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We're sick. We're both sick. One of us is smart. One of us is not. I got up at 0630, showered and headed out to Fukuoka anyway. It didn't feel that bad until I think around noon, when the weather (36, with a humidex of 43) started to really catch up to me. Seraphine had helped me out with an itinera...

That's right. It's the onsen episode! Rebecca got me a ryokan trip as a birthday present, and indeed I turned 31 yesterday. Here is me squinting in a yukata. me-scale.jpg We arrived by train -- we picked up a whole Shinkansen pass for the next few days because we have an action packed week planned, ...

Several friends appeared in Japan this weekend. Instead of traveling wildly, it became a period of just exploring where we were -- as for one of them, we were bantering back and forth about the merits of spending $300 for what amounted to an additional 12 hours together and a tour of Tokyo before ju...

It's noon on Friday and I never really wrote about Thursday -- yesterday we went to the Nachi Waterfall and its associated shrine . It's only an hour east of where we were, so it didn't feel so bad. And getting there was nice! We stopped by Nanki-Katsuura, an onsen town, just between trains and buse...

my friends who have gone, some really proficient in japanese claimed that nobody wanted to speak to you or would even be bothered to have been talked to. maybe this is just how the bigger cities are? I think this would definitely be the case in Tokyo. At least the time we were there we didn't talk ...

Today we headed down to the most southernmost tip of Honshu, Kushimoto . Up at like 8am, we went to get a rail pass for the Wakayama / Osaka / Ise corridor, which I guess includes Nagoya in that, which helps for Saturday, and possibly helps with Nara, if we do go there. For today though, we got on a...

Quiet day today. Was a toss-up between an impromptu Tokyo trip and a reading day, and it ended up being a reading day -- I also inadvertently caught up on some sleep midday. I tried to look for parts of Osaka I haven't seen yet, so I headed to this Jazz cafe , though it's more of a cafe that plays j...

We thought we weren't going to Kyoto today, but we did. We thought it was a simple day where we just work -- well, we did do that. We opened by going to our "number 3 coffee place in Japan," where I finally got a nice pourover and we got to focus a bit on our respective work. I did some VN...

Hopefully I'm not hijacking the thoughts ! I want this to be a broader conversation, though ! I want more thoughts. There's definitely a ton of specialist shops. I like that the most. There's places like that in the States, less so in Canada, but they are very spread out. Hole in the wall in Nebras...

I did not take many photos today. It was meant to be a relaxation day before going to Kyoto, then it became just as busy as the other days usually are with wandering around. And now Kyoto tomorrow seems uncertain -- it's supposed to be 37 degrees before humidity, and we expect a bit less air conditi...

Warning: This is a whinier post than usual. But in the interest of logging my general feeling as I go... We decided to visit Kobe today. It seems like the next week looks more like a quieter weekend before doing Kyoto SIDE A and a full tour of southern Kansai villages. My friend Alice will be in to...

Another long day -- we ended up walking like 20km today overall. I know I meant to keep it to the travelogue, but some of you may have spotted me posting a picture here and there . I will not double post a photo, but expound upon this one. We opened the day around 8am flat heading to a Shinto shrine...

Do you think much about difference? It's all I can think about today. There's so many examples of "try this foreign thing" here, whether it's the Girl Scout uniforms at thrift stores, the vague English explainers on T-shirts, the Italian restaurants and especially the French that's littere...

are you shooting with a camera? the focal length tells me such. do you feel weird walking around with one? i'd think the japanese would be most icked about personal space or outright object to being photographed. it's so quiet, in those train cars. can you even get away with it? Just don't photogra...

Shopping? Again? Yeah ... kinda. I thought we would go immediately for day trips, but Rebecca felt like it was better to get some bearings in the city, first. I did have some stuff I still needed -- I now had a day bag with tons of pockets and space, a lil notebook and pen, my camera, wallet, we hav...