Thank you very much for visiting our HP, Masahiro & Kumiko’s World Travel as Our Honeymoon over a year.  You will see the real-time records of our world trek on this HP.  Some of you may want to try your own world travel in the future, to go abroad, join us, or may be worried about our safety.  Others may be interested in oversea or what will happen a couple after over a yearlong honeymoon.  We hope that any of you will enjoy our HP.

Hopes and fears.  We are now excited about what we will see, will be changed, and learn, etc.  Nobody knows what is going to happen to us as well as your lives.  Unimaginative story may wait for each of us. 

We are very grateful to share our world travel records and really appreciate that one of our friends Shige creates this HP for us.  Thank you Shige.

World travel has been my dream (Masahiro’s dream) and I have hoped that my dream would come true some day.  There were a lot of reasons why I hoped that the world travel would have come true that much.　I would like to tell you one crucial experience that gave me the trigger.

“ Travel to India when I was sophomore. “

Foreign country means only “the United States of America” for me in those days.  As I just admired America by that time, the experience of traveling India as my first abroad was enough shocking.  One of my best friends Mr. Yoshioka asked me to join his travel to India if I would like, then I joined him without thinking deeply.  I was tossed about by cloud of people (I wasn’t able to understand where they came) in Calcutta, a man with no legs or arms who lived on the streets were chasing me to get some money from me, we volunteered with the beautiful Indian brothers and sisters at Mother Teresa’s “Nirmal Hriday” (a house in Calcutta for terminal ill patients who’re waiting for the death), helped the patients to eat the food, massaged their bodies.  We were also deceived into some bad Indians, sometimes …

“ What is that?!?!  What is this?!?!”

This sentence was repeated in my mind and heart.

“ How come we are so different from each other? ”

“ Because of the difference between religion? “

“ Or because of different histories? “

“ Otherwise, the difference of the environment makes these differences? “

I completely lost my words because I wasn’t able to understand and digest a lot of things that I saw in India by my own.  I was shocked.

Though I was shocked by India, I became interested in that country sOu much, because I thought that people in India seemed to have way more “vitality for their lives”.  I thought

“ Wow, how cool those energetic people in India and their culture! “

I also thought that

“ I didn’t know that traveling abroad was such a exciting thing before.” 

Afterwards, I continued to visit Asia, Middle America and South America, and I began to think 

“ I would like to seek a lot of unknown things in the world continuously some day! “

“ And I would love to write own book about it! “

As I knew that it’s not easy to make a livelihood by traveling, I got a job with a department store in 1994.  However I had hoped that my dream would have come true.  Six years had passed since I began to work with that department store when I met my wife Kumiko and we decided to get married after a couple years.  After a long-long discussion with her, we made a decision to travel around the world as our one yearlong honeymoon and quitted the company in August 2002.  8 years had passed since I began to work with a company.

I and my wife discussed a lot till we reached this decision and I would like to mention that there were a lot of supports and understanding by my wife, parents, and many people around us.

Departure
By a ship “New-Ganjin” from Osaka International Ferry Terminal on October 1 2002 and will arrive in Shanghai on October 3. 
(We arranged only this as of September 30.)

Return
Approximately from October 2003 to April 2004

However, we are not sure exactly.  Some of you may think that is a bit too vague and irresponsible yet we did minimum but important preview. We looked up several surface and local lines in the countries, checked visa information, and the bus routes.  Basically we use buses and stay at guesthouses, so we need to be there to make a reservation, so we cannot fix the schedules now.  We don’t know what will happen to this world and we don’t know how we are changed by this journey, either.  If the direction for our interests is changed, we may change the visiting country list.  More detailed information and schedules will be informed on determination.

Approximately schedules are as follows,

1,Eurasia（October 3 2002 -- 4 or 6 months）
To Tibet, Nepal and Bombay in India from Shanghai by land, to Teheran in Iran from Bombay by Iran-air.  To Turkey, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Germany, France, England and Spain from Teheran by land, and to Morocco through Gibraltar Channel by a ship.

2.Africa（About 4 – 6 months）
To Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon from Morocco by land.  To Nairobi in Kenya from Cameroon by air and to Tanzania, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa from Nairobi by land.  To Buenos Aires in Argentine from Cape Town in South Africa by air.

3.North, Middle and South America( About 4 – 6 months)
To Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and Colombia from Buenos Aires by land.  To Costa Rica from Colombia by air and Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico and the US by land.

After we get to New York by land, we will visit my wife’s second hometown Seattle before returning home in Japan.