I.AM.STARR.ZAN

Where one story ends and another begins is hard to tell but what is known is that each forms part of a greater story being told. A chapter experienced in a moment of time. Since my last post a lot has changed, specifically geographically and career wise. My wife and I were living in Cape Town South Africa and then decided to move to Japan for a while, arriving just in time for the Rugby World…

Tuesday, 12 July 2019

And just like that, more than a year has past since my last post. The title of that post was aptly named The Pursuit, and what a pursuit it has been.

Having returned to Japan twice during this time, we are currently residing in Cape Town, South Africa, more specifically Sea Point. Sea Point is one of the more expensive places to live in Cape Town, but it has everything…

As we progress through life, our priorities often change. I, having been single for most of my life of 35 years, was mostly always only focused on myself, my own wants and needs, my own future, my own path in life. Now that I have been in a relationship for the last year, my priorities have changed, a lot actually, and if there is one word that can describe my year of being in a serious…

The Virtual Currency Revolution and how to get free Bitcoins (and what that actually means)

Monday, 02 January 2017. For the past two months, I have been diligently clicking my time away, trying to get my hands on Bitcoins, with the hope, and promise, of getting Bitcoins for free. Please note: Now there should be an immediate caution here, that even though you get “free Bitcoins”, you actually only get the smallest fraction of a Bitcoin for free for your efforts of clicking and view…

Life, Time, and The Future

It’s been a while. Since my last blog entry, I went back to Japan again, during late November and early December, and spent a most wonderful 3 weeks in Tokyo and Beppu. Throughout the time leading up to that trip, I had been constantly busy, either with work or with travelling around the Western Cape province of South Africa, but mostly I was busy with work, all the while being on an adventure…

There And Back Again

How do you go back to your normal way of life, your everyday and ordinary, after having had an adventure that is completely out of the ordinary, such as I had in Hong Kong, Thailand, and Japan? I know that many people have had the experience of travelling to another country, especially to a far-off country, and lived there, for however a short while, in a place that is different to their own.…

Japan – At Journey’s End

Wednesday, 22 June 2016. Three days into my hike along the Nakasendo Way, from Kyoto to Tokyo, by way of the Shiga, Gifu, Nagano, and Saitama prefectures, the journey ended. The reasons for this sudden ending of my trek was manifold, with various factors all aiding in the decision to change my course and travel in another direction, back to a place I had visited before, back to Beppu. But before…

Japan – Good Friends Along The Way

Sunday, 05 June 2016. Leaving Hiroshima was not easy. For one, its tragic past was an ever-present reminder of the frailty of life and the regrettable folly of man. Yet the city, as with all of the cities I have encountered in Japan, holds a festive mood and a mutual joy of coming together with others, with progress, sustenance, and renewal being a common theme amongst them all. For another, I…

Japan 2016 – Honshu to Shikoku to Kyushu to Honshu, and Other Observations In-between – Part 1

Sunday, 29 May 2016. It is a rainy Sunday morning, in Nagasaki, and I am on a bus, warm and dry, heading to Fukuoka, my final stopover on the island of Kyushu. In three days time, I will once again be back in Honshu, the biggest of the four main islands of Japan, where another infamous city, Hiroshima, awaits me. But I am getting ahead of myself. It has been a while since I last wrote about my…