Urban backpacking!

I leave for Japan and Seoul in a little over an hour now. What do I feel? Excitement, anticipation, slight trepidation, and an intriguing epiphany. What is that epiphany? That my family probably can't backpack the sierras without having to resort to cannibalism, but they're professional urban backpackers.

You've probably seen the urban backpacker - they tend to flock to Europe. Male or female, they're usually 20 something people who are out exploring the world as cheaply and as mobile as possible. In the case of my family, they're just trying to live up to the Japanese ability of streamlining and improving upon the idea of travelling to another civilization. I realized this as I was double checking my lists with my mom about what to bring - clothes? toiletries? camera (I AM Japanese...)? No, my mom suggests I bring along change of underwear and some extra socks. Period. "You should go fast and light" she says "just wear what you need, buy anything you require and remember NOT to check anything in". She made me feel like I needed to rush out to REI and buy all of their ultra-light adventure racing gear for this trip (dehydrated boxers? sweet - that's light and packable!).

Somehow I'm out of practice with the urban backpacking though. I'm sticking with my 2400 cu in backpack with a smaller camelback (originally I was going to go with a jury-rigged manpurse, but Johnnie talked me out of it for fear that people Stateside would taunt me forever... oh.. ooops...), clothes for 30 F degree to 80F degree weather, toiletries, camera, a green ribbon and my compass. My compass is keeping me feeling safe and comforted. I very well couldn't bring my MSR stove with me to help keep me feel as if everything was just A OK.

I still managed to streamline what I was bringing. I'm going to attempt not to check in my backpack and hope they don't have a problem with it. oh well if they do...