Akisawa Hotel Sukumo

... to the space bar (one reason I haven`t written more till now). The next morning I took a ferry to Yawatahama on the island of Shikoku. I was on the deck by chance to watch the pilot bow to the official on the dock who solemnly bowed back as we chugged out to sea exactly on time.

On the bus from Y. to Ozu: Modern Japan can be incredibly ugly and incredibly beautiful - electric lines everywhere, billboards, signs, concrete building blocks ...

... journey, partly to review my course in Japanese and extract the verbs and vocabulary needed for the tasks of travel, and mostly because I loved this ryokan with its old wooden buildings looking like samurai houses and stone lanterns and paths through plantings, and lit torches at night.

... Station
910yen (about 10 dollars) from Beppu Station
Usuki is also accessible by ferry from Yahatahama Ehime, to Usuki Harbor (2hours and 15minutes)

Once you arrive at Usuki Station, you can get tourism brochures. With the English map that I found, I did the recommended walking route which is about 2 kilometers. There are also free bikes for tourists to borrow at the station and apparently these can be used to see the ancient Stone Buddah structures (6km from ...

This is my first travelpod entry! I love to travel around the world so much, but let me write about my small hometown first.
I live in Iwakuni city, Japan. Iwakuni is a small town near Hiroshima, where an atomic bomb was first dropped about 65 years ago.
Iwakuni is famous for ...

... the air ticket was cheaper though this time around but I should have known better. I spent a lot of time with my Gramps in the mornings and then had the rest of the day to putz around (actually I ended up rearranging half of the house and ran out of time to finish the rest!).

To maximize my time in being back in Japan, I filled up on food! I ate yakiniku, matsutake dishes, ramen, strawberry shortcake ...

... that was far more modernized, but when we got to the traditional old town area, everything was made of wood, clay and ceramic roof tiles. I really liked the theater and the Kamihaga house. The rest of the town had an awesome authenticity to it, with the exception of the SUV's driving down the center of the perfectly paved road (in old times, the streets would have been made of dirt) The theater, Uchiko-za, is one of the most famous theaters is Japan ...

... 1.5 hours, this guy took a serious detour to do some errands) we tried our best to remember and look up as much Japanese as we knew to keep the conversation from getting stale. We found out he's a grocer, who drove to Matsuyama to take a Karate test to move up to his next belt. This guy was huge, he said he weighed about 220 lbs. That's impressive for a Japanese guy. After we arrived at the festival, we immediately ran into an ...

... nice, and the nice woman who recommended the Chamomile tea brought me another cup without me asking. I don't mind, it's just I'm not sure I can keep drinking all this tea. I'm starting to feel kind of hot actually. I'm considering taking a nap. I have another 2 hrs and 20 minutes before we're due in Taipei. Maybe a quick nap and then the dinner will be good to finish this slew of flights.

... dealings with the western world. He also wrote the first Japanese-English dictionary. We went to the Manjiro museum on the cape and one of the most amazing things was a letter from President Roosevelt to an ancestor of Manjiro's saying that their two families went back a few generations and would always be friends. And the letter looked authentic too, not just a copy. Other than that it rained a lot and we had a good time just enjoying the scenery. One other cool thing that ...

So the next few days were spent getting to a quiet little city called Uwajima. The roads to Uwajima were much more difficult as they were all inland and very mountainous though it was nothing like the experience of riding to Matsuyama because there were pretty good shoulders along the highways. But right before we got to Uwajima we found ourselves on beautiful, sunny coastal roads. They were a beautiful sight. Uwajima ...