We’ve made it to the last country of the Asia tour. It started off with a lot of energy, positivity, and excitement, all of which were sustained for a pretty long time. But now, the energy is gone, the optimism is a shadow of what it once was, and the excitement—well let’s just say I’m excited for one thing: to be home.

It’s unfortunate that it hit me in the country that I was possibly most excited for in this part of the world: Japan. But I’m not even trying to fight it. I’m just ready to be back.

The week started off with my last final of the semester and I really hope I did enough to pass. That should be the case, but we’ll have to see how the bell curve plays out.

Following that, I went out one more night with the friends I’ve made over the course of the semester. We watched the World Cup and enjoyed our last moments together.

Goodbyes always kind of suck, but it’s pretty sad to build up relationships over the next four months just to know that you might only see these people one or two more times in your entire life, if at all.

The following day I woke up and departed Singapore for the final time. Maybe it’s the final time ever, who knows? I don’t have any plans to go back anytime soon.

I suppose it’s time for a brief tangent on my thoughts about Singapore, now that I’m gone.

Singapore offers a lot of things to its residents. It boasts an incredibly high quality of life (higher than the US), very strong education (NUS is a top 10 university in the world in some rankings), cheap healthcare, copious job opportunities, great public transportation, and inexpensive food ($6 USD will leave you completely full). What’s not to like in a country like that?

Honestly, a lot. Singapore is a country run like a business. It’s a well-oiled machine, and if you work hard you’re going to make a lot of money. So that’s what its residents do. But what it misses, compared to America, is a little freedom, creativity, and fun.

When it comes to freedom, the government definitely does its best to stifle any dissent about the country. It’s become more free speech-tolerant in recent years, but the residual effects from when there was a much stronger crackdown still remain. People don’t feel the need to speak out, and harsh punishments can be imposed for doing so. Protesting is illegal without a valid lisence (issued by the government lol).

Regarding creativity, Singapore has built up some incredible institutions in the last 50 years. It’s solicited foreign businesses to set up shop in the country due to its business-friendly tax laws and educated population. Like I said earlier, it’s got it all, and citizens are incentivized to become a cog in the machine. If you work hard, you’ll get paid well, and live a good life.

Because that seems so lucrative, there is no culture of innovation or creativity. As someone who is interested in startups, I would not enjoy living in Singapore. They have produced a few unicorns (including Grab and Shoppee) to their credit, but the culture is simply not there. Trust me, I looked.

If it wasn’t obvious, the culture in Singapore is to put your head down, don’t make too much noise, and do well in school so you can get a good job some day. So very few Singaporeans seem to enjoy going out on a weekend. That means that bars and clubs are far more frequented by tourists, which means they jack the prices way up as a result. There’s an entry fee for everything, and alcohol prices are generally through the roof. It’s fine if you visit for a week or two, but after four months I was ready to go.

So Singapore is a great place to visit for a week. It’s also a great place to be located in southeast Asia if you want to travel the area (Changi Airport is ranked among the best in the world). But I could never see myself living there full-time. Simply put, it lacks some of the things that make America awesome. Things that we generally take for granted.

Anywho. I’ve now touched down in Japan and spent time in Osaka, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and now Tokyo. Here are some highlights.

The view from Abeno Harukas, the tallest building in Japan was pretty sick. But even cooler was that at the top, they randomly had a basketball court! I ended up playing 2 on 2 with a guy from Japan and two guys from Macao, on top of the world. It was pretty sick.

I also got to see a nice view of Kyoto after a short mile and a half hike. Kyoto is famous for being the “traditional Japanese city,” as it still has a lot of temples and shrines that are hundreds, if not thousands of years old. On the Japanese bullet trains, it’s only a 13 minute ride from Osaka, making it easy to take a day-trip from where I was based.

Finally, most significantly for me, I took a day-trip to Hiroshima, the location of the first atomic bomb that was ever dropped, which contributed to the end of World War II.

Two-hundred thousand people died from the bomb.

One single bomb.

I think it’s hard to fathom how much desctruction that is. Even for me, being there, it was hard to fathom.

Most people died extremely painful deaths within a few days from burns, but some died suddenly years later from cancer or leukemia.

In the US whenever we talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is a massive emphasis put on how the bombs leveled the city. I don’t think we talk enough about how many hundreds of thousands of lives were lost or ruined from those two events.

But going to the site of the detonation really puts that in perspective. Most of the people were civilians, a lot of children, and most of them died without even knowing what happened. Considering that no one knew what an atomic bomb was. American POWs also died from the explosion.

That’s kind of insane.

Now, I’m not going to comment on whether the detonation was justified. The reasoning from Americans is that Japan had never surrendered in a war in recorded history, and about half a million Americans would have died from an impending land invasion, not to mention 5-10 million Japanese. The US’s other strategy was a naval blockade of the country, effectively starving them out, which would have led to many more civilian deaths.

But still…

I don’t know. It’s a nasty weapon. We’ll never know if the atomic bomb saved lives and was the lesser of two evils. But I do hope that they’re never used again and countries like America and Russia can take steps towards denuclearisation. And just stop fighting in general.

One thing I learned this week is that I reached my travel limit. Maybe it’s because the end is in sight, but Japan also isn’t the easiest place to solo travel. It’s far more expensive than southeast Asia, and I’ve stayed at three different hostels here, all of which have been pretty antisocial.

Either way, I definitely feel like I reached my limit in Asia, and at the very least it’s satisfying to look back on it and feel like I did everything I wanted to. But now that I’ll be home in 5 days, it’s all I can think about.

To all my loyal fans, I’m planning two more entries, one talking about the remaining four days I have in Tokyo and summarizing my favorite countries abroad, and one detailing some of the things I learned from traveling. Stay tuned!