400 Days Away is a photo album covering a year of travel across 15 countries.

In the end of 2025, I decided to take a year away from usual life to do a slow lap around the planet.

I spent half a year in Japan, where I had already lived for a year as an exchange student, explored in the older, cringier album Loveletter To Japan.

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Many of my old friends there made this lifestyle change easier. I was also lucky to make many new friends, especially during our time in a rural town teaching English, playing volleyball, and for some odd reason learning to make mochi in a garage.

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I went back and forth nonstop for those six months. Tokyo, Nikko, Kagawa, Hiroshima, Osaka, back to Tokyo, then back down south to Nagasaki and Fukuoka. Japan hadn't changed much, I felt. But I did. It felt good seeing it again without a yearning to go back. Like I had moved on.

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Korea was a fresh change of pace. I loved the liveliness. People seemed straightforward. That also meant you saw when they were bored, or pissed, or tired. But I liked that, it's honest, it's transparent.

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Indonesia was more of a challenge to my world view. I felt so odd being the (relatively) rich tourist. This year-long trip was motivated in part by my growing interest in how capitalism and economics at large affected our lives. The example that Indonesia's tourism-heavy economy presented really clarified, for me, the processes of gentrification in various forms, the zero-sum games we play in our economies (and relatedly race-to-the-bottom style business), and how economical classes are formed both nationally and around the globe. Everyone I met there was amazing, and I wish the world was different.

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Australia was far more familiar to Canada, excluding the wildlife. I went snorkling and could barely see through the tears in my mask because of the blinding beauty. Oceans are amazing and terrifying, just like space. If they had documentaries about deep space creatures I would be considering a career change.

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A month of my time in Australia was spent in a campervan, which I loved everything about, except for the campervan. Scouting for a cold shower every few days can be a bit exhausting. I learned how much I took for granted. To those who live in cars or boats, you are strong.

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Then the final 3 months in Europe went by quickly. Like the shrines in Japan, there's only so many cathedrals you can visit before they all start to look the same. I'd trash talk the tourists if it didn't make me a hypocrite. There are so many good places, places sometimes better than what's popular, that just don't have the same marketing hype. It's really worth exploring for yourself and getting a local opinion.

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After a year abroad, can I even summarize all the lessons I learned? The answer is yes.

People are the same, no matter where you go.

A huge part of my life is centered around computers, and that's super weird.

Everyone is a slave to whoever's money or attention they desire.