Pre-travel jitters

My brother and I have agreed that the hardest part of a big trip is getting on the plane. After that, you just have to live it. Well, this nomad is having pre-travel jitters. These last days before the trip have consisted of coming and going from DC to New York, New York City to upstate, transferring my belongings, AKA crap, from one location to another. Along the way, I have been thinking, "What is a home, anyway?"
In Sierra Leone they say that home is where your placenta is buried. I do have my placenta buried in the backyard of the house where I was born in Queens, but I'm sure that it has disintegrated in these 29 years, and Queens doesn't really feel like home anymore. My friends and family are all over the country and world, so I guess I take them with me wherever I go. My home is in the heart.
My goodbyes (or temporary goodbyes) to many of you these past days will stick with me. The enthusiastic thumbs up my mother gave me as I managed to use an expired bus ticket from the wrong location after seeing her. My brother's intensely loving gaze as he dropped me at home one night.
You'll all be coming with me on my trip. So I think you have the right to know what the first stop is. Tomorrow, Christmas day, we'll be going to Los Angeles to visit my two brothers Jon and Matthew, as well as several cousins. This upcoming weekend, we'll be taking a trip to Death Valley.
(Don't worry if you're busy, I'm sure you could fit it in, and yes these are just images taken from the internet. I'm actually not going anywhere, I'm just going to hide out in my mother's basement for two months and post blog entries pretending I'm in exotic places.)

So I will be in LA from Christmas until New Years when I depart for Asia, experiencing multiple "Happy New Years!" as I fly through the air through various time zones from Cali to Japan.

We land in Tokyo, Japan on New Years Day. My friend who I'll be staying with lives between the cities of Osaka and Kyoto, but I think I'll spend the first night in Tokyo proper at an inn where they serve you tea in the afternoon and you sleep on mats.

The girl I'll be staying with had suggested that I stay in a "capsule hotel" where the beds are like pull out coffins in the wall.
I was freaked out just by looking at them, feeling like I would be baking in an oven like Hansel and Gretel, wondering if you could eject the incubator yourself or if someone needs to pull you out in the morning. There is a panic button.

On a website it says that the idea of capsule hotels have not caught on around the world. As my friend Pam said, "Ya think?"

I will be visiting several temples around Japan as well as a city where there is free roaming deer called Nara, but let me leave these hypothetical plans for another day and wish all of you happy holidays. Hasta luego! Sayonara!