re: The commodification of travel

I relate a lot to Herman's recent post, in more ways then one. His thoughts on travel are very similar to mine, and the fact that he's writing from Kyoto is even better. You see, I spent a semester studying in Japan 14 years ago (good grief has it been that long?). I went to a business school in Tokyo (武蔵大学), despite being a computer science major. I honestly had never been interested in traveling until then. The only reason I found myself in Japan was having been lured into the International Studies office by a sign saying "Free Pizza (Learn About Exchange Programs)", and hey, my college town did have good pizza! While in Japan, I visited Kyoto during the freezing cold of November. I went with another American in my program, we stayed in a hostile, hit the 銭湯 (public bathhouse) every night and hopped around on bus to each destination. We had little plan outside of a small list of things we wanted to see. Most of what we ended up doing was the result of recommendations from our…