If i remember correctly we ordered a bottle of sake, or at least we thought so. When we poured our drinks and took a first sip, me and my brother looked at each other with disbelief, this was something else. We remembered the taste from a week before when we ordered a similar drink called "shoshu" which was this beverage of between 20%-40% which tastes absolutely awe full. Needless to say we got quite drunk from that bottle and we were all talking and having fun, anyhow this must have been the point where Alx, the French guy i met earlier, started to talk about how he has been traveling in Australia and booked a flight to explore Japan as well. I might be wrong but that's sort off how I remember it.

I asked him quite a few questions about his travels to Australia as I was completely fascinated by this way of traveling, we drank up the bottle, had a few more drunken conversations, and after a while we were all getting quite tired and said we were going to bed. We exchanged contacts and arranged to meet tomorrow with the whole group as we were going to explore some more parts of the beautiful city Tokyo. Me and my brother went back to the hostel we were staying at and I'm sure I must have thought about Australia that night as it never really got out of my mind after that.

After Japan I didn't think that much about it anymore as I was still in awe of what a wonderful journey I had had in japan, I went back to my daily life of work and partying and whatever I do here in Belgium. During my journeys in Japan I had already arranged my next holiday with one of my best friends Ian, I think it was my holiday to Norway where he was working at the moment. Then when I was in Norway we decided to plan another holiday to a crazy festival in Ukraine called kazantip. This festival lasted 2 weeks and looking at the videos online this was going to be amazing! We even planned a short road trip trough Romania and Moldavia as the people joining us on that holiday were from those country's.

This year had been crazy for me and I really got the hang of traveling now, when I was in Belgium I got really bored and wanted to go somewhere, that's when I recalled my conversations about Australia and started to research how this could be done. Shortly after I ordered my visa for Australia and I knew this was gonna be the cherry on the cake. Sam, another one of my best friends seemed quite interested in this idea and he decided that he was gonna come as well.

Now here I am am, one month from now I will be in Australia, I can only imagine the life I will have there, a full year in a foreign country on the other side of the globe. It's going to amazing for sure!