Kasaoka to Kurashiki

Camp Japan.

Ride your bicycle to a train station.

Put it in a bag and get on a train.

Ride the train for one hour.  

Get off.  Put the wheels back on your bike. 

Ride south until the road runs out.  Then walk.

Find this place.  

Unpack your sleeping roll.

Start a small beach fire to warm your feet.

Drink a bottle of wine. Watch the sea change colors.

Wake up at dawn and repeat the fire and sea change routine.

Then walk a few miles of rock and beach and back up a mountain to your bicycle.  

Ride the coast line home.  

 

Somewhere between Yokohama and Tokyo, Yama, Wide and Gen ride together in August 2012.

November 2012. Phone pictures from a ferry/bicycle trip to Sadoshima Island in the Seto inland sea.  I took the morning ferry peddled about 20 km halfway up this mountain, then walked the rest of the way up.  I finished by coasting back down at dusk and camping on the beach.  

Japanese Bullet Train Window

Going East from Okayama on the Shinkansen (bullet train) in Japan means you are going to  go through a lot of tunnels.  Going West however means that you are going to see a  bit through your little air-plane sized pressurized double paned window.  Doesn't really look like 160 mph does it?  

Lucky

Do you see that road in the right hand corner of the photo?  Not the one with cars on it but the one above it with no white lines.  Its an elevated paved path, on one side is a 10 ft slope to a heavily trafficked road and on the other is a 30 ft steep slope to the park below.  I use this path to commute.  Sometimes when I am riding my bicycle home from work in the dark, unable to see the pavement because of the oncoming headlights below me my mind has time to wander.  I think about how folks in Japan must view space.  I was born in West Texas where space was plenty and people where few.  The idea of owning the rights to the air in my immediate vicinity, or the right not to be touched or ran into if avoidable, were ingrained subconsciously.  

My friend Gen lives in Yokohama and he says I live in a small town (Okayama only has two million people, small for Japan.)  “Okayama..... I think that’s so country,” says he.  Even in a so called country town in West Japan it is impossible for a person who’s idea of peace often involves images of open spaces and open roads not to feel their ideologies stood on head.  Going from riding a motorbike to not at all.  The absence of a quick forward motion.  The absence of the quick forward motion of the workshop and friends within, into the congestion of a crowded set of islands.  An amazing place.  Old ladies push me out of the way on train platforms and run into me at the grocery store.  High schoolers play bicycle chicken with me on congested walkways.  But it’s not chicken to them, its just riding.  And the old ladies have earned their place on the platform.  They don’t have to ask for it.  Its just sharing space.  Something we don’t have to do to anywhere near the extent that most East Asians do every minute of their lives.  My inner desire to challenge those perceived intruders has all but faded to a laugh (I imagine the day when the bicycle handlebar locking scenario takes place, but it won’t by some Asian miracle.)  Now those interactions are more like being tickled by another culture.  

Just back from whirlwind trip to the states, three states, friends and family.  Then transported back to the picture that you see above.  Fast to slow.  Motorbike to bicycle and my feet standing on train platforms.  My ninth floor view.  Should it go without saying that sometimes we must slow down see what we have?

Hiroshima and Miyajima

Phone pictures. 11-23,24-2012

CarshowNagoyaOct20,2012

Like many Airports in Japan, the Nagoya Airport is a massive man made peninsula made mostly of pavement.  This is because the vast majority of the island is mountainous and difficult to land a 747 on. What isn't mountainous is occupied by people or edible crops.  At any rate a megastructure in the ocean is a perfect place to park an ocean of old custom cars.  This was the Cali Flavor car show.
Thanks to A.G., Yuka, Yang and Hanayo for getting us (my wife and I) there.  Thanks to the Vise Crew for the Nagoya food and beer the night before and the company the day of.

Kane Moto

This is the evening view from our 9th story apartment in the Kane Moto Neighborhood just east of Okayama City, Japan.  Our front door faces north and after the sun goes down you can see a bullet train pass every ten minutes or so like clockwork.  Even though it happens that often, if I walk out of my front door and see one of those giant sixteen car streaks of window lights one quarter of a mile to the north, I feel like I have been the recipient of some cosmic gift.  Like any kid who wonders where the people on that train are going, I sill want to go with them.  

Nara

Sunday, Sept. 15, 2012

Awa Odori

Tokushima City, Shikoku Island, Japan, August 14, 2012.  Awa Odori festival is a regional dance festival in Tokushima city which is a part of the greater Bon holiday, where it is tradition to invite your ancestors to come visit you from the dead.  At this festival the traffic lights are turned off and the streets overflow with people and dance troops.  Not professionals, but neighborhood groups, friends, co-workers gather in large groups to wear traditional clothing and do a dance that is part choreographed part free style, in the streets.  Some dances are scheduled into parades and others are renegade with teams commandeering an intersections and going for it (the best ones I saw where of this variety).  They each bring along their own set of drummers and some bands even include flutes (shinobue).  Drinking contests follow, traditions of politeness are dashed, and old drunk men fall on your friends as they are crouched eating street food made of octopus.  Wikipedia describes the situation as anarchy. 

Picture captions from the top down: Number 1: The graceful ladies of Japan Railways taking an intersection over.  Number 2: Aggressive male beauty salon employees make a floating stage quiver.  Number 3: Taiko drummers.  Number 4: Yoshino River. Number 5: Drinking contest on the shoulders your friends.  I believe the object may be to drink until you fall off.  Number 6: A street.