Another huge travel day. This is the last day in the Japanese country side. After this it is all big cites: Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Hiroshima.

But, before rejoining the hectic life (and holy shit is Tokyo hectic) we walked the 8 km between 2 post towns following the footsteps of Japanese lords and retainers from 250 years ago. A great surprise was an ancient tea house half way along the route. A local man served us tea and pickles and some locally brewed plum wine after I chatted him up. Normally tourists walk the direction opposite what we did since it was quite rigorous. “Gentle up hill climb” my ass. What’s really great is the number of Japanese who were visiting this area. In general they seem very interested in their own history and culture which is not something we have seen so much in other countries.

Walking around the rural area like this
really gave me a sense of the inspiration for some of the post apocalyptic environments depicted in anime. There is almost nothing untouched by man. Almost all rivers in Japan are dammed Concrete reinforcements and huge pipes carrying mountain run-off to power plants creep out from the bamboo and cyprus forests. Many of them are over grown, appearing as the remains of some previous society now lost to time.

Did I mention hat food can be cray expensive? How is $25 for two ice creams and coffees? Maybe we were paying for the beautiful views.

Finding addresses in Tokyo is fucking bonkers if you don’t have a map. It took us 2 hours to get to our Air B&B rental when it should have only taken 30 minutes. Two taxi drivers, a local police officer, and a resident all needed to consult a map to give us directions, and all were all different! If I did but speak some Japanese it would have been worse since they could not read the address written in English. So, if you got to Tokyo, bring a good map.

The apartment itself is amazing. It must be 1500 square feet. The shower room is itself as large as the first hotel room we had after arriving. The whole neighborhood is super posh. Expensive cars are tucked into tiny driveways on every street and a Ducati motorcycle and used luxury car (Ferrari, Bugatti, Austin Martin) dealerships have a prominent home on the main street.

Dinner involved a large amount of stumbling over my bad Japanese with our waiter but resulted in some delicious cold soba noodles and sake.