Hi I'm Jan Philipp and I'm from Germany. I'm traveling around Japan for more than a year now to see and meet up with people and their culture and meeting other like minded travelers.

For my character, I'm a quiet and peaceful person with a lot of thoughts crossing my mind which I usually keep to myself (yes, an introvert). This however doesn't mean I don't like to have a good conversation, I like getting knowing a lot of people.

PHILOSOPHY

Be nice, bright and open and you'll get the same in return.. Wait, wasn't that called karma?

oh and this..

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."
- Terry Pratchett

Por qué estoy en Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I'm going around and meet up with interesting awesome people through couchsurfing. I also like the idea of being a host myself once I'm back to my home country., yet I don't know where my home is atm.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I've started in Okinawa, end january 2014. I liked it. After that I had some hosts in Kagoshima, Sendai and from there it snowballed on. Everyone was so supportive.

I'm new to this and still have to learn the ropes about couchsurfing. One thing I got told by the more experienced couchsurfers is that I have to plan way in advance to stay somewhere. I'm more a person who tries to be flexible so a sudden change in plan isn't unusual. So I either must make a plan and stick to it or finding people who don't mind a short notice request.

Intereses

Photography (look over at the photo section), traveling, technology, culture, taking a stroll through the woods, urban areas and recently climbing mountains. I got a lot of interests and when I start talking about them I could become a little obsessed with it.

• culture
• photography
• running
• boating
• technology
• traveling
• hiking
• rock climbing
• languages
• mountains

Música, películas y libros

Movies:
Minority Report, The Place Promised in our early days, fight club.

Music:
Recently I'm always firing up 8tracks.com and search for "study", "calm", "piano" or "classic rock"

Books:
Mostly phantasy novels like the Discworld books, Harry Potter and such.
Recently heard the audio book of Pierce Brown's Red Rising and Michael J. Sullivan's Hollow World.
Currently finished reading: Wizard's first rule by Terry Goodkind and Golden Son by Pierce Brown.

Algo increíble que he hecho

From routined worker and couchpotato I've turned into a person who travels around on his own.

I've done lot of scary things and they turned out to be amazing. I've took the boat instead of the plane, run the risk to destroy my camera while keeping it out in the rainforest and actually killed it, got out to hike a part of Kumano Kodo, cycled around the biggest lake of this country, I've climbed around in the Japanese Alps for 5 days and got some amazing pictures with my camera, but badly strained my right knee in the process, I still went up Mt. Fuji with that. I crossed Daisetsuzan in Hokkaido and took a job as a hostel manager after that during a high season in Kyoto. I've met so many people, made friends, allowed myself to fall in love, get rejected, twice.. Going to Japan was the best decision and the one Amazing thing I've done yet and I'm still busy with.

tl;dr: Getting out of my comfort zone.

Enseña, aprende, comparte

I can share what I know about:
📷 Photography and compositions.
🎨 Designing websites, logos, etc.
🎌 Languages and culture (especially Asian)

And if you don't need to learn anything new, apparently I'm a good listener too.

Países que he visitado

Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan

Países en los que he vivido

Australia, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Netherlands