Because he ' s still ten , one would assume it ' s been less than a year , yet IIRC , in an episode in Hoenn , the narrator said it was currently the Third Year of his Journey . That makes it difficult to determine exactly how long Ash ' s journey has been , because he apparently doesn ' t age . Some have tried to explain it by saying that Hooh caused Ash to never age , and others have said that maybe in the Pokmon universe , age is representative of familial status , rather than number of years lived . This would mean that when a person comes of age , they are labeled Ten , Twenty when they have kids , and Fifty when they have Grandchildren . Of course , both of these explanations have problems , but they ' re about the best we can do . The best answer to how long the journey ' s been ? However long the narrator says it ' s been .