On a frigid, early morning in November, the window of the bus taking me to Narita Airport frames a winter scene. The withered ivy and gourd vines drape the forest, creating hills of desolation that give me the shivers. Ten-minutes behind schedule, the China Eastern Airlines flight takes off, headed from Narita to Shanghai. The aircraft exterior is decked out in bold coloring characteristic of China, while the interior is, though not quite LCC-basic, of a simplicity you don’t quite see these days. The in-flight announcements in Chinese continue from the loudspeaker as I continue on my journey and, try as I might to decipher it, I understand close to nothing. We pass through what I assume are the skies over the Korean peninsula, and eventually touchdown in Shanghai. After a somewhat dull transit through Pudong Airport, I then board Shanghai Airlines for my connecting flight. The CA is beautiful. However, I am left with pretty much the same impression that I got from China Eastern Airlines. Of course, I have nothing to complain about. I do land safe and sound at Singapore Changi Airport, after all.

From the time I stepped through the entrance of Narita Airport, to the time I transferred trains at the above-ground station of the Singapore MRT (subway), it has been roughly 8 hours since I had been exposed to the outside air. The smothering, subtropical humidity. And the different smells that mingle and brew in the towns of Southeast Asia, they are reminiscent of those of Hong Kong.

The previous day’s weather report for Singapore was, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, “Rain”, “Lightning and Thunder”, “Rain”, “Lightning and Thunder”, “Rain”, “Lightning and Thunder”. Prior to my connection to Singapore, I give serious thought to just abandoning the flight and disembarking at Shanghai for some Xiaolongbao and a crab tasting tour instead. It is 80% humidity, day after day. Singapore might be a modern city, but taking a walking tour in a rainstorm doesn’t seem plausible. For someone with an aversion to the cold, the one redeeming thing about this situation is that the temperature is 32 ºC, much, much warmer than in Tokyo.

At one of the MRT stations, a man in his 50s boards and sits in the seat across from me. I undoubtedly look like a tourist and he speaks to me twice in what is most likely Malay. I’m sure he is warning me, “Hey, you. You’d better transfer here if you want to the city centre.” Half the passengers got off the station and, thanks to him pointing his rolled-up tabloid magazine towards the platform, I completely understand the meaning of his words.

I thank him as I hop off onto the sun-drenched platform and, within the 5 minutes it takes for my connecting train to arrive, sweat has begun seeping out of every single pore on my body.

Singapore. A tiny country. Subtropics. It’s a transit trade country, or is it now known as a “hub city”? It has a high level of education. What else? …Oh, yeah. I think I recall learning in some boring class in junior high school that, “There is a fine for spitting out gum.” That about sums up what comes to mind when rattling off the things I know about Singapore. To add one more, the surprisingly small size of the Merlion. Or more recently, the Marina Bay Sands and the view from the rooftop pool. That’s about it. Setting off for Singapore is a surprise given that, until last month, I have had about as much inkling to go to Singapore as I might have for wearing stiletto heels to Ginza.

It was as night was beginning to fall while on my way to Ochanomizu station from Jimbocho station. I happened upon a classy stationery shop where schedules printed with “2013” were on display. When I arrived home, I found a rather blah-looking 2013 calendar with the gas company logo on it in my mailbox. By the time I had begun to think about organizing my holiday greeting cards, receipts and major cleaning, I was once again overcome with a combined sense of futility and impending crisis. The two calendars appearing before me hit me with the realization that each year ended in essentially the same way that the previous year ended.

I decided to set a new year’s resolution: “I will visit the Tohoku region of Japan once every month. I will go abroad 4 times a year during the spring, summer, fall and winter.” Although it seems like I’m not that busy, for some reason there have been years in my life when I haven’t had a moment to spare for an entire year and my record for travelling to the Tohoku region came to an end last September. As for travelling abroad, a trip to Taiwan at the beginning of the year had been the last time until November that I needed to go through the process of showing my passport photo to an airport customs officer. Never again would I let the bells that ushered in a new year, toll for me in vain.

That night, after drinking at a neighborhood bar, I went home and organized the pictures I had in my computer hard drive while I continued to drink, enjoying slices of blue cheese and cheap Spanish wine. Suddenly I noticed the dark red of my passport peeking out from the pages my bank book, which was sorely lacking in entries, and began to turn the sparsely stamped pages. I don’t remember very clearly, but it was probably that moment which inspired me to open up my laptop and search international travel sites. I adjusted my cursor to the “destination” tab and clicked “Asia”. There were rows of images of foreign cities I’d never visited.

Busan… Bangkok… Singapore…… Manila… Kuala Lumpur… Brunei… Jakarta…

Whoa. I had lived some 38 years, but had no idea that there were that many places in Asia that could be visited within a mere three days. With the alcohol helping a bit, I suddenly had an epiphany that I had lived a shallow and boring life because I knew so little beyond Japan. Granted, I hadn’t had the luxury of more than a handful of 3-day weekends over the past 10 years, but in the face of my revelation, that now sounded like just a sorry excuse. Right. So this was something that I needed to consult a travel agent about and, because alcohol can have a surprising influence, I ended up sending out e-mails to numerous travel agencies asking for quotes.

In the end, there wasn’t any particular incentive for going with my third choice, Singapore, except possibly that there were a number of people around me at the time that had recently gone to Singapore. Just the other day, I had had Hainanese chicken rice for lunch. The typos in the e-mail replies from the travel agencies were a little amusing. And that’s about it.

The next night, I continued to cut slices off what was left of the blue cheese as I got drunk on Japanese sake, and entered the numbers from my somewhat meaningless mileage card into the travel agency website. Nonetheless, from the time I made the reservation to the time of departure, I met no one, no ticket arrived, and with the simple exchange a just a few e-mails, I was able to travel to a foreign country. It was at that time that I pondered how much times had changed. There was no more to it than ordering vacuum cleaner filters on Amazon. Schedule? Work? Those shouldn’t pose a problem. It was possible that I would face a few regrets eventually, but given that this was a decision that I alone made, who was I to complain?

…The MRT that pulls in across the tracks blows a lukewarm, southeast Asian breeze up on to my platform. At the far end of the unintelligible announcements and cloudy sky, glitter the pale white skyscrapers of one of the most modern cities in Asia.