Japan Tour

First off I believe an apology to my readers is long overdue.  For those of you who have either faithfully or even sporadically followed my blog only to see it quickly and abruptly stop I’m sorry.  Officially, this blog has two more posts coming at least (maybe a bonus trip will be added).  Although I’m already home I wanted this blog to be a thorough documentation of my years travel abroad and since I’ve gotten home, I’ve succumbed to laziness as well as been overwhelmed with the onslaught of schoolwork.  I have just completed my fall quarter back at my home university and will once again be reinvesting some time to this blog, at least until it is complete.  So here goes as I see how many details I can remember.  This is going to be a long one as I show you my trip through Japan…

First, some context.  After school ended in Japan, I had roughly a week before leaving for my trip to China.  Andrea at the same time wanted to plan a brief trip around Japan to see a list of major cities and sights around southern Honshu and asked if I wanted to join him.  I worked it out perfectly so that I would be able to stay in Fukuoka long enough to get my Chinese visa which was 15,000 YEN!!! with no discounts for being of Chinese decent *sigh*.  Also I got to work one more night at Cream and celebrate with Nick on his birthday which was an added bonus.  The plan was I would travel by local train (because it’s the cheapest option to travel) with Andrea to Yamaguchi, Miyajima, Hiroshima, Okayama, Naoshima, Himeji, Kobe and Osaka.  At Osaka we would branch off and he would head for Kyoto while I would head home.  This was good for both of us because I had never been to any of these cities yet and at the same time I could show him how to use the “Juhachikippu” ticket and navigate the sometimes frustrating local JR (Japan Rail) train system.  It worked out so that I would end up traveling for 6 days in Japan, return home to Fukuoka for only one day to rest and recoup before going to China for two weeks.  So here goes…

  

Fail at Yamaguchi

Yamaguchi is a small and often overlooked city that we decided somewhat on a whim to go to.  It was conveniently along the way to our first intended destination and we decided it was worth taking out about 2-3 hours to see Brittany’s recommendation, YCAM – Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media.  Unfortunately after taking about 40 minutes off the main JR line to get to the station and walking for about another 30 minutes with our huge backpacks to YCAM we were met with some bad news.  Apparently, there were no exhibits to see that day because they were setting up a new exhibit called, “Cloud Forest”.  It was scheduled to open the very next day and there were still preparations still being set up for the grand opening.  We were just too late to see anything and just in time to see… nothing.  Despite our foiled plan we remained in high spirits as we made our way back on our original path.  We don’t regret stopping in Yamaguchi because the city was quaint and we still had enough time to hit all our intended destinations.  Plus we got to see this huge cat!

 My Favorite Place in Japan

Our next point of interest was Miyajima (AKA Itsukushima), a place that is famous in Japan as having the only torii gate in the bay and is a UNESCO world heritage site.  It is one of the major attractions listed in most guide books and travel websites and for good reason, I learned.  We were happy because we saved money on the ferry since it was included in our train ticket.  And at first I didn’t really get what all the fuss was a about.  When we arrived and asked the information booth what to do, they said to wait for sundown because that’s when the tide would come in and the torii gate would be its most beautiful for viewing and taking pictures.  At the moment, it was just muddy and the temple surrounding it looked like it was built on a dried up swamp.  So we explored the little town and few surrounding temples and pagodas to kill time.  The city itself was very likeable and like Nara filled with random friendly deer like this fellow…

There were plenty of sites to keep us clicking away and busily taking pictures until sundown.  Here are just a few pictures of the temples and moments we encountered:

But the real beauty of Miyajima is definitely at sunset.  Andrea and I grabbed ourselves a prime spot on the beach next to the water temple and basked in the unrivaled beauty.  The best part about this site that was unlike other major sites in Japan was that it really wasn’t crowded at all.  We shared the whole beach with maybe 2 other pairs of people and that was it.  We took a ton of pictures of the gate at every angle, setting and perspective we could think of.  Maybe this is unusual since we at our next destination…

 

Hiroshima

We arrived on the 65^th year anniversary of the day the atomic bomb was dropped on August 6^th, 1945.  This was also the same reason that there was a huge influx of visitors who wanted to see the yearly memorial which looks something like this (even though we missed it, this is not my picture):

We got into the station at about 8 PM and scrambled to find a place to stay for the night.  We had not been able to book any hostels since everything was full online.  In fact most of this trip had little or no planning and we had to find lodging for many of the cities we went to without first booking something in advance.  We found a nearby internet café by the station.  This was going to be Andrea’s first time staying at an internet café and he was very excited by each of the perks and grew increasingly giddier as I moved down the list of things that was included in our admission.  He particularly liked the unlimited soup and soft serve ice cream.  

Ice Cream

One thing to note about traveling with Andrea who I will first say was a great travel companion, but Andrea is a guy who loves his ice cream.  And when I say love, I mean he loves his ice cream.  Every day of the trip we would stop at least 2 or 3 times at a convenient (conveni) store to get an ice cream bar/cone.  We would have ice cream more often than we would have real food.  This was fine since it’s 1) once of the cheapest things to eat in Japan especially out of convenis and 2) it was summer and hot as hell most of the time. 

We explored Hiroshima which was exactly as heart wrenchingly sad as I had expected it to be and moved before the nightfall by train to our next city, Okayama and had…

 Pictured: Heart Wrenching

The Worst Night Ever

We arrived in Okayama, a city we knew very little about after the information offices of the train station had closed.  With nowhere to find any information we wandered around for an hour before we found an internet café that had room but was kind of pricey.  Andrea was also travelling with a very limited budget which I completely understood and we agreed to continue to try to look for a more affordable café.   Another hour of wandering around the confusing streets of Okayama later, we stumbled upon another internet café behind a group of similarly aged Japanese guys/travelers.  The employee at the café informed us that there was one option left and it was a single room that had a couch and had to be shared by two people.  After taking a little while to discuss it we gave in and just took the cubicle.  What went wrong:

1)      We had to sign up for the one shower in the café and after an hour of waiting, just decided to go to sleep.

2)      The leather couch meant we would get hot and be forced to turn and change the surface area of our body that came in contact with the couch every hour or so or just succumb to extreme heat and melding into the couch itself.

3)      We had not realized, but the internet café was located directly below, above or next to a club.  A constant but disturbing beat was thumping through the walls until about 4 AM.

4)      Just the most uncomfortable night I’ve spent anywhere in all my travels.

Me vs. Homeless Man

The next day we tried to put it behind us and moved on to our next port city and ferry to the island of Naoshima.  Naoshima is a unique island because it has very little development on it except for a small population of residents and one single resort.  An art collective organization took over the development of the island and had placed pieces of art in very specific locations throughout the island.  All the pieces and buildings on the island are carefully designed and placed to be integrated perfectly into the surrounding natural landscape.  It also came highly rated by everyone who visited it.

The island is small but filled with treasures like the Lee Ufan museum designed by Tadao Ando which was dramatic, stunning and really a place that can only be experienced.  A lot of the architecture I didn’t even really understand, like an abstract painting, his lines and intentions are not obviously stated but definitely meant to elicit a specific emotion or feeling.  The one thing I did get out of it was a small square skylight cut into a few feet thick concrete ceiling that would change the lighting on the art piece on the ground depending on the time of day.  

Pictured: Architecture

Secret Garden 

We got back to Okayama late and were disappointed since we were almost sure that Okayama garden (rated one of the three best gardens in all of Japan) was closed.  But as we got closer we were pleasantly surprised as we entered and found there was actually a special summer festival where the whole garden was lit with lights.  This served 3 purposes: it let us explore the beautifully illuminated garden while avoiding the heat and even see Okayama castle in the far background which was just one more castle to scratch off the list.

Contemporary Tradtion

Ramen!  The best meal ever.

We had been so busy traveling and sightseeing that we had skipped right over dinner and at 9 o’clock we were really almost certain that all we’d find was lame conveni food.  But just in our time of need, our prayers were answered as we came upon the most beautiful shop that could have been there, it was Ippudo, my favorite ramen shop in all of Japan.  I got a bowl of ramen with 2 extra noodles, a side of discounted gyoza and to top off the perfect meal a free soft boiled egg because the employee screwed up the order.  If any of you could have seen me then… well, it was not a pretty sight but you would have seen what I assume was pure happiness on my face.  

My first time in a capsule hotel…

We had came across a cheap looking capsule hotel before we’d left for Naoshima in the morning and had decided to stay the night there.  We were sure as hell not going to go back to the worst night ever internet café and were both excited to try the capsule hotel.  So how was it?  It was GREAT!!  The worst night of sleep ever was completely made up with the best sleep of night ever in the capsule hotel.  Andrea and I didn’t know exactly what to expect when we went to see our “rooms”.  But when we found our boxes we were actually very happy with the space and surprised by the extra amenities.  Amenities included:

1)      Not-so-coffin-like box/room that had plenty of comfortable sitting up height with clean towel, bathrobe, sheets and pillow. 

2)      Personal speakers and built in television (with as-expected AV programming)

3)      Blind for privacy

4)      Access to in house public shower/onsen

All for about $25!  Not too shabby.  I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Himeji Castle 

This is Japan’s most intact original castle and is currently being preserved and restored to its original condition.  This is good, but it also means the castle right now has many main sections closed off and the main structure has a really dorky looking metal brace on most of it supplementing the structure.  This makes for terrible pictures and made taking good pictures of it particularly difficult.  We made do, came to terms with it and moved on to Kobe to find…

The Giant Robot: Tetsujin

I was very disappointed when I heard that I had missed seeing the giant Gundam Robot in Yokohama by less than a year.  But when I heard there was one more giant robot left and it was in Kobe, I knew I had to find it.  While we got into the main Kobe station and tried to find our way to the giant robot, we asked everyone around the station and nobody seemed to know where the giant robot was located.  This started to puzzle us.  How could everyone just miss the gigantic robot?  After exploring the area a little bit and seeing the major sights around Kobe station we found that the robot was actually two stations back.  Though it was starting to drizzle we were determined to see the robot and I wasn’t about to be deterred by a little rain.  We finally got off at the right station and found a sign pointing us in the right direction to… TETSUJIN!

Before nightfall we make our way to Osaka and find a special pass that covers a lot of major attractions in exactly the amount of time we have to spend in Osaka, how perfect!  We check into our hotel near Dobutsuenmae station which means roughly, in front of the zoo station.  This area used to be a bustling commercial center and the site for a major retail promenade but has since turned into a slum and definitely one of the most interesting neighborhoods in Japan.  In my stay of one year in Japan I can honestly say that it was difficult to find any slums or neighborhood that looked or resembled or was equivalent to an American slum.  How I asked could this society be so perfect that there was no poverty anywhere.  I had seen homeless, but there seemed to be no middlemen between the middle class and the complete wino.  Here in Osaka, I had finally found it.  The streets were nitty, gritty, and full of interesting sights and sounds.  The first night exploring I had seen homeless in the streets, shady looking characters (one of which had long shaggy stringy hair and went into the building we were staying in), naked men in rooms with doors flung wide open, bikes in the middle of entryways, vomit in the street and a random bra on the ground.  All of these things you would be hard pressed to find in most other parts of Japan, but here I saw all these things in one night. 

 Just a small taste

Shadiest Hostel Ever

The room we had gotten was on the 4rth floor of a hostel that seemed promising at first.  The staff was friendly and we went up to our floor to find our room.  We emerged from the elevator to find ourselves walking down an eerie hallway lit by one glowing green exit light at the end of the hallway next to our room.  The sign stood in the way of our door and prevented the door from fully opening.  Inside the room smelled of an unidentifiable odor that was repugnant, lasting and like nothing I’ve ever smelled before.  We really had no idea about the actual cleanliness of the room itself but we definitely questioned it.  The other rooms down the hallway seemed to be permanently lived in and served as lower income housing.  There were only squat toilets available in the bathroom and a trough for the sink.  The public bath downstairs had too few stalls and was open from 8-10 for Men, 10-12 for Women and 12-1 for Men again.  Every single time I went to take a shower however early or late, there was one man sitting on the far right stool showering the whole time.  Even though everybody was patiently waiting in line and took only the amount of time necessary, this man stayed there in place showering the whole 2 hours every night.  The reason nobody spoke to him was because he was most definitely yakuza and had a full dragon tattoo that spanned from the base of his neck down his back and sliding down his leg.  I never made eye contact with him, got in, showered and got out without engaging him ever.  Oh yeah and the last night we were there I took the elevator down and when I reached the ground floor the elevator jolted and dropped an additional 2 feet.  When the doors opened a second later the ground level was two feet above where my feet were.  I stepped up and the hostel clerk warned us not to use the elevator anymore.  But it was cheap!  =P

 Thought I was kidding about the horror movie ambience?  Think again.

Tennoji zoo, Shinsekai, Tsutenkaku (aka Hitachi Tower), the Natural History Museum, River Boat Tour, Fugu, Osaka TV building, Osaka Aquarium, Umeda Sky Building and Osaka History Museum

To my surprise, Andrea had never been to a zoo before, or if he had, he had forgotten what it was like because it was when he was very young.  So when we went to the nearby zoo, he was very excited to see the animals on display even though in my opinion, the zoo was quite lacking.  Next we tried kushikatsu which is an original Osaka food consisting mainly of skewered meat and organs deep fried and paired with raw cabbage that is popular amongst the locals and visitors alike.  We ate it after going up to see a view from Tsutenkaku.  It was good but much too expensive for the amount of actual food.  The Natural History Museum is lame, don’t go.  The river boat tour is lame too.  But I do recommend the streets around the river are great to walk around.  It is the iconic image of Osaka with both shores filled to the brink with brightly lit billboards.  Osaka Aquarium has a very large tank with a whale shark, other than that, it is crowded and not that much fun.  The Umeda Sky Building offers a great open air view of all of Osaka.  Afterwards we rode a Ferris wheel since Andrea had once again been depleted as a child and had never been on one.  One of the most educational and interesting museums is the Osaka History Museum that we decided to go to very last minute.  I also tried the possibly deadly Fugu AKA blowfish in Osaka which is famous for Fugu.  It is one of the few places in Japan that serves Fugu year-round despite it being out of season, it gets the fish from elsewhere when it is off-season.  The taste and texture is very unique and unlike any other type of sushi I’ve had.  I can’t very accurately describe it, but I did feel a faint numbing, dulling feeling on my tongue which is supposed to be the low level of paralyzing poison that is excreted from the fish itself.  The texture is chewier than most other fish and the taste really isn’t good enough to risk your life too often.  Worth at least trying once in your life though.

Food for Thought

On this trip I ate okinomiyaki which is a pancake type food from Hiroshima and takoyaki which is from Osaka and though it was good in both places, I would say that many parts of Japan may do an equally good if not better job of it.  It’s not always better at the place where it’s from.  After all these adventures, I said farewell to Andrea and wished him a good rest of his journey.  The next morning we took trains in the opposite direction and I made my 13 hour trek home to Fukuoka.  I spent 2 of those hours in a standing room only train doing pull ups every few minutes and getting a few strange looks from some train-goers.  I arrived home, did laundry, got a night of comfortable rest, packed and left for China a day later.

Hanabi Matsuri – Firework Festivals

I got a few more stories to wrap up for this year though...

In the states, there are few occasions to see huge displays of fireworks.  Except for July 4^th, New Years Eve and every night at Disneyland, fireworks are kind of a rare sight.  That’s not the case in Japan.  In Japan, there aren’t specific days but rather a season of fireworks that last almost an entire month.  These fireworks festivals or “Hanabi Matsuri” in Japanese are held all over Japan and are huge events with shows lasting upwards of 2 hours.  

The crowds.

Having some fun with telescoping effects.

 

Flower Light.

Something about the hot summer days and the festive nature of summer vacation motivates thousands of Japanese to flock out to rural parts of the Japanese countryside to munch on small skewered snacks and dress up in traditional clothing like kimonos, yukatas and getas.  

What is it like to watch a 2 hour fireworks display?

Never seen a firework show last more than 30 minutes?  Well, neither have I until I saw a Hanabi Matsuri but now I’ve seen multiple shows last hours.  Is a 2 hour long show better than a short and sweet show?  No, not necessarily.  In fact, the 2 hour long displays of fireworks are simply too long and actually start to get boring despite the thousands of dollars it takes to put on the show.  The difference is that instead of having a nice tempo of slow and fast parts with certain portions of the show growing and shrinking in intensity of fireworks perhaps put to music or at least with some sort of rhythmic order, it is just one monotonous string of fireworks, one after another with no real crescendo to build excitement and no grand finale.  Longer does not mean better.

See!  Jonathan's so bored he's pretending to fall asleep.  His gf's still conscious though at least.

Yoko-chan is still paying attention.

 

But this was pretty cool I must say.

Not bad...

 

Self Made Fireworks Display

What I actually enjoyed more was simply gathering a bunch of friends, spending a few bucks at 7-11, buying packs of Hello Kitty themed fireworks and setting them off along the riverbank.  This is made all the more cool by an add on in the pack of fireworks that changes point sources of light into little shimmering hello kitties.  Like a pair of 3D glasses, the lens somehow transforms a small light in the dark into a prismatic hello kitty.  Sometimes the simple things in life are all you need.  For one of Baptiste’s many goodbye events, we just set off our own fireworks and I think it was a better time than watching a huge elaborate firework display.  

Cool huh?  Don't ask me how I did this.

Yay Baptiste is *22

Star Power

=D 

Dressing Up

A guilty pleasure of mine is dressing up a bit for special occasions.  I know that sounds a bit “unmanly” but personally I just like taking care of myself and it feels good to look a little different once in a while.  And there’s no shame in looking good.  But one of the highlights of the fireworks festivals was dressing up in full Japanese traditional clothing and feeling as if we’d finally made the full conversion to Japanese.  If only for a little while, it felt good to wear a traditional yukata which is a light and thin summer kimono with getas, traditional wooden shoes that click and clack ostentatiously when you walk.  The group (actually just the foreigners, not the Japanese haha) all wore our best outfits and had a good time attracting the attention of most Japanese on the train.  

Nice!  Group Photo

Awoken from the Dream

In the last month I’ve been late to update because of a few reasons.  The end of the academic school year in Japan kept me somewhat busy.  Tack on a few side projects I had taken up and saying goodbye to some friends as they leave for hometowns and that kept me pretty well occupied.  Almost immediately afterwards I left for my own Japan tour around Honshu Island for about a week.  One day of rest and recovery back in Fukuoka and I took off for China.  Two weeks later I returned to Fukuoka and spent the better part of my remaining week in Japan mostly organizing goodbye dinners/parties, working a few nights more at Cream and strengthening some connections I hope to keep for the rest of my life.

Noticing Differences

Now I’m home, which is a strange word to me now.  What is home anyways?  Why is Los Angeles, America my home more than any of the other places I’ve been this year?  Because I was born here, because I was raised here?  I admit I’m still struggling to adjust to American life.  I pretty much can pick up everything that I left here as if I had just been gone a day.  I sit with my friends in the same places they’ve always sat and seamlessly blend back into the surrounding as if nothing has changed, as if I haven’t changed.  But I have.  I know that I’ve changed.  I see the world I lived in now with totally different eyes.  I try to find occasions to walk because I miss being reliant on my own two feet to get me from point A to point B.  I’m astounded by American portions and wonder how I was able to eat so much before.  When I left Japan, it was over 90 degrees and humid.  Today is 60 degrees and dry.  My lips are chapped daily and I miss the moisture in the air. 

Home…

Mostly, the most difficult thing is having nobody to relate to about my year.  I can tell them stories, but I can never convey what it was like to live a life in Fukuoka.  Nobody here will ever understand what I know now.  I feel a bit alone in that no one will ever know or care about the little things that have made up my life.  And it is nobody’s fault, it’s just something that I can’t possibly communicate and that they could never know without having done it themselves.  In that regard, I feel a bit like a stranger in my own country.  I had gotten used to understanding only about 10% of my surroundings at any given time.  Suddenly, I understand every word that is said and written and around me with ease and it feels not normal.  I’m happy to regale my friends with stories from abroad, but I will be telling these stories for the rest of my life.  And right now I feel like the people who I’ve known most or all of my life don’t know who I am, not yet anyways…   

The life I’ve lived for the last year was merely a dream and now real life looks gray.

Yamakasa Festival

Hello and sorry to my faithful readers who have surely lost interest in my un-updated blog.  My only excuse and consolation is that I’ll be updating quite a bit from here to catch up on things I’ve missed as well as to show the last couple trips I’ve done in the final stretch of this year’s nonstop adventure.  So without further adieu I will tell you about…

Yamakasa Festival

Yamakasa is held once a year in parts of Tenjin and Hakata for a period of about a month.  It commemorates a ceremony that farmers and residence used to do to encourage good weather and healthy harvests.  It has now evolved to some sort of crazy and nearly impossibe to understand festival that is really one of the most interesting and entertaining things to watch in all of Fukuoka.

Staring in awe...

What happens is…

Hundreds, perhaps thousands of men, young boys and even some young girls dress up in a very specific outfit that is best described as a thin strip of fabric wrapped around the groin like a loin cloth and a traditional Japanese shirt with the emblem of either the festival or a family crest inscribed onto the back.  Huge shrines are displayed all over the city months prior to the start of the festival and on the 15^th of July, all the participants (mostly men) let everything hang out and hoist the huge 40 foot tall shrines onto their shoulders, run around the city on a designated paths and race other men from other provinces and prefectures in Fukuoka for the pride and glory of being champions of Yamakasa that year.  The floats are elaborately decorated and show figures and scenes that depict Japanese life in all different eras.  On top of carrying the shrine, they also have 3 men on the float yelling “Oisa! Oisa! Oisa!” and constantly pouring water on the people around them to prevent overheating and it is a practice that is a remnant of the original ritual of blessing the people around the float.  Rumor has it that the idea of the race started after two floats were made one year and one of them passed the other one.  The logical evolution of stupid male pride results in what we know today as the largest gathering of men in giant diapers in Fukuoka. 

Stretch it out...

 

The contestants take this very seriously and those who don't practice the handoffs of the floats enough run the risk of falling under the feet of their fellow runners.

 

Nothing that dramatic happened this year though thank God.

It’s a sight that sounds ridiculous when described and even more ridiculous to see.  Despite starting exactly at 4:59 AM and it being pouring wet this year, I’m glad to have been able to witness this strange and unforgettable sight at least once in my life.

Catching Fireflies in the Rice Fields of Oita

Sachie-chan was nice enough to invite all of us back to her parents’ home in Oita Prefecture.  Oita is a part of Kyushu I have yet to visit before this trip and it was a very nice treat to spend a little time in the countryside part of Japan.  Best of all she said that this was the perfect season for seeing fireflies!

Getting There

We had agreed to meet in downtown at 12 to catch a bus to Oita but we had all partied the whole night before and everybody was either exhausted, nursing a hangover or still drunk.  Combine this with getting Axel, Baptiste, Jonathan and me together, out the door, to the train to Tenjin all before noon and you have one hell of a time.  We make it to Tenjin station just in time to be greeted by a spritely young Japanese girl who walked straight up to Baptiste and started giving him directions for getting tickets.  We were confused until we realized how much this girl looked like Sachie and realized it was her younger sister, Tomoe.

 

The Sagara Women

Sachie’s parents picked us up from the bus stop and we enjoyed a nice scenic drive through the huge open rice plains and endlessly tall pine and evergreen trees that reminded me of drives through Lake Tahoe.  The most striking thing that we soon realized was how alike all of the Sagara women were.  On the self built property of Sachie’s home, there were 3 generations of Sagara women living together.  The grandmother is a small and frail woman hunched over from years of hard work in the fields.  Sachie’s mother has exactly the same bright smile as Sachie and Tomoe.  And last but not least, her father stands on the side stoic and mostly silent.  He seems to be the strict and powerful leader of the family who only speaks when necessary.  

Little House on the Prairie

The log-cabin style home was a pleasant surprise nestled in the Japanese countryside.  Designed and built by Sachie’s father, this home was inspired by none other than the old 70’s American television show, The Little House on the Prairie.  Ironically, mixing American log cabins and Japanese construction equals something that resembles a German house, says Jonathan.  The house was small, quaint, simple and cozy with interlocking wood logs and rounded doorways.  Inside there are classic American style bedrooms and also a multipurpose living room with tatami mats that can be opened up to create a larger space or closed to become a bedroom.  Outside, we picked onions and potatoes out of the small garden beside the house.  There’s no existence as pure as actually living off the land.  I’d like a small garden of my own some day.  I think it’s a rewarding and self fulfilling hobby.  

 See the Resemblance?

Home Grown Food Pwns Trader Joes

The Land of Oita

I’ve always been and will always be a city slicker.  I simply enjoy modern conveniences, a bug-less environment and concrete too much to ever live in the countryside, but I must say visiting the countryside is really quite a nice.  What Oita lacks in loud obnoxious pachinko parlors and congested city streets, it makes up for tenfold in sweeping green hills, pockets of green forests and picturesque postcard worthy moments. 

 Cloudy Day in Oita

Wall of Trees

Follow the Leader

 

Sachie Ventures Forth

 

Mushroom Farm

 Worn Path

 

Tomoe Enters

Dew Drops

Moss Wall

Dog Takes Human for a Walk

View from Front Porch

And rest assured that If you somehow get sick of the constant idyllic landscapes you can always enjoy one of the many famous onsens (hot springs) or admire the occasional scrap metal sculpture of Godzilla.  

Thought I was Kidding About Godzilla?

 I Wasn't

Catching My First Firefly

There’s something iconic about the image of catching a firefly.  For me, it conjures up images of a time far simpler than the modern quick paced lives we’re used to living.  Where nature provides the only illumination at night and you can capture a piece of the magic in the palm of your hand.  Anybody who knows me at all knows I’m not a particularly big fan of insects, but for fireflies I can make an exception.  They maybe some of the most mesmerizing and fascinating bugs I’ve ever seen.  They fly slowly with no real course, wildly changing directions and with no inherent goal.  They are surprisingly easy to catch and I even had a few fly right into me as if they wanted to be caught.  Jonathan started to collect them in his front shirt pocket and even gave them individual names.  He insisted his new pets have their own identities.  The fireflies would strobe on and off as if they had built in dimmer switches that were slowly being pushed up and down.  Each one has their own internal beat, but when you put them together, they automatically sync to each others’ rhythm.  That’s why off in the distance deep in the woods, there are just hundreds, maybe thousands of little green lights flashing on and off in unison.  Nature is so amazingly organized.

 The Best Picture I Could Manage - Not Even Close to Real Life Though

Japanese Hospitality

The Sagara family really took great care of us.  Besides giving us a place to stay, they cooked us a delicious barbeque dinner, explained to us a bit of history and gave us a tour of their homes, walked us around the extensive grounds of their property and even taught us to make our own breakfast donuts.  At night, Baptiste and I shared one of countless bro moments watching the stars and philosophizing about the universe before Sachie, Axel and Jonathan ambushed us with wet wads of paper.  I ran right by them trying to catch them but was lost in the pure darkness.  The only light coming from the single house on the hill, everything in the distance was black.  No neighbors to be seen or heard of.  I enjoyed every moment of the breathtaking scenery and was more impressed by the bamboo forest in their backyard than the one I visited in Arashiyama, Kyoto.  It was an absolute pleasure to spend some time with such a kind and wholesome family and I can’t thank them enough for their gift.  ありがとう　ございます！

 Tomoe and Kone (Neko = Cat)

 Rasta in Oita

 Breakfast as One Big Happy Family

From Above

No Japanese Home is Complete Without a Small Totoro Collection