A ridiculously inexpensive flight from Milan to Tokyo and back, my backpack, a fluent-Japanese-speaking girlfriend wwoofing on a tropical island in southern Japan who is waiting for you (while Europe is buried in snow), and a copy of Will Ferguson's book "Hitching Rides with Buddha" [1]. Pretty much everything you need for setting out for a trip to Japan. And here I go.

Ferguson's book is brilliant. It has all the features that I happen to like in a book: it's well written, funny, educational, useful, it tells a damn true story. I just had to read it before starting my trip, although my timing and the season did not allow me to go all the way to Hokkaido. And by the way, you have to do something during those 12 hours you're forced to sit in the plane, so you'd better have something good to read if you don't want to watch Bruce Willis saving the world for the 348th time on a 10-inch-screen with the audio resolution of a tamagochi. But the book needs some updating. That's why I'm telling you the story of my hitching in Japan.

I left Haydarpaşa a few hours ago and have been very sleepy during the first few hours of the ride. Waking up every now and then from my snooze, I would see large quays, harbour areas in the middle of nowhere and huge oil transformation complexes.

I went on reading the guidebook to Turkey Daniel gave me as he was flying back to Australia, diving into it for the first time. What do I know about a country before I get there? Nothing. I knew nothing about the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles and the gap between two continents that Istanbul was trying to bridge. I knew nothing of this language so full of harmonies. I knew nothing, apart maybe from the kebab.