Comfort Inn Kochi

... view was quick to disappear though as we went into a long series of tunnels. I arrived to hard rain in Kochi, which matched my mood. After a rough night in the business hotel and finding out my CF photo card aquired a virus (damn Hostel PCs), I was pretty irritated and vaguely sad. This blog will have to do without photos as I'd rather not inadvertantly infect other computers. The good news is the virus doesn't appear to affect my camera or ...

ciao a tutti e che bello vedere un po' di commenti!! solo un rapido aggiornamento, ieri ho fatto i mille mila gradini (1800 e passa + il ritorno) del tempio Kompirasan, stupendo davvero, mentre la notte l'ho passata in una casa molto molto giapponese in mezzo al bosco e sulla riva di un fiume ...

Primo traghetto che personalmente a me da una particolare libidine caricarci la moto e navigare per mare ogni tanto. Fiondo nell' isola di Shikoku , l' isola di un pellegrinaggio Zen da 1500 km attraverso 88 templi . Io la taglio a meta' naturalmente per montagne e dormo a Kochi altra citta' di mare e naruralmente si cena a base di sushi freschissimo . Sto viaggiando un po in fretta un mio amico a Shizuoka mi ha invitato ad andare ad Iwata a visitare la fabbrica della Yamaha .Potevo dire di no?

... tokushima prefecture taking in the beautiful country side smack dab in the middle of japan's 'leaf changing season.' it was beautiful! (the scenery, the weather, the leaves, the company, the experience, and the memories!) but i'll let the pictures tell the rest!

In Hiroshima I visited the famous or infamous Atomic Dome(ground zero August 1945)and learned a lot of interesting details. The first atomic bomb was detonated at 600 meters above the city to maximize its lethal potential. It resulted in over 140,000 deaths including 14,000 Koreans who were forced in to ...

... strong and Mac blew me away when he played 'Bloke' by Chris Franklin just for me! I don't know if he really understood the lyric, 'I'm a bloke, I'm an ocker and I really like your knockers', but it was a sweet gesture nonetheless. Also made friends with the lovely Yuki from Okinawa, who was sitting beside me at the bar and getting drunk at the same rate as me. Her grasp of English was about as good as my grasp of Japanese, but we managed to communicate through the ...

Saijo is a little town in the Northern part of the island of Shikoku. Hint: Shikoku is the island that we live on. Every year, Saijo has a huge matsuri (festival) to celebrate the fall harvest. Think of it like a Thanksgiving. But with no turkey. And big wooden carts that are dragged thru the city. Also there's no pilgrims, cranberry, or dinner for that matter. But there are large shrines, lots of people, chanting ...

So after my last Kyoto night spent in a late night inaugural karaoke experience, I zoomed by train to Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four major islands with two goals: to see the secluded Iya Valley, and to meet a woman named Taeko who was email-introduced to me by my kind friend Steph. Tokyo & Kyoto were great, but the feet were blistered and ears were ringing from aural overload. The stunningly high-speed shinkansen rail network of Honshu ...

... otherwise I'll kick myself anytime anything reminds me of it. of course, it did almost get me stuck waist deep in a hole 25 meters under the city of Budapest. But that's a minor detail. I would most likely never seek whalemeat out in a restaurant again, but if offered to me, I would gladly take it. REASON #2 After lunch, we went back to watch the dogfights. We waited in line with a bunch of other tourists (all Japanese, I think it's great that Japanese are such tourists in their own ...

... where there were a sport load of people standing around in costumes. These people were putting on a festival with some traditional wooden clackers (I don't know what they're called in Japanese). They hold the clackers in their hand and dance to the music. It's kind of fun, they seem to be large groups of teenagers - possibly high school clubs that do this dancing thing, tho there were some older performers. After wandering around some more ...