Our school owner, Iwayama-San, his wife, me (amber!), & Joe standing on the famous Kappabashi (Kappa Bridge) at the start of the day.

2 monkeys alongside the path – can you spot them both?

Myojin Bashi (Bridge) at the halfway mark of our hike.

Late afternoon sun on the river before heading home.

We hiked the shortest of the trails that was 3km each way, and an extra 2 km after that and spent the whole day there, from about 10:15 until 5pm when we hopped the bus back to the parking lot (about a 30 minute ride). We had nice bento boxes for lunch but you can also buy lunch from a few different locations inside the park. We went on a Saturday, and it was semi-crowded – we barely got a parking space in the 2nd parking lot, and we arrived at 9:30am

Kamikochi is a huge nature mountain preserve less than 1 hour drive from Takayama. You can stay in an onsen hotel there or camp out, or do a day trip from Takayama. You cannot drive a personal vehicle into the park though, so if you want to camp, you better be prepared to cram it all in your backpack! You must take one of their buses to get in & out of the park for 2000 yen/roundtrip per person, or a taxi -3500 yen each way.

As always, you can see about 125+ Kamikochi photos on FLICKR,

OR checkout my photos on INSTACANVAS – they have some new printing options available!

I’ve almost been living in Hohoku town in Shimonoseki city for a year. Life in the Japanese countryside sure is different to being a student back in Leeds, and vastly different to my time as an exchange student in Kansai. Still, true to heart I’ve always preferred city life, but can still appreciate the wonder of nature.

Many of my friends go on adventures to famous places and come back with a suitcase full of pictures (seriously, a suitcase full of memory cards full of pictures) that remind me that if I want to see something famous I may as well just look at it online. I’ve previously blogged on my ineptitude when it comes to visiting tourist areas which explains my general lack of pictures when it comes to visits to Tokyo, Kyushu and so on. Why take a picture that’s been taken a million times before?

Aware that this in itself is an odd way to introduce my new photography blog, let me explain. As of 1st August 2012 I’ll have one year left on my contract. One year left in the Japanese countryside. One year left in Hohoku. Now it’s true that my contract could be extended, but let’s ignore that for a while. For the sake of this blog I have 1 year left.

Hohoku is not a particularly famous place, in fact probably the most famous area, Tsunoshima, has only just got an English Wikipedia page. But there are some really great areas here, worthy of a few more eyes.

So the challenge I’m setting myself is simple. Over the space of a year, I want to take (and upload here) 1000 pictures of Hohoku. The rules are also quite simple (I’ll probably add to these later).

1. Pictures must not be taken before 1 August 2012.
2. Pictures must be of Hohoku (they can be taken from outside of Hohoku, but must be of the Hohoku area).
3. No pictures will be taken of people or houses without their (or their owner in terms of houses) permission (by this I mean as a main focus point, for the sake of people’s privacy).
4. All pictures must be different. No taking a hundred pictures of the same tree (there are plenty of other trees).
5. There must be at least 1000 pictures uploaded before 1 August 2013.

Scenic Routes are Good if you have the time!

Kanazawa Station in the afternoon sun

Ninja Temple in Kanazawa

We finally got on the road out of Takayama around 10:15am and headed west for the highway. I didn’t find the highway entrance, and instead we took a sort of side-road through the mountains and along a river. I kept seeing the highway peeking out of the tree tops high above us but I missed the entrance…probably since it was in Japanese. It’s probably better though because the side road was much more scenic and the highway is expensive! We took it a little later on to save us some time, and it cost 1500 yen= $20!! Keep in mind Kanazawa is only 125 km away to begin with!

Once we arrived, we found our tiny hotel (no couch surfing hosts could be found) and if was too early to checkin but they let us park our car early which was great since they only charged about $4 for parking! We set out on foot but soon found it too hot and ducked into a mall to cool off & get lunch & a Starbucks. We ended up just walking around a bit & then going to the movies later to stay cool. Plus it was couples day and the tickets were basically buy 1 get 1 free! We saw The Amazing Spiderman in English with Japanese subtitles. (They did have this movie available dubbed in Japanese as well)

The next day after a pastry & coffee at Starbucks we walked the 2.4 km in the morning sun & heat to the Ninja Temple! We were scheduled for the 9:30 tour & we needed to be there 10 min early so we left around 8:00am. We had to remove our shoes before entering and pay about $10 but it was really cool! There are over 20 hidden stairs and traps and secret rooms and even though the tour was in Japanese, they gave us these little binders with photos of each room and descriptions in English about what was being said.

After the tour we walked over to a few shops to do a little shopping to stay cool again, and then off to Kenrokuen garden, which was much cooler than the street. It was very nice and probably a mini version of what Kyoto probably looks like, with a fountain, a pond full of koi fish, and little footbridges scattered around. Once we covered the park, we hopped in a taxi for a quick trip back to the hotel to get our car and hit the road again. On the way back we went through Toyama, the nearest city to us. We took all side roads on the trip back even took a small detour that brought us to the coast and saw some nice mountain views as the sun was setting.

More photos from the trip on Flickr

relaxing in the shade

Having got used to the endless urban sprawl that extends the length of the Japan Sea coast, we were amazed at what was in store when a friend invited us to stay at his mother’s home in the rural south of Kyushu. After an eventful boat trip from Osaka where we found ourselves sharing a “private cabin” with an unknown couple, we set off on a seemingly endless car journey from Kagoshima that skirted the still smoking Sakurajima volcano. Finally the car stopped in the emptiest space I had seen in Japan; an open vista of terraced paddy fields with two houses in the centre.

One house was a fairly modern construction with a metal roof and sidings; the other was a traditional straw and wood warabuki house. The latter belonged to my friends mum. We were welcomed in and given tea while we watched a huge stag beetle circumnavigate the centre light. On looking around the house, it was obvious that everything about the place was original. Shoji screens separated the tatami rooms from a corridor and kitchen where a cooking pot hung over an open irori fire. The small amount of smoke that came from the charcoal fire escaped freely upwards towards the thatched roof.

My wife at this stage asked directions to the lavatory and was handed a torch and a pair of very tall geta clogs and pointed towards a shack at the end of one of the fields. On asking why the geta were so high, she received the simple explanation – “snakes”. A while after she set off, I heard a scream and teetered down on another set of geta to investigate. I found my wife looking at the open toilet door with the biggest, blackest spider we had ever seen suspended from the centre. I am ashamed to say that using the space behind the lavatory seemed an easier option.

At bath time we were again handed the torch and shown to a lean-to at the side of the house, this contained an iron goemon-buro looking like a cartoon cannibal cooking pot set over an open wood fire. The washing area was a large flat stone level with the top of the pot. We took turns on this and in the bath whilst my friend’s mum made favourable comments about western body shapes.

Nervous exhaustion gave way to sleep and we woke up to the increasingly frenzied clucking of chickens, culminating in what sounded suspiciously like a death rattle. We sat down to a breakfast of rice, satsuma-jiru soup and a plate of raw chicken meat, all washed down by imo shochu, (distilled potato spirit). This was just part of the preparation for the day’s fishing trip which I will tell you about another time.

Cute kid and bubbles.

Well, it’s how you see pockets of beauty, I think. In Kyoto, the old Gion area is nice, there are plenty of beautiful old temples and shrines and The Philosopher’s Walk makes for an extremely pleasant stroll. There is a lot to like and a lot that is pleasing to the eye. But, for me, those pockets of beauty to not negate the hodge-podge nature of the architecture downtown, the unsightly power lines which blight almost every view, and the apparent lack of thought regarding what to build and where. Paris, to me, is a beautiful city with pockets of ugliness. Kyoto, like many Japanese cities, is its inverse.

My own hometown has a pleasant view of mountains. Many of the people who live here tell me, and it would seem in seriousness, that they live in a beautiful town. If they do, they must love factory chimneys and buildings created with such an eye on functionality over appearance that they make prisons look glamorous.  To be frank, there is no way any sane person could think this town is beautiful, and I can only assume that they think a distant mountain’s beauty trumps the nearby factories’ ugliness. You can find a pretty temple here and a quaint shop there, but generally the town is fairly charmless.

The locals, however, seem to be able to see that pretty temple, to admire that quaint shop and to stand in awe of those distant mountains and blissfully ignore the rest. Those things are beautiful, ergo the town is. But you wouldn’t fancy a right old boiler with defrosting chicken arms, a cellulite arse, hairy armpits and a full moustache because she had a really pretty little nose, and nicely trimmed fingernails, would you? Of course not. Because she’s still a boiler. But I think the Japanese can see the nose and the fingernails above and beyond the rest. You can go for a walk in the country and it might be strewn with rubbish and old tyres and the odd abandoned television or refrigerator, yet people will spot a pretty flower or nicely coloured leaves and sigh at the beauty of Japanese nature.

I envy such an ability, because I want to like my hometown. I really do. But in truth, the best I can say about it is that it is in a good location from which to go to other places. If I so choose, I can wake up and decide to drive to the Olympic ski resorts of Nagano. In the summer, the pretty, sandy beaches of the Izu peninsula are close enough to escape to for a weekend. Even the excitement and bustle of Tokyo isn’t to far away. Yes, my adopted hometown is in a good place. It just isn’t one.

Firstly, I met a world renowned Japanese ceramicist by the name of Terada Yasuo, 寺田康雄. I got to see and participate in putting wood into the kiln. Seeing the massive hand built (designed and coordinated by Terada-sensei himself) wood kiln was truly fantastic but I cannot help but think that meeting Terada portended more than just a pleasant coincidence. He invited my wife and I to come see and hang out with him in his hometown. I will definitely take him up on that offer very soon.

The kiln.

Stoking the fire

Terada-sensei, Ohta-sensei, and I also as a side diversion put out some eel nets.

Mihama Bay.

All in All another fantastic pottery related experience.

 I was hoping for something more customer or visitor friendly. But entering the actually grove is forbidden. You can walk around the old gate and down path but not go through the original facade. The entrance had a rustic, fairy tale like approach with a massive cave carved into hard earth and the eerie green glow of a forest so overgrown with foliage in tightly woven canopies that rain barely penetrates it.

Because Owase had long ago awakened a much stronger arachnophobia than I thought I had, when a Hunter spider (look it up its huge!!!) crawled onto my ceiling and greeted me in the morning, We speedily and cautiously came and went.

But not before we left a permanent mark of our own. Hail Doi Bamboo Of Carla and Nick’s love haha…

In this picture you can see Carla’s perpetually messy corner, our TV has a – wait wait for it – a VHS player *GASP* and is analog so it also will not work in 4 months time. Also the mirror, that was original just leaning against the wall next to the TV, is now hanging up thanks to yours truly. Lastly, those sliding doors reveal our somewhat excessively expansive closet space.

The Board of Education ran out of money so we have no bed, just mattresses. This is also my perpetually messy desk/corner. Charis’s and Sasha’s cards, and a map of our prefecture are hanging on the wall. : {)

The three little pots represent our ambition plan to grow our own tomatoes, basil, and peppers! You can see the southern mountains from here. This is a somewhat peaceful place to have a nice sunny breakfast or just tea when the weather is cool. I just did this the other day. It was somewhat comforting. No dryers in most homes in Japan so every apartment comes with one of these balcony thing-ys too narrow for people and sitting but perfect for drying clothes.

The kitchen viewed from the bedroom. Carla’s cooking!

Yes, that little thing in the corner is the washing machine. I basically wash clothes every day.

The shower/bath. The toilet is completely separate from the sink and bathing area. pretty smart! no poo “meest”

I had to add a coffee maker to this crazy tetris-esque cooking area. Other than that everything came with apartment.

The dinner table and some more of my decorating efforts.

The entryway cabinets. the flower is called the higanbana (彼岸花). It’s apparently poisonous – it’s sap irritates the skin.

One of the many cemeteries that pepper the town. This one gives one a much better sense of care for the dead and gone. In many others i have seen old gravestones taken from others graves and used as stands, bricks, and supports for new graves. An image of samsara in miniature. After no one remembers you, you never existed. Only the plants devouring your carbon have any sense of gratitude.

Surrounded by new homes, and roads. This is all that’s left.

The foundations. facades. and walls of past homes. Some still lived in. These are very traditional streets thin, walled in by real stone wall foundations.

Finally the truly forgotten shrine.

At Least the Stone Name Pillar is still new...

Faded Vermillion, Mossy Steps

P.S. Thank you Josh for making me see this town in a little more attractive light.

Triangular Building Tokyo Street

The expressways we drove through gave us glimpses into people’s lives in Tokyo, snaking as they did around buildings, always above ground, always at least two stories high.

One-room Apartments in Tokyo

I saw many, many one room apartment complexes, a Japanese building climbing up like a straight reed with toy doors and toy windows, and invariably, a flower or plant peeking out from behind the curtains.

Japanese Man at a Station

If you see the morning crowd rush, you would think the Japanese the most prim-and-propah dressers in the world, the men in suits, even those on bicycles, and the women in knee-length skirts and pump shoes.

None of the layered clothing, pink and green colors on hair, woolen caps, tall, strange shoes and boots and vibrant scarves I had seen on the Ginza yesterday. It is as if there were two Japans, two kinds of Japanese. One more corporate than corporate Europeans, and the other more punk than punks.

Japanese Tour Guide

Our guide, a bald, white-haired, spectacled Japanese, explained that one-room apartments were the only option for the young people in Japan, because real estate is very expensive. No wonder, given that Tokyo is one of the most densely populated cities in the world.

An average worker’s salary, he informed us, was about 48000 usd a year, which was not enough for a lot of things in Japan. His bitter story of Japan’s economic downturn and call for change in the recent Japanese elections continued through the day. We wondered if he had a single good thing to say about Japan. He didn’t.

We were stuck in a jam for most of our one-hour drive through the city. Our only consolation was we could see Mt. Fuji, or Fuji san, as we drove through a clear cloudless day.

The view became easier on the eyes as we hit the inter-state, and soon we caught glimpses of rolling hills and red-roofed toy houses in the green towns and villages we passed though.

View of Japanese Countryside on the way to Mt Fuji

The paddy-fields were a gorgeous, eye-catching green, and not even a lecture from our ironically smiling guide who informed us of the poverty of the farmers could dampen our spirits at the sight of the bright vistas that passed by.

When Mt Fuji revealed itself in all its glory, we fell in love with its symmetry, as if a child had drawn a mountain, equal slopes on both sides, the flat crater in the middle.

Mt Fuji, Japan, View from Fujiyoshida

I clicked a hundred pictures as Fuji san towered over the surrounding landscape, all inhabited, so very different from other mountains, accessible by road to the 5th base in four different spots,and an easy climb for most determined walkers.

As I looked at Fuji san through the window of my bus, he seemed to say something to me, only I couldn’t catch it. Lunch at a hotel surrounded by pine trees. A quiet place, shining, relaxed under the cool breeze and the warm, in-your-face sun.

Lake Kawaguchi, Japan

We then drove down to Lake Kawaguchi, one of the five surrounding Fuji, and from there admired the cloudless view of the mountain again.

Mt Fuji over Lake Kawaguchi

I had imagined I would not want to take pics, it was a snowless Fuji that met us after all, but I found I could not take my eyes off its perfect proportions. The surrounding hills and greenery were gorgeous too, but I just could not get my eyes off dear old Fuji san.

View from Lake Kawaguchi Mt. Tenjō Ropeway

We took the Lake Kawaguchi Mt. Tenjō Ropeway up the hill opposite the lake, and the view, as from nearly all touristy rope ways, was not un-spectacular. The thrill for me was going up through the pines though, and being able to see right into the heart of each one: tall proud, stately.

The drive to the 5th station up from Lake Kawaguchi is one of the greenest I have been on for some time, and I live in quite a green country. The road up to Fuji is paved but tiny, barely enough for the width of the bus, and I could imagine it from July through August, scores of climbers walking their way up towards the base, when the road is closed to vehicles. People trudge through the trail at night and climb up the mountain, for what I have heard is a magical, unreal sunrise.

The 5th base of Mount Fuji proved to be an enchanting place. On one side was Mount Fuji, and all around were pine covered hills, blue skies and clouds. Paradise must look like that sometimes.

Mount Fuji Details

Mount Fuji from the 5th Station

Vegetation below Mount Fuji

I sat myself down and looked up at the face of the mountain, wrapped in a shawl I had had to pull out.

It was chilly, and as I sat looking up, it came to me, what the mountain was all about. ‘I am big, and you’re small, and that is the way it should be.’

There was something comforting in its symmetrical, calm, overwhelming presence. Even though I knew this was a volcano, dormant but very much capable of destruction, I sensed a reassuring benediction pouring forth from it into the surrounding landscape.

I kept looking back as we drove down, catching occasional glimpses of the mountaintop and told myself it would be nice to come back and attempt the 7 hour hike to the top some day.

The drive back through the rolling Japanese countryside dotted with cute little homes surrounded by well-tended gardens that looked like pixies and fairies just might live there, was a treat in itself.

Gardens in the Japanese Countryside

We also drove through Hakone, a beautiful town that is on my list of places to stay in if I ever visit Japan again.

The bus tour ended at Odawara from where we took a 40-minute Shinkansen ride to the Tokyo station. While the eventual ride itself was rather uneventful, it was fun watching the bullet trains whooshing in and and out of the station while we waited for our Shinkansen to arrive.

We got back, tired but happy, from the Tokyo station back to our hotel in Shinjuku. It was my turn to explore Tokyo on my own the next day, on Day 3 of our stay in Japan.

Title: ねこ鍋：みちのく猫ものがたり
English Title: “Neko Nabe: A Tale of Cats in the Northern Provinces”
Author (and Photographer): 奥森すがり (Okumori Sugari)
Publication Year: 2007 (Japan)
Pages: 96

Neko Nabe is a photography book chronicling author Okumori Sugari’s attempts to raise a litter of stray kittens in a traditional farmhouse in the north of Honshū, an area traditionally referred to as “michinoku.” To scholars of pre-modern Japanese literature, this area will be familiar as the setting of Bashō’s famous haiku collection Oku no Hosomichi (“Journey to the Far North”). Scholars of contemporary Japan will recognize Neko Nabe itself as a major phenomenon in bookstores and on the internet.

As her kittens (neko) grow older, Okumori finds that they have a habit of sleeping curled up in Japanese cooking dishes called nabe, which are used in the winter for making potluck stews called nabemono. Pictures of kittens sleeping in nabe abound, but this book has quite a bit more content to offer, especially as the photographs and text detail life in a pleasantly rural part of a country that is often perceived as overwhelmingly urban.

Another joy of this book is that it is written in the local dialect. Because Okumori’s Japanese is fairly simple to understand, a student of the language should have no trouble picking out and deciphering the instances of northern dialect. For example, 先ず becomes まんず, 私 becomes おらほ, and the speech of Okumori’s father and grandmother becomes quite colorful indeed.

Neko Nabe, filled with amusing anecdotes and charmingly amateurish photography, is a short, easy, and oddly engrossing read for Japanese students interested in a depiction of life outside of Tokyo. Even when the dialect gets too heavy to be comprehensible, the cats are still cute, so there’s no way to lose.