Introduction.

Hi,
I'm Andy.  I am a physician from Oklahoma, and this blog is a means to document my travels.  To understand, let me give some background.

ONE year ago, my wife passed away by means of a great trauma.  We had been married for nearly 17 years, but I would not call it a good marriage.  She had substance abuse issues that always subverted (one could say ruined) much of our relationship.  In fact, she died on the day that I was planning to file for divorce.

Throughout my life, I've always had a bit of wanderlust.  But once married, it seemed that whenever we would travel, she would insert some type of drama into the situation.  I now know that it was likely because of her inability to procure her substances of choice, which caused her significant anxiety.  Suffice to say, travel became more trouble than it was worth.  My passport even expired without me realizing (something that would have been unheard of to the single Andy)

So a year ago, I decided that I wanted to take a bit of a "Crazy"trip.  I wanted to travel to a place where English was not the primary language and where the culture was completely foreign to my Western eyes.  Around the same time, I began reading the novels of Haruki Murakami.  I became fascinated by Japanese culture.  So the plan was to go to Japan.  ALONE.  No tours, no travel agents.  Because I am a solo practitioner, this was going to take a lot of planning.  So sometime in March or April of 2013, I decided to go to the Land of the Rising Sun for two weeks in early spring of 2014.  I wanted to try to catch some of the Cherry Blossom bloom.

Coincidentally, last year I became involved in a "guys weekend" in Vegas (with my longest and closest friend and a few others), and I wanted to do that as well.  So I tacked them together.  The Vegas trip ended today, and I was supposed to fly to LAX onwards to Tokyo Narita International Airport today.

The details of why I'm not will be in the second post.