I’d like to say a lot has happened since my last post, and a lot has happened since the last post was written a couple of months ago. Things are bound to happen. My daily life still consists more or less of cooking, cleaning, and grocery shopping so not too much excitement there. I also spent a fair amount of time obsessing over blogs like dailykos.com, crooksandliars.com, and fivethirtyeight.com prior to the election. But on the plus side, I’ve had time to get out and enjoy Japan. The month of October was essentially traveling every weekend. One weekend in Kurayoshi, the next big town over, for a friend’s birthday party, another weekend in Yonago, the next next big town over, for a gaijin-filled Halloween party, then there was a day trip riding out to Matsue and Sakaiminato.
The biggest trip in October was heading to Hiroshima to enjoy the sake festival where hundreds of brands of rice booze were available for our drink-till-you-drop pleasure. We’re not just ridiculous drunkards, however, and there was a lot more to enjoy about Hiroshima. For starters, I rode my bike there – a beautiful mini-tour of 300km that I broke up over three days, spending one night with friends in Yonago and one camping out in the mountains. Once in Hiroshima we did a fair amount of sightseeing, climbing Mt. Misan on the nearby island of Miyajima and of course checking out the Peace Dome and A-Bomb Museum which was a sobering experience to say the least. When I was a child and first learned about the Hiroshima bombing, I imagined it being to this day still nothing more than a radioactive crater. Later I learned that wasn’t the case and that it had recovered magnificently, and yet I was still surprised and heartened to see just how vibrant it had become despite its history. I thoroughly enjoyed its cosmopolitan atmosphere. It was so refreshing to be in a big city again where, for example, a nightlife after 8pm actually exists.
Lately, Bronwyn and I have been riding closer to Tottori City to check out the local attractions like the sand dunes and waterfalls. At least what Tottori lacks in big-city appeal it makes up for greatly in natural beauty all within an easy pedal away. Fall has very much set in, coming as kind of a shock for this Californian of the last eight years where the concept of “seasons” was limited to whether or not I’d need to wear a sweater. The temperatures and frequency of rain is actually quite similar to Washington state where I was raised, though a major difference being that here the trees change color rather than staying ever green.
The next big adventure is Kyoto this weekend. Bronwyn and I and a small group of friends will be heading out for a three-day weekend of mischief and merriment after which I’ll be taking several days to ride back along the San-In coast, stopping, among other places, in the city of Obama. Should be fun and hopefully I won’t wait another two months to write about it.
