Day 11 – Hot springs in Hachijojima

My second day in Hachijojima is my final day on the island. If I had a few more days, I’d probably jump in on some Scuba diving or deep sea fishing action, but I won’t have time for that today. The sun rises early out here, and before 8am I’m downstairs enjoying a simple but […]

Day 10 – Tokens of the Present, Prayers for the Future

Today I turned 30 years old. From the time I was born until now, the Earth has gone through approximately 11,957 rotations. That’s 263,000 hours, or 15,800,000 minutes, or about 1.2 Million beats of my own heart to bring me to this exact point in time. Pretty remarkable when you think about it. Sadly, I […]

Day 8 – Please feed the animals

Day 8 brings me to Nara. Once it was the ancient capital of Japan back in the 700’s, but now it’s a clean and smallish city off 300,000 or so people accessible by train about an hour from Osaka or Kyoto. There are again a lot of foreign tourists here and from all over, and […]

Day 7 – Pilgrims in our own time

Day 7 is a notable day not just because it’s the half-way mark of my trip in Japan, but because today was probably one of the first actual sunny days I’ve had this whole time! It’s great not carrying an umbrella everywhere. Megumi-san made another wonderful breakfast for me, this time a stew and a […]

Day 6 – Osaka Wandering

Another gray day here in Japan, but if the weather forecast is to be believed, tomorrow should be much nicer. I roll out of bed and shuffle my way upstairs where Megumi-san has prepared for me a nice breakfast. Today: Tuna, quiche, strawberries, and an onigiri for the road. Still haven’t fully adjusted to fish […]

Day 5 – Goodbye Okayama, Hello Osaka

Today marks the end of my stay in Okayama. It’s been fun, but a new week and no more races means it’s time for me to pack up and move on. Rather than book anther hotel, for Osaka I’m doing a homestay with a local family, kind of an Air BnB sort of a deal […]

Days 3 and 4 – Off to the races

The SuperGT race this weekend is one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Japan, and why I ended up staying in a relatively unknown city like Okayama to begin with. Did it live up to the hype? Oh hell yes. For those unfamiliar, SuperGT is a Japanese touring car racing series, which in my […]

Day 2 – Bombs and Baseball

I woke on Day 2 to another gray and drizzly day, something of a theme for weather where I am right now. After writing a blog post and eating a fine breakfast from 7-11, I decide to get out of Okayama and take the shinkansen over to Hiroshima, only about 45 minutes away by bullet […]

Day 1 – Rainy Day Castles

Howdy y’all. Let’s get right down to the genuine far-east blogging. I woke up early this morning, not fully adjusted to the new time zones, and I wrote my first Day 0 blog post. A little after 7am I went down to the hotel lobby for my first true meal in Japan. Helpful waitress lady […]

Back in the Saddle – Japan awaits! (Day 0)

Ohayo fellow readers! ‘Tis I, Geo, ready to embark on a new adventure. Over the next two weeks I will be traveling around Japan and hopefully sharing a new post every day or close to every day with all the latest developments. Trip Overview I am in Japan for two weeks. I flew from Midland […]