Hey! My name is Ryota, and I'm a freshly graduated games design student from the University of the Arts London (UAL). So now you may be asking yourself, "Why is a games designer starting a travel blog?". Well, just as much as I love making games, I also love travelling (and writing too!). I'm adding this short disclaimer here to let you know that I'm no world travelling guru, that has all the secrets to eternal happiness. I'm just a walking set of flesh and bones that enjoys writing about travel, and to hopefully inspire and show others the beauty of exploring the world..
From a very young age my parents would often take me on numerous trips abroad, from the rustic, cobblestone paths of France, to the white sandy beaches of Spain. Many of which I still have fond memories of. As the years went on and my two brothers were born, travelling became less and less frequent. This takes us to 2017.
I was in my final year of college on a two year games design course, and fantasies of travelling the world again, slowly began to seep its way into the memories of my brain. I went from watching tons of gaming related content on YouTube, to travel related content, and this fuelled my hunger to explore the world even more. Summer rolls around, I graduate college, and I start a summer job working at a restaurant. Working full-time and also planning out which university I was going to join, occupied a large majority of the real estate in my mind, so my exploration dreams were put on hold for the time being. September arrives in a flash, and I'm thrust into a whole new class of people, and studying more of what I enjoy. I ended up continuing my summer restaurant job, part-time while studying, however the late night hours ultimately took a toll on me and by the time December arrived, I was no longer working there. Around November I was encouraged by my managers to start booking some days off, since I still had the same amount of paid days off as a full-time employee, despite now converting into a part-time position. I messaged my friend about the possibility of travelling somewhere, and from there the excitement of a holiday sparked our imaginations. The endless lists of countries we want to visit, places we want to see, and food we want to eat then ensued, until our fingers began to ache from typing. We of course also created the obligatory 'holiday' group chat, otherwise it isn't official right? I believe that almost every friend group must have been in this situation, where you all talk about going on holiday somewhere, making a group chat, and attempt to plan some sort of trip. People then begin to have disagreements on where they want to go, someone decides that actually they can't get the days off or is running low on cash and leaves the chat. The initial honeymoon period of excitement was now pierced, and all those desires of travel sat inside a deflated balloon of dreams. This usually happens way too often and you end up spending one boring night, sifting through numerous deserted group chats of a trip which never left the planning stage. I was determined to make it work this time, and thankfully we were able to go on my first trip abroad without my family to Belgium and France.
The experience was so eye-opening and fun, that it reminded me of how much I loved to visit different countries and take in different cultures. I also learned a lot in terms of planning and booking a holiday, including how we managed to get to Belgium from London for £10 per person. Yes, literally, £10. This will be something I'll go into more in depth on in another blog post, as at this point I realised that I may have gone a bit overboard for the first introduction post. The great thing about having your own blog is that you don't have any deadlines to meet, or guidelines you need to follow. So, with that I will end it here. Thanks for reading. <3
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