Japan is one of those nations that has always fascinated me, having heard stories of a conservative nature with extreme focus on collectivism, a history filled with twists and turns, and most of all, existing as the most eastern of the eastern cultures, an assorted collection of islands, strung together by the perfect balance of tradition and technology.

What is knowledge? How is identity determined? Who does the land belong to? Sometimes our journeys bring forth momentous questions that we don’t even know we were seeking answers to! Such was our travel to this remarkable island country continent in the Southern Hemisphere – Australia!

In our second round of continents around the globe, the next stop happened to be Europe. I have often come across this argument in movies and books that Europe should not even be considered a…