Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Japan in 2005?

I'm thinking I might actually manage to take a trip to Japan in mid-late 2005, if I can get all of my debt paid off by the end of 2004. (50-50 odds of that happening, might take me until mid-2005 to finish pay-down, but after August I'll have finished paying off my car loan which will accelerate the process.) Of course, I'll also need to save up a bit of cash to pickup a Sony Mini-DV camcorder to match up with my Sony digital camera (the Sony Mini-DVs use the same batter pack as my Sony camera, which makes life easier). The DCR-PC105 or the DCR-PC330 seem like nice options (and they'll both drop in price quite a bit by next year).

There are some 8-day guided tour packages that are anywhere from $1600-$2400 and depart from the west coast, which means probably $2000-$3000 for the trip. (Sounds like a lot, but once the car is paid off and the debt is cleared, that won't take long to save up for.) For my first trip over, I don't think I want to try and piecemeal a trip on my own. Too many pitfalls, especially since my Japanese would be far from fluent even if I studied non-stop between now and then.

So while it's 18-30 months away, it means I'd better get cracking on studying and saving up the cash.

posted by Wuphon's at 3:52 PM