Tables Are Turned – Travel Poll 2025
Good evening,
This is the November edition of Letters from Japan, and this month I have something different: a travel poll, the kind I used to post on Instagram at year’s end, back when I was younger (well, not that much younger, ten years ago, when I was 35 and already too old for this kind of thing), mostly for friends. It is not the kind where I ask what you’d like to see more of in this newsletter or whether travel makes you a better person, but rather an excuse to reflect on our travel habits, and on the concept itself, a little lightly, or perhaps even a bit too seriously, in a way that somewhat mocks the whole thing. This is not a serious poll at all, as you’ll see right from the first question, where I offer you a trade to forgo a world-famous landmark.
You may also choose to fill it in on Substack, where the layout works more beautifully, with results and vote numbers showing immediately, along with a comment section. To vote on Substack: Travel Poll 2025.
The Travel Poll – 2025
Below are some truly nonsensical questions, inspired by the games we used to play while traveling with friends in high school and college. The road trip kind of question: Would you spend a night alone in a thousand-year-old cave in Cappadocia, full of ancient and religious carvings, with no electricity and no one around for a kilometer, if we paid you USD 10,000? I’d instantly turn down the money, not because I’m not materialistic, but because I used to be utterly terrified of the dark (just a little less so now) and could not and still cannot imagine anything scarier.
In terms of the more extreme hypothetical scenarios below, the only question I already know my answer to, with 100% certainty, is #3. For the rest, I’ll be deciding and voting along with everyone else until the end of November, and if you would care to know, I’ll be transparent about my own votes, possibly even for question #10.
As always, thank you for being here and for bearing with me through this very strange diversion from our regular programme. I will be back with Japan-focused content in December.
Until then,
Burcu
