Suzy

Hello, traveling families. Today's episode is incredibly special because we are joining thousands of creators for the fourth edition of Podcasthon. For one week, podcasters around the world are highlighting charities that move us, and I'm honored to shine a light on the Make-A-Wish Foundation. My guest today has a story that truly defines resilience. As a teenager, Jodie faced a daunting battle with cancer and became an above-the-knee amputee. Through that journey, the Make-A-Wish Foundation was a vital source of joy and hope. And her Make-A-Wish trip to Hawaii kickstarted her love of travel. I am so happy to welcome advocates for accessible travel, Jodie and Anthony St. Clair, to share their travel origin stories, the convenient timing of their RV purchase, their transition to full-time travels with their now 14 and 11-year-old kids, and what prompted them to purchase a condo in Japan as their home base. Stick around to the end to learn more about Podcasthon.

Welcome to the Wander Worldschool Podcast. I'm Suzy, a travel-loving money nerd, mom of two, and our family lives between Spain and Colorado. On this show, we discuss the stories, logistics, and finances of traveling families and the many ways to learn along the way. Today, we get to know Anthony and Jodie St. Clair. Please tell me more about you and your family.

Jodie

We are a family of four. Our kids are 14 and 11, and we have been traveling full-time since August 2022. We now have a little bit of a base in Japan that we will talk more about as we get into it. But we are not living in Japan. We're still just traveling on a tourist visa in Japan.

Suzy

Very cool. Yes, I'm excited to hear more about Japan because I told you we're heading there this fall. It's going to be very new to our whole family.

Anthony

You're going to have so much fun and you're going to be just fine.

Suzy

Great, thank you. I always like to take it back either pre-kids or when you were growing up, where did each of your love for travel begin?

Anthony

I grew up in Virginia, so I got to go to New York and Washington, D.C. But when I was in college, my university had a student exchange program with a university in Edinburgh, Scotland. So I spent the first half of my senior year of college in Edinburgh. And that really changed my life. I got my first insights into backpacker culture, into the ideas of gap years, into this idea that travel could be more than just a vacation or a trip to go see family, that it could be a lifestyle, that it could be a way to get a sense of different places, different cultures for deeper growth. So fast forward from all that, when Jodie and I were getting serious and talking about the future and partnering as a family, we always knew we wanted to travel at least a year with our kids while we had the chance. They're ours and they're young for just such a brief bit of time. So for us, that was a way we could just get a lot of time with them and do something meaningful.

Jodie

So.

Suzy

It is important to give that opportunity. You're right, studying abroad at those pivotal early years in someone's education can be such an eye-opening experience. That's great. How about you, Jodie?

Anthony

Not mildly.

Jodie

I am an amputee and cancer survivor. And when I was in that part of my life as a teenager, I was granted a wish from Make-A-Wish. And my wish was to go to Kauai, Hawaii. So we went to Hawaii on this wish and that was enough to kind of spark that. And then actually, Anthony and I were in Edinburgh at almost exactly the same time. A high school theatre group was performing at the Fringe Festival, which was a great honor to be able to do that. And then when I met Anthony, he was talking about these gap years. And he was talking about families going, and that was like a very new idea to me. We kind of formed this little plan that we would do this year. But as I was researching, I just realized that this dream was growing a lot. And I was going, there's just no way we can do what we want to do in a year. I think we should make it open-ended. And that really kind of changed how we were thinking about it, that maybe we would go and not have a return date.

Suzy

How old were you when you had your Make-A-Wish experience?

Jodie

So I was diagnosed at 13 and I went through a year of chemo and I wanted to do my wish after I was done with chemo. So I think I was 14, almost 15 when I did my wish. I had very short, stubble hair, just growing fuzz back in, and I was more mobile and everything at that point. I should mention that with my cancer diagnosis, I also became an amputee because it was osteosarcoma, which is inside the bone. They have to remove your bone in order to remove the cancer.

Suzy

So you were in your teen years when you were navigating not just cancer, but also learning to live as an above-the-knee amputation, correct? Yeah. Yes. What was that journey like as you adjusted to your new normal?

Jodie

There are parts of it that were easier than it sounds and parts of it that are hard. It is a little bit of a lifelong journey because every once in a while something flares up and I'm like, oh, I just wish I could do that, you know? But for the most part, it was a little bit black and white. It was either like, you're going to choose to survive or you're not. And you're either going to choose to flourish in that survival or not. My parents were incredibly supportive and great examples, really helpful through all of that. And that made that journey much, much easier. And I was never told you can't do that because you're an amputee or anything like that. So I didn't really feel like I had a whole lot of limits. I just kind of ran into them naturally, which actually was a good way, I think, to kind of discover where those limits are. And I've really come to this place of recognizing, well, everybody has limits in some way; it's just different. And some people have more in certain seasons of their life and some people have less in certain seasons of their life. Everybody's journey is unique in that way. So my limits just really are mostly centered around my amputation, my leg, and what I can physically do in a day.

Suzy

Well, you were navigating accessible travel even before family travel. Yeah. Because you said you were in Edinburgh. Have you all been back to Edinburgh, Scotland as a family?

Anthony

Our son, he's 14, he has asked us to hold off on the UK and Ireland until he is of legal drinking age.

Jodie

He wants to have a pint with us there. So, I'm trying to hold off to honor that.

Suzy

That sounds like that would be a really special adventure.

Anthony

The proper Irish stout.

Suzy

For sure. My brother and I went to the Guinness factory when we were in Ireland a time ago. We had a lot of fun on a pub crawling. What has family travel looked like? You mentioned your goals around introducing travel to your children. What did travel look like when they were younger? And then this journey has been about three and a half years.

Anthony

When our children were younger, we lived in Western Oregon in Eugene. So we could, within an hour, go from our front door to the Oregon coast. We could go to the mountains. We could be on hiking trails in the forest, you name it. So a lot of our travels, when they were younger, were throughout the state. And then as they got older during the pandemic years, we had gotten a pop-up camper.

Jodie

We bought our pop-up camper in February of 2020. It could not have been a better time to get the pop-up camper. We did more travel through the pandemic than we ever had as a family because it was something we could do and we could do it safely. We could go out on our own. We always homeschooled, so we always had a little bit more flexibility.

Anthony

We wound up doing this giant camping trip just all up and down California. We had already been talking about when we would start our travels, but seeing that we could handle over a month of camping, we thought, "We can do this. We can travel the world. And you know what? We're starting now." When we got back from that trip in March of 2022, that's when it was go time, including that camper.

Jodie

Then we started selling everything. Yeah, including the camper, which was bittersweet, but it was that necessary step to move on to the next thing.

Suzy

There's no home base back in Oregon then, I see.

Anthony

Not anymore. We owned our home in Eugene. We rented it out long-term. We had tenants in there. We built a little storage room in the back of our garage. So anything we were keeping but not traveling with, we could just keep in there. We did that for a while. We actually sold the house in 2024. Having the house and renting it out was a way to say, "Hey, you know what, if we decide this isn't working for us, if we're done, then we could go back." Over time, we thought, well, how we are living is changing. If we were going back, this house wouldn't work for us anymore. There are different things we would want. So it was more favorable to sell it when we did than to wait. And that was one of the hardest but best choices we made. Our house meant so much to us. I proposed to Jodie there. We raised our babies there. We did all these amazing things and that house made so many things possible for us. But it was so important when we realized all this is no longer serving the life that we want. It's time to let it go so we can now serve another family.

Suzy

That's so well put. And I can see how your experiences of venturing out into the RV and then taking some trip and then renting it out so you had a little bit of a backup if needed, took years to then finally come to that point of, "This makes financial sense, logistical sense to let go of this and move on and make space in your life for these new adventures." So kids... 14, what was your second age? 11, okay. What are their thoughts about travel over these last couple of years?

Jodie

Generally, they really like traveling and they really love experiencing new places. They love being in Asia. I mean, that is definitely our favorite area to be in so far. We were very careful to try to listen to what they're saying. And that way, if they're showing something that they're not liking, it doesn't necessarily mean that we would stop, but it does mean that we might modify what we're doing.

Anthony

We've never been a "because I said so" family. We've been much more of a "what can we work out together" family. We have always wanted them to know they had agency, they will be heard, and we'll make better choices as a family if we're all communicating and all figuring out those gives and takes, those bits of compromise that are a good life skill all on their own at any age.

Jodie

And then we also just try to pay attention a little bit to the things that are unsaid, too. We can notice if it seems more severe or something and go, "Well, what do we want to do about that?" And that's actually part of why we ended up buying our condo in Japan, because we were really craving a space that we could just come back to a little bit more regularly. It works really well for us because we can't live there permanently. We don't have residency. We don't have any kind of visa where we can live there longer than a tourist visa. It really is just a vacation home. And we like that because it does keep us traveling, doing the things that we like. But at the same time, now we do have this place where they have a room and they have a space that they can bring little souvenirs to or whatever and decorate and all of those things that they were craving a little bit more of. We found somewhere in the middle where we can continue to do the adventure and travel that we especially like. I feel like our kids really like it.

Suzy

I love working together. That's like something I always try to say, how can we figure this out together? Yeah. Good. Good ethos to move forward. But you mentioned the home base in Japan. When did you all first venture to Japan? What really struck you about Japan as a place that you returned back to over and over and now have purchased a property there?

Jodie

Alright. So our very first trip to Japan was in 2013. Connor was just 15 months old and we went because I was going for a professional conference. I was a Suzuki violin teacher, so the Suzuki method originated there. And I really wanted to go when the opportunity showed. We were like, "We'll do whatever we can to go." And we really did that trip on a budget. We couch-surfed through most of that with our toddler. And it was such a fantastic experience. We stayed with bachelors who were still living with their moms. We stayed with couples that were foreigners to Japan that were there living. We stayed with couples in families that were native Japanese. People wanted English speakers to come into their homes. Especially when they had kids, they were like, "My kids are going to get to hear and practice English with you around." And we were like, "Great, great." We were fine. We did that trip. It was three weeks long.

Anthony

Talk all day.

Jodie

And we just fell in love. And we always knew we would go back. You hear a lot too, like, "Why would you travel with your kid at 15 months old? He's not going to remember that." That's a huge trip. We really saw that shaped Connor for sure. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind. There are just certain things. It's partly because we talked about that trip. You know, it's part of our family mythology; it's part of our story. He has always liked Japanese food and he's always just been kind of fascinated with Japan. And so when we were traveling full-time, Japan had not opened back up yet from COVID.

Anthony

I want to say it was about October or November of 2022 when we got word that it was reopening. Yep. We were like, "We're working on it." We were.

Jodie

We were already in Asia. We went to Thailand, we spent some time in Cambodia and Vietnam. It was a really easy "yes" to say we're going to Japan again.

Anthony

We got to be there in the spring of 2023. We were in Osaka for the cherry blossom season or Sakura season. Being there, Jodie and I definitely wondered: How will the dynamic be as a family of four? How will it kind of match up with what we remember, what we experienced 10 years ago? We were there for about six weeks. And by the time we left, the kids were like, "When are we coming back?" The thing about going to Japan, it can seem very different initially, but then there is just so much that you quickly understand. It is so safe. It is so easy to get around. The food is just straight-up incredible at every spending level and everything from the highest-end restaurant in the tallest high-rise in Tokyo to the everyday convenience store on the corner. All of those things come together then with this culture that has such history. So being there, you are just enmeshed in this fascinating place where there is baseline kindness and safety and ease of getting around. It is so nice to just be there and go.

Jodie

It's very quiet. Whenever we leave, we have to kind of recalibrate.

Anthony

There is no quiet like Japan quiet.

Suzy

What I've heard is there's so much pride in what you do and how you take care of yourself and your job and your community and the people around you. And that's why it is so clean and safe.

Jodie

Yeah, yeah.

Anthony

There is very much a sense that you have a responsibility to the people around you to be considerate, to follow overall social norms. And when you're not Japanese, you get the pass to a certain level, but still, there's some expectation. You're a guest in someone else's home, essentially. And we value being a good guest a great deal. And that's in trying to always know at least a few phrases in the local language. It is having an open mind toward the food. It is accepting that, "Hey, we're not from here, but we know that being here makes us better people." We know that's because this place is so amazing. So we try to just keep that very front and center in what we do and how we interact. I think it comes through pretty well. People can tell us like, "Hey, you appreciate being here and we take a lot of pride in this place, in our home." So cool. We love that you're here.

Suzy

I like that. What do I tell my six-going-on-seven-year-old though, who does not know how to keep quiet, especially in public? I will say that is something I'm a little worried about.

Jodie

Yeah, I would say Japanese kids are Japanese kids. Like, they're not quiet everywhere. They're acceptable places and times. As a parent, you just gotta kind of know where to prioritize. Like, inside the train station, maybe not the best place to run around like it's a playground. But the playground or the park... I think it's just having awareness of the right time and place, right? I always try to balance it with managed time versus freedom of movement time, the two big things. And traveling, especially when sightseeing, kids are often very managed, right? And so if there's too much of that, it can be disastrous, and kids need that balance of total freedom of movement. I'm going down the slide and swinging on the swings and I can decide, I can decide, "I'm going over here and I'm going over there."

Anthony

For example, if you're in Tokyo, you want to have some cultural experiences and check out some museums. Let's say you go to Ueno Park. Giant park area, plenty of green space, paths, playground, ways to get that big movement time. But also, right there are lots of different museums and other cultural landmarks. So you can find that balance. Okay? One other area that we always like to recommend for this, especially with younger children, is in Osaka. There's this place called Sumiyoshi Temple. It's one of the most major temples in Osaka. You often see people going there because it's always been associated with good tidings for the port or business. But also, you'll see a lot of parents with newborns because it's a place that people take their newborn children for blessings. Beautiful place. Naturally, it's where you want to be a little more serene. But then you cross the road, and you can go through into Sumiyoshi Park, where there's a giant playground. Okay. And then another quarter of the park, if you just want a little chill time, there's a massive cherry tree grove with a beautiful pond. So you can very easily, within five minutes of one another, get that range of experience.

Suzy

I'll definitely be taking advantage of that recommendation to balance those two. When did the thought to purchase in Japan come to play?

Anthony

I think it was somewhere around mid to later 2024 when we'd been kicking it around. I think you had seen some things about what are called akiya, which is just kind of a term that means a non-occupied home. I had found some people like some podcasts and services and whatnot who were there to help foreigners if they wanted to buy like an investment property or if they wanted to buy a vacation home. We were in Japan throughout the end of 2024, we spent some time in Tokyo and we spent some time on the southern main island of Kyushu. There's a great city there called Kumamoto that we spent a month in and another month in a city on the other side of the island called Oita. After that, where we'd been so steeped in neighborhoods and just got to talk to more people, engage more, and just see how much we all thrived being around just different parts of Japan—that, I think, is what really set it.

Jodie

Okay, I'm going to add a couple other things here. So we were talking about the pop-up camper and how bittersweet it was to sell it. But I mean, we have enough experience now of making those big shifts and seeing that, especially even financially, when you make that shift and you change something, then it just opens up new doors. We wouldn't have even considered it without selling our house first. Our house needed to be sold. So we did that in the summer of 2024. We took a cruise after that from Seattle to Tokyo. That is when we spent those three months Anthony was talking about in Kumamoto. And part of it was, it is really, really difficult actually to find family-sized housing for a longer-term stay in Japan. Osaka is the best. If you want to stay like a month or more, Osaka has more available. It has to do with some laws and regulations around Airbnbs and whatnot. We're okay with kind of stacking up a little bit. There are certain comforts, because we're staying long-term, we really like, and we want to come back to Japan often, and we're having a hard time finding places we can stay longer and fit well. Part of doing this sustainably is definitely having spaces we feel comfortable in. Since Japan is so important to us, we really want to find a place. It's kind of funny; we ended up buying in the Osaka area even though that is the easier place to find housing. But part of that is because we really want to be able to hang out with other traveling families, too. And since that is such an easy place for other traveling families to find housing—worldschoolers like us—we were really interested in kind of being in that area.

Anthony

We also especially liked the Osaka area. We appreciate your first-tier cities. Your Tokyos, your Londons, your Parises. Those are great. We're more "second city" people. Yeah. A city like Osaka just fits our personal style better. And there are some logistical things like Kansai International Airport. So you can actually fly in and out of Osaka without having to go through Tokyo. So that's a huge bonus. We love the location. It's on more of the central part of the main island of Honshu. So it's about three hours on the Shinkansen, the bullet train, to go back to Tokyo. Kyoto's half an hour away. Destinations like Hiroshima are, I believe, about another two hours west. So there's this wonderful convenience to being in the Osaka area that appealed to us a great deal. So once we factored all that together, combined with a favorable yen-to-dollar ratio and the fact that we had set aside some proceeds from selling our house... whether it's somewhere around the world, whether it's somewhere in the U.S., some chunk of this will be going toward our next base, essentially. And it just happened that this little condo in Japan—

Jodie

You.

Suzy

Love it. That's so cool. And I know you have some videos that give a tour and share a little bit more about it. So I'll make sure to link to those because I feel like there can be a lot of questions that we could deep dive into. Overall, it sounds like you're very happy with having this home base there. And what months do you try to stay in Japan or plan to be there?

Jodie

I can tell you what we never want to do again, which is what we did.

Suzy

Was it summer?

Anthony

July and August.

Jodie

July, August, and September we did this last year. Those particular three months in a row, hopefully never again. It was brutal. Summer, and this summer was record heat and all of that. It was very difficult. I mean, we've been to a lot of hot, humid places, but I think what makes it different—I've thought about this a lot—why is it so different? You just have to walk outside a lot. We would have to walk almost a kilometer just to get to the train station. And the train stations are air-conditioned once you are at the train station, but then you are walking. If you're going in the summer—which, hey, Japan time is better than no Japan time—so I don't say don't go. But you will need to change your trip from what I kind of think of as like the "textbook" Japan trip.

Suzy

That's a great quote.

Anthony

You want to balance in a lot more indoor attractions and destinations or make sure you have some of the downtime. Anytime we need to, we duck into the convenience store. It's air-conditioned. There are cold drinks that are very affordable.

Jodie

Try.

Anthony

I like to aim for a lot of spring visits and fall visits. Fall is, I think, our favorite time to be there. Because we'll be there all fall. You get the reds of the maples, you get the golds of the ginkgoes. The appreciation of fall is essentially on par with the spring cherry blossoms. It's just different and it's cooling down. A lot of the big tourist push is subsiding. It is such a wonderful time.

Suzy

I'm happy to hear that because fall is my favorite season. I like them all for various reasons, but fall is just so fun. That's going to be so fun. You mentioned homeschooling. Share a little more about how you've been balancing education with travels.

Anthony

It's evolved over time as our kids have aged and progressed in their education. So, younger years, we would have a lot more physical materials. Our kids had varying handwriting, copy words, things like that. So we'd have some physical materials for them to use. We would build in—say, if we're RVing in the States—national parks and state parks as a huge priority in those travels because there are just unparalleled opportunities for wildlife. Junior Ranger programs at our national park sites are one of the best parts of our culture. And as a friend of mine once pointed out, there is no upper age limit on being a Junior Ranger.

Suzy

Good to know.

Jodie

Our kids were starting to move more to online when we started traveling full-time. So that definitely helped. Once a week, they can move to like a Kindle or some sort of e-reader. Whew, that makes it a lot easier.

Suzy

It's true. We got my oldest's first Kindle for Christmas last year and he's obsessed. I love it. It's just so amazing with traveling. Yeah. We're very lucky to have these opportunities, but that is the benefit with some older kids: that they can really navigate learning through an online system and take some more independence with it as well.

Anthony

Having the digital tools that we have access to make this lifestyle, especially with kids, so much more feasible. For kids like our daughter, we subscribe to a math program called Beast Academy that she uses for her math lessons. It's got great structure and we can sit down with her. She's got materials. We can talk things through and she can keep working at her pace. Our son has now progressed to doing some high school-level work. He's doing a lot of Khan Academy.

Jodie

There's just the hands-on learning, like wherever we're going and what we're doing.

Suzy

History, the culture.

Jodie

We try to put in some life skills as well as the academic skills so that our kids are feeling confident in those areas as well. Some money skills of managing in different currencies, but also just saving and investing. Our son, Connor, has started doing some of his own investing as he has been able to read up and learn a little bit more. We're really proud of him for taking initiative on that stuff, too.

Anthony

And then there are a lot of little things, like if we are in a convenience store or some other shop, the kids have to do their own talking. If there's something they need or something they want to buy, they have to go to the register. They talk to the adults. If they have some different language that they need to work in, they work that out. It's good practice. It's self-confidence. And then it's also handling money, counting change, making sure everything's correct. Those little things help a lot, too. We also love to tie in, especially in our international travels, all sorts of different classes, especially cooking classes. So they've done things like learn to make beef noodle soup in Taiwan and soup dumplings. And they've learned how to make Vietnamese coffee in Vietnam. So, tying in those also adds this togetherness as a family. It adds practical skills. And it is a way to balance out the things we do digitally with our reading or schooling or whatnot with something hands-on—an in-person full sensory experience. So it keeps things more balanced in that way, too.

Suzy

That's so true. And you're getting science in there. I mean, there's just so much with cooking. And then at the end, you have a delicious product that is so good. It's like a win-win in all aspects. And you brought up the money piece, the financial piece, which I think is so important to start kids young. The power of compound interest is in their favor, right? And I was a participant and I think I had already been following you on Instagram or something. And then you were with the Coast FI work job. Just for anyone listening, Coast FI is basically when you've saved and invested enough that it can just work in the background and keep growing for retirement, but you can step on the brakes a little bit with the investing part of it. What does the financial piece look like for you all, either in typical expenses that you've had along the way? Are you still working online? You have the YouTube channel, which is really cool. Fill me in on what that looks like.

Anthony

I should have said this earlier: one, we are not rich. We are not trust fund babies. We did not win the lottery.

Jodie

I'm sure you guys have had this too, but a lot of people immediately assume, "You're traveling full-time. You must just have an endless amount of money, right?" And we have to explain like, "No, not at all." We really actually save a lot of money by traveling full-time. That is part of our money strategy. So our budget—we kind of have a range because our housing and stuff is not set. So we have an average that we want to hit. And so we look at it kind of big-picture. For us, usually we're able to find accommodation somewhere around the $1,800 per month. At this point, our kids really enjoy having their own rooms. There are occasionally times where they share still if we need to. But that includes our housing or internet, heating, and any electricity. We're not paying anything else on top of that.

Anthony

So we look a lot more now at how the overall year balances out. Because we'll have months where we say, "Oh, we're spending $1,800 or $2,000 on accommodation for this month." But then, say, when we're at our condo, which we own free and clear, well, that's a much more minimal cost. So the month-to-month swings matter, and it's good to have a sense of our overall target. But then as we look more every three months, six months, and the year, we have a far more meaningful picture of, "Great, this is where the finances are; this is what we've spent." Other things like food activities—well, food is also in part an activity for us. It's our favorite activity. We're typically spending 600 to a thousand a month on groceries. Often we're dining out a touch more, depending on the place. Then somewhat tied into that, sometimes not, just depending again on the place, maybe there's another two to four hundred on different activities or taking a tour of some place.

Jodie

Or a tour of some place.

Anthony

But again, we don't own a car in the U.S. We don't have insurance or a car payment or other factors. Those things are more freed up to go towards our financial independence journey, our Coast FI journey, or going toward our travels—which is both in the moment, but also an investment in our quality of life and an investment in our children's range of experiences for their own futures. And doing something that most people, as they get older and move toward retirement, travel is one of the main things people wish they had done more of in their younger years. And we know too, we will age. Jodie may have concerns that make it less possible for us to travel over the years. I might have things that make that harder. So you know what? We do it now. We don't have to wonder "what if."

Jodie

Yeah, I already have some limits with my mobility. I am very—like as far as amputees go, I'm pretty mobile. I do a lot, but I also know that that can change. I didn't want to wait to do this kind of travel in retirement because I really felt like I can do so much more now and I want to enjoy it now. You just don't know what the future will bring, but I'm really glad that we are taking the opportunity now.

Anthony

We understood that we could do it now. Things had lined up that we could do it now and that gave us both a sense of urgency and a responsibility and a joy to do it now.

Suzy

Yeah, that's really well put; if you think of the seasonality of life and how things will shift and you get that perspective, especially as kids get a little older, it makes it even more important to take advantage of the opportunities we're given. With the accessibility piece, how does Japan work out? Like, is there quite a bit of accessibility opportunity? And maybe this is for people with various mobility challenges? And then are there also cities and countries that are really well equipped for people that have any mobility challenges?

Jodie

I have come to realize like every place has its areas where it's really great and then areas where they need a lot of improvement. And I would say overall Japan is very good. One of the areas that I don't need a lot of accessibility in is accessible hotel rooms, but that is an area that I've seen over and over as a difficulty for Japan. Overall, the things that I need in accessibility, like great sidewalks, easy-to-use surfaces as far as getting places, easy to get on and off trains, seating when I'm on the train for sure, or a bus—all those things are really important and Japan does really, really well. I would say Taiwan was also really accessible. There is a lot of motorbike usage in Taiwan, but they tend to actually park their motorbikes. Even though it is on the sidewalk, they tend to be a little bit more organized and in designated places so that there's still walking space on the sidewalk. There are a little bit more like steps along the sidewalk occasionally instead of ramps. So if you were in a wheelchair, it would be a little bit more difficult.

Anthony

I would say Singapore has very good access; the infrastructure is newer, especially. There is just a lot more mindset around things being level and things being wide. You don't have as much older stuff that was just "this is what we built at the time." So Singapore can be very easy to get around.

Jodie

Mobility rate.

Anthony

Then some things just depend on that terrain. A lot of Portugal—incredible places, you have good infrastructure, but it's just a nice hill. Very hilly. Say, Sevilla, Spain—much flatter, a lot easier on that front.

Jodie

Even like Morocco was pretty easy with accessibility. The medinas were sometimes a little tricky, but when you were actually in the city, there was a lot of great sidewalk. The one tricky thing for me was sometimes there is just this fine layer of sand on the sidewalk. You can't control it, but because it's from the Sahara Desert there, it makes for just a little slippery surface, which means I'm just working harder, that's all. You can't totally know what each place is going to be like until you're there. And for me, usually if it's less accessible, it just means more energy expenditure. It's a little harder for me to do as much. And I'm going to have to pace my days a little bit differently. We've spent a lot of time in Vietnam, and Vietnam is not very accessible. There are a lot of motorbikes parked all over the sidewalk. You're going to walk in the street quite a bit. And sometimes it's a little dangerous feeling, with different surfaces. It's tricky to get around walking. But I just know it's going to take me longer to get from point A to point B because I have more stuff I have to dodge. I have more stuff I have to go around.

Suzy

It's all about learning what you need. And of course, the more we travel, the more we tune into what our needs are, what our limits are, how to balance that with the family desires and needs. So I think that's where actually, as you travel more long-term or full-time, you actually can pick up on those cues that you need, your family needs, and accommodate some of that a little easier than when you travel somewhat intermittently. You forget all that somewhat, and you're like, "Let's go and explore all day!" And then you're like, "Hold up. This was challenging to me. I need to take tomorrow off."

Jodie

Especially when our kids were little, we kind of got into the practice of travel. And that can mean like a day trip, or not even staying somewhere overnight. It can mean just like going out to some place outside of your city or whatever. That's fine, that counts. You don't have to stay somewhere; just go out somewhere for the day and then come back home. We would expand it out to someplace just overnight, someplace for a weekend or whatever. And you just get better and better and better at it. In that way too, you can do it very reasonably. It doesn't have to be something super expensive. Start with something cheap and accessible right near you and then move on from there.

Anthony

Just pick that thing that's been nagging at you that keeps being on the list and just go, "We're getting this done." And then you build out.

Suzy

Exactly. And then before you know it, you've purchased a condo in Japan. It's a slippery slope towards purchasing a home base in Japan. Maybe we'll be like, a year from this fall, "Okay, I need to buy now," because we've fallen in love.

Jodie

I do say if anybody has or wants more information on traveling to Japan, we do have a lot of information, both in video and on our website. Also, feel free to just message us. Obviously, we love talking about it and we love giving recommendations and we love trying to help people find the trip that's meaningful for them because there are so many avenues of finding the Japan trip that's right for you. It is very much like that first trip to Japan, and there is a reason it's that first trip to Japan that most people do. But if you really want to cater it to you, like, there are so many ways to do that. And Japan has so many things to offer.

Suzy

I will make sure to link to your YouTube because I know you share a lot of wonderful tips and tricks there and people can connect if they want some more Japan tidbits. Then also, I know you're running the Worldschooling in Osaka Facebook group.

Jodie

On Facebook right now, connect if you're coming to Osaka. It is just an organic kind of meetup-style group and it's just starting. It's in its baby stages. So we would love to see you there and would love to connect and hopefully meet up with some people. We're going to be there in April. We will be there for three months.

Suzy

Perfect. So you're avoiding the summer this year. That is good.

Jodie

Yes, our plan is April through June and then we'll be gone. We will come back October through December.

Anthony

We're planning to spend July and August in some new-to-us parts of Europe, like Finland, the Baltic states, and Poland.

Suzy

This has been so great to chat. I'll make sure to link everything in the show notes.

Anthony

It's been so great talking with you and all those families out there. Just trust you can travel to more different places than you might realize, and you can have an amazing time. You can find safety. You can find people. You can have great experiences. You can do it.

Suzy

That's perfect to end on. Thank you so much.

Suzy

This special episode highlighted the significance of the Make-A-Wish Foundation for young people like Jodie. Make-A-Wish grants life-changing wishes to children aged 3 to 17 diagnosed with critical illnesses. Supporters can become wishmakers through donations or fundraising. To learn more about the Make-A-Wish Foundation, visit www.podcastthon.org, linked in the show notes.