Tsuruoka Washington Hotel

There were two foreigners in this town, me included. We were celebrities. I had arrived in Shirataka, a rural non touristy village in the Northern part of the Honshu Island of Japan. It was the fall, and most leaves had not fallen yet. The first thing I did when I arrived in the modern apartment overlooking rice fields and temples was to have a ...

Today we had to clear out of our hotel by 10 am, but our train didn't leave until 5 pm. In any other city we have been to so far, this wouldn't be a problem. Unlike every other city we have been to so far, however, Sakata offers little in the way of...anything. We visited the city's museum about Samuri houses (I think?), but it was difficult to...

The sakura (cherry blossoms) were passing through southern Akita last Sunday. It seemed like a good time for cycling to Misaki Park, an hour-and-a-half trek on which Marty joined me. I made my grand entrance to the park by losing control of by bike in a gravel parking lot and bracing my fall with the palms of my hands. There are still bandages o...

It's Christmas and I'm at work. That's okay, really. I sort of treat it like the Superbowl: a powerful, emotional force that annually sweeps through the population and somehow misses me every time. My role in the holidays and Superbowl Sunday, when I'm at my most active, is therapist. People describe the symptoms of these sociological disorders ...

There was an agricultural festival in Kisakata this weekend. The poster advertising the event at the train station depicted a few stern-looking middle-aged men walking around in the mud between stalls of vegetables with angry looks on their faces. The reality was, in fact, thousands of stern-looking middle-aged men walking around in the mud with...

For an American Midwesterner, trains may represent the most jarring upheaval that comes with living in a foreign country. After all, before coming to Akita, I always thought of trains as nothing more than panoramas of graffiti I could peer at through my windshield -- a way I could stay updated on the real estate acquisitions of various gangs fro...

Nikaho is pinched between the sea and a number of large hills that are all covered in evergreens. The exception is a grassy plateau with massive windmills on it. That's not what makes this place scenic though. Mt. Chokai, on a clear day, rules the skyline with a pointy, snow-spotted peak and a massive, sprawling bulge that rests in two different...

There's no theme to what happened here in Japan this past week. Stuff just happened. And so, here's a list of it: 1. The board of education had another drunken blowout. I politely crept away when they started getting touchy-feely. Something about the soft, jolly way that flesh adorns my body invites drunk people to reach out and prod at it. I sh...

On Saturday I went to a gallery of Buddha paintings in Sakata with a girl who always wears a kimono and wooden sandals; the one who's forbidden to meet my friends. I asked her why she always wears a kimono and she threw the same well-thought-out bucket of steaming rhetorical vomit on me that I usually throw on others when they ask why I don't dr...

I had a 75 minute transfer in Shinjo where there just happened to be a festival at the train station today. They had tons of food stalls where I got some food, and one vendor who was cooking live fish on a stick gave me one for free! This was a fun transfer and broke up some of the monotony of riding the local trains continuously.