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Stranger in a Strange Land Newsletter: February, 2009

Dear Readers,

I mentioned that I'll be offering a Worldschool Travel Tour to Japan this November and that I'll send out more details about it. Here are the exciting details, and, in fact, so many people have shown interest already that I decided to offer a second trip this year in August as well!

On both of the trips my step-mom, Tomoko Shibuya, who is from Japan, is going to be a guide on the trip. We're both really excited about it.

The trip from August 1st-21st has the advantage of being the hot season in Japan and the time when they have many festivals where people don yukatas (light casual summertime kimonos) and display some of the best fireworks in the world.

The one from November 1st-21st has the advantage of milder, cooler weather and having festivals around the beautiful red Japanese maple leaves. Also, Tomoko's daughter, my (half) sister, Yuni, will be on the trip and will go through a special ceremony for seven year olds in Japan which we'll be able to watch as part of our experience of Japanese culture.

On both trips we'll be seeing Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, Himeji Castle, and Mino "Monkey Mountain".

We'll have a Japan Rail Pass and travel from city to city on the Shinkansen "Bullet Trains".

We'll eat real Japanese sushi, "tako yaki" (fried octopus dumplings), miso soup, fried udon and soba with teriyaki, and other great foods you might not have heard of like "oden", "nabe", "katsudon", and maybe some "natto" (slimy fermented soy beans) if you dare!

We'll see numerous beautiful temples and shrines along with the lovely gardens and bamboo groves that are often next to them. We'll see a couple impressive castles in Osaka and Himeji. We'll see people walking around on the street in majestic kimonos about once a day or more. We'll see manga shops, wildly dressed Harajuku girls, and intense video game arcades. We'll encounter tame deer in Nara and kleptomaniacal monkey on Mino mountain just north of Osaka.

The cost of this three week tours is $3,600 including airfare from Los Angeles, all lodging, and a Japan Rail Pass for free travel on the Shinkansen inter-city trains and local JR trains.

I'll will provide my service in finding the cheapest flight possible to LA, as low as $260rt from the east coast of the US, but it is not included in the cost of the tour. Food is also not included in the cost of the tour.

I will also be available for coaching in how to raise money in the several months leading up to the tours as we highly recommend the young people on Worldschool Travel Tours raise much or even the majority of the money needed for the trip. This is a necessity for many families but we also find that earning money is an empowering education itself and makes the experience on the trip all the more valuable.

Check-out info about past travel tours and see photos on the Worldschool Travel Tours page. Contact me with any questions at: eli@eligerzon.com

Sounds pretty exciting, desu ne (doesn't it)? In the meantime, I canceled the Guatemala trip in July because I actually didn't have enough people. I decided to postpone it, possibly for next winter. I prefer to go there in the winter anyway. In fact, I was planning on going myself right about now but decided I didn't need to scout things out for the tour in July anymore and there are other things I want to concentrate on here.

I'm planning for the Japan tours and others further in the future and I'm starting to write for a popular travel website called
www.wanderingeducators.com which happens to be run by two very cool unschooling parents I met at the Unschoolers Winter Waterpark Gathering (UWWG) in Sandusky, Ohio in the beginning of February. And they're helping me improve my website and put up a blog connected to my site. I'll keep you posted about that!

The UWWG was a lot of fun and Hannah and Cameron were both there. I gave a talk about my travels and my Worldschool Travel Tours and it was great to have them there to speak first hand about their own experiences. Other people shared their travel stories and wisdom and I think we all got a lot out of it.

In regard to these Japan tours some readers may remember the difficulties I had while teaching English in Japan for eight months in 2004. There are some things about Japan I find challenging and I'm sure some will too on the tours. But Japan is an amazing place and in trying to understand and work with the strangeness that is Japanese culture I think we'll all learn a lot. For me that's half the point to these tours.

When we face challenges and use what we learn to better understand ourselves and the world and how we can share our gifts, it's a wonderful thing. The real problem is when we have difficulties and we let them take us over and we lose track of who we are and what we really want. That's what happened to me in Japan: I lost track of myself and what I really wanted and I stayed there too long. The irony is, I often felt I was there just to earn money and in the end I left with the same amount of money as when I arrived!

From that I learned that it is possible for me to lose my way and the consequences are not fun: I actually got very sick in the end. Still, I also learned I can recover from detours, continue on my journey, and eventually find what I'm looking for. That's what happened on my next trip to South Korea in late 2005: after further trials and tribulations I discovered what I'm really meant to do is travel from place to place and share what I learn as best I can. That's my goal in my writing, my speaking, and leading these travel tours. I hope as I try to share my light, it will help others share their light, which will help others share their light, and so on. I realize that's all we can do in this world and I think it's a lot.

May you shine your light and give others the courage to do the same,
Eli