#20 Night walk through a scary Japanese park

Transcript

Who man? I don't know if fall in Japan is just the fucking super best time of the year, or if I'm an extremely lucky person, so it's early November. Last night as I was walking home, it started getting really windy. And the bitter pattern of rain was bad enough that I pulled out my umbrella. I probably didn't need it though, because after, like, well, I'm so glad I had it. It was a solid couple of minutes. I would have been getting pretty wet, but then even that calmed down again, but then all night and then all this morning. Intermittent winds, very cloudy outside, and I was like, uh-oh, is this it now finally? Is it finally going to become what I expected this whole trip to be? Because I just kind of expected coming in the fall to the winter. I'll be here until the end of January. I don't know, I guess I'm just thinking of, like, the YouTubers who do stuff in Japan, and you can tell when they're filming in the winter, because it's just this kind of gray, cloudy sky. So I assume that's coming at some point, but I thought it would be here right now, but I didn't really have a lot of choice as to when I came because WestJet, the cheaper, though not exactly cheap airline in Canada, doesn't run flights in the winter. So I had to come now or never. Now or wait till the spring. And it's just been fantastically amazing. It's been better than summer the whole time. And then, uh, today I kind of took a little time dragging myself out of the house. It's like I better get moving. It's like two in the afternoon. It's going to be dark by five or five or thirty.

I like getting both. I like getting the sunlight and then getting the dark. You get to see both sides of Japan, because they're both very beautiful in different ways. But I don't want to just see the dark. I got to get some light. It's like, get moving, dude. Get going. And yeah, by the time I'm out here now, it's the hottest day yet. The clouds cleared. It's 26 degrees. I'm pretty sure it hasn't hit that yet. It's hot out. It is downright hot. This is fucking crazy. It's so good. But while I'm in the neighborhood of Ikubukuro, I've been going there every day. And it's been awesome. I love that neighborhood.

And then the walk from OG station to Nakayitabashi on top of that. So I was going to do that again today, because this is my last day in this neighborhood. Tomorrow I'm heading off way out to Western Tokyo. But I need to take a little rest. I'm running myself ragged because that is a long walk. Yeah, walking around Ikubukuro for two or three hours and then walking to OG station. That's not exactly close. And then walking up to Nakayitabashi. That's like, I don't know how long that is. But it feels like 90 minutes. Then I got an extra half an hour to get to my Airbnb. I didn't get home until midnight.

And I feel like I'm starting to push my body further than I should be pushing.

Oh man, I don't necessarily want to fill myself full of coffee before I get on the train. Jesus, the fourth one? This is insane. What is up with this stuff? But I've never seen this before. Sangaria brand, Maro Uma, Cafe Ole. I mean, I assume it's going to taste just like all the other ones. But it's in a really big bottle that I've never had this kind. So let's do it.

And then let's rush across this crossing because this is not going to stop clearly.

I don't know, get the drink, hurry. Hurry, gotta run. There's going to be a train in like fucking ten seconds.

Let's go. Oh man, I made it. I made it all the way across that crossing without a new train coming. But yeah, as much as I love that whole loop, I love the walk down the Shikouji River. I love Ikibukuro. I even like the walk in between, even though it's just kind of a long sort of a highway sort of situation. I really know it well because that's where my first 40 days in Tokyo were. So it's, you know, it's just dumb stuff like, oh, there's the intersection with all the pizza places. And there's the intersection with all the major convenience stores, just because I recognize them and I know them. But yeah, I don't need to do that today again because it'll be the whole day. You know, there's no quick way to go do that, that particular journey. And it's not like Ikibukuro is hard to get to. If later on in my visit, if I'm stuck in some neighborhood that I don't care much about, like I'm predicting once I get to a middle little capsule hotel near the Skytree later on. And I doubt there's much there because I've been to Asakusa, which is across the river from the Skytree. 5:00 And it seems pretty cool, but that's not actually where I'm going to be. I'm going to be on the Skytree side, which the bit I've walked around there really just seems residential. I don't know if there's much there. So, I mean, I'll just start taking more trains. I don't have to just walk around whatever neighborhood I'm in. I can get on the train if I want to go back to Ikibukuro, I can go. And I'm sure I will. So today I thought I would take a different adventure, a smaller adventure that does not involve eight or nine hours of walking. Because yeah, so far my body's holding up okay. My shoulders are feeling surprisingly good. I think lugging my book bag around early on in this trip actually did help. Now that my muscles have, uh, have bounced back, have recovered a little, they feel a bit stronger even. I complain about my shoulders so much. I'm sure people just think like, why don't you just do some push ups, you fuck. But it's just so tricky because of, uh, Scoliosis. I have this one shoulder that just gets injured so easily. It's really hard to do exercise that doesn't, doesn't injure me and then that's much, much worse. Really what I should be doing is like yoga and stuff, but it's just hard, hard to dedicate my, myself to that. I would rather walk around. So maybe walking around with a book bag is not the worst kind of exercise. Fuck, this is loud as shit.

Anyway, today I'm going to get on the train and instead of going to Ikibukuro, I'm going to go the other way. I've never gone the other way before so I'm just going to go there and see what happens. So let's stop in when I get there because this is unpleasantly loud.

Oh wait, let me try this coffee.

I mean, it is super sweet. It's definitely too sweet, but it is very tasty. Very good.

Man, it's so, like, as soon as a red light hits, it's so quiet. It's just the quietest thing in the world. And then as soon as the green light hits, it's loudest thing in the world. Okay. Okay.

All right, this is kind of cool. This is taking just a random train out to the middle of nowhere. I haven't done this in a long time. So yeah, the trains in the center of Tokyo are all that tangle of stuff I had to do getting in from the airport. That stuff's not that fun. But it's pretty cool to get on some train and just there's not that many people on it and it just keeps going and going and going and going. And you just end up somewhere that totally random. Even to a smaller degree, I like this in Vancouver, you know? Like the first time I went to New West Minster or stuff like that. It's just like, wow, you can just take the train and you're just in a new place. In a new little town.

In Tokyo, you can do that like crazy. You can just go wherever. So this is the Tobu Line. And it seems like there is a version of this train that goes even further. I went to Kawagoashi Station, which each one is numbered. So Ikebukuro is one. My precious Nakatabashi is five, I believe. So I'm at like 21. There is a version of this train that goes to 39. So it goes twice as far as this.

But the trains are confusing and I don't really understand how they work. So I think that's just like a very occasional local train. You know, obviously that one is not especially popular. So it doesn't run all the time and also it's like four o'clock, little after four. The sun ain't going back up. So I was like, this is plenty good. I would just be on the train till it was dark if I went any further than this. But I noticed it's the shame it doesn't go one stop, just one stop further.

Because by Nishi Kawagoe is the Kawagoe Aquatic Park. So I'm just walking toward there. I should just have time. I should just have time to at least see it while the sun's up. And then once the sun's down, you know, that's fine. That's just the world I'll be in now, darkness world.

Yeah, it's interesting to be on one of these trains, little local trains that stops at every single stop. It's going to the middle of nowhere, no offense. Kawagoe, K-A-W-A-G-O-E. But every stop announcement gets repeated in English. And I heard that was the thing they started doing for the Olympics. So even when I first visited in 2019, that was already happening. But it is interesting to just be like, man, they're playing that every stop every day for nobody. 10:00 Nobody cares. But hey, here I am. I'm here today. Somebody cares about the English.

Although I say that like, oh, geez, look at this. I'm so far away. I went on one train ride. Look at me. I'm a foreign guy. But I just walked past two black dudes. One of them had a huge afro. So I mean, there's foreigners everywhere.

There's no question. Japan is obviously more homogenous than North America. But I wonder.

I mean, even if you went way up North, maybe then. Maybe you really would be the only foreign person, but even then maybe not. Maybe it's all a bit exaggerated.

Jesus, this is actually a little bit of a walk. Oh, well.

I chose my adventure for the day. This is what we're doing. And it is fun. This is kind of exciting. This is neat to just be somewhere I've never been before. I just wish I had gotten started a little sooner. That's because I hung around my house because I was like, yeah, you know, it's easier to get work done early in the day when I still got my brain about me. So I was trying to edit an episode of my writing podcast. And I didn't even finish. It was just taking too long. And I was like, I have to get the heck out of here. It's going to be dark soon. So I think I just got to switch up that pattern. I just got to, when I get up, just leave. Just leave the house. Go soak in the daytime. And then do work in the evening. It's just the problem is. By the time I get back from wandering around all day and having little weird Japan adventures, I will not get work done at all. But whatever. I'm just going to have to try to force it because yeah, it just doesn't make sense to do work early in the day. Unless I literally wake up at 7 a.m. There's just not enough sunlight this time of year.

But at least I'm on the right route. This route will take me. It seems directly to the park and the river is called the Ruma River, I-R-U-M-A River. Parks, rivers, it's all my favorite stuff. And then on the way back, the Nishi Kawagoa subway station, that precious one extra stop that that train did not go to, theoretically on the way back at least, I can get on that train. So being trapped in the dark will be no big deal. There's a station right there. The dark's no big deal anyway. It's actually kind of fun once it gets dark. It's just this transition period that makes me feel weird. You know, the sun's going down.

This is where it feels like, you know, don't just go wander randomly. You're in some totally different part of Tokyo you've never been in before.

And you're walking even deeper. Don't do that in the dark. But then once the dark gets here, it's no big deal. But anyway, yet another loud road. So let's bail out till I get to the park. Oh, I guess I will mention real quick, though. That tofu line, how I said, it makes me cough. It makes, puts a little tickle in my throat. So I always make sure to carry cough drops in general. I just find that they're surprisingly useful. But that's a good example. You know what, I can still tell this when I get to the park. Why am I telling it now when it's loud? Fucking, geez, what an idiot. So let's reconvene at the park. Where theoretically there won't be trucks driving donuts in the park. Although if there is, that'd be cool too. Oh, geez, the big bridge, what the heck is this? Anyway, see you at the park.

So that bridge I saw was like a land bridge. It didn't cross any water, but it also didn't really have anywhere for people to walk. I don't think so. I just followed a local through like down a little stairway. There were some kids playing in a creek under an off ramp around some stuff. Then luckily, you know, even as this is starting to feel more and more rural, and more and more just like local. But how there's this having 11, so I went in there. Because yeah, realistically, I just took one train ride. I'm really not that far. But I think maybe, I don't know, I'm going to have to like do a little research about this place when I get back. I think maybe I'm inside Tama. Maybe? I'm not sure. But the offline Google maps, which are a little lame to begin with. They're not as functional as I would like them to be. But I got the Tokyo and Fukuoka maps. And I grabbed the Chiba map because I do have one Airbnb in Chiba. 15:00 I didn't get the Sai Tama map, but I'm going to have to do that when I get home. Because I probably won't be up here again. But you just kind of sneak in, you just suddenly you're kind of there. And suddenly things on the Google map are especially strange and not quite sitting or making sense or loading in properly.

And it's like some bamboo I'm passing. And whatever lives in there is fucking excited today. But yeah, I was looking at this map and I'm like, okay, here's me. Here's that park I was talking about that I'm still not further than it seemed. And if I cross that river, it seems like not that far. I can see Ome station, which Ome is the classic like that's really far in Tokyo. That's like almost all the way as far as you can go. And I was like, am I accidentally near there? Is that something I could walk to? But not at all. It's still 40 kilometers away.

Maybe I'm just further zoomed out than I thought I was. Or maybe this map is, I don't know, I'm not quite sure. It's not that close though. It's so neat though, I like this feeling, even though I don't know. Like I'm not necessarily actually going anywhere. But it's an exciting feeling to just go somewhere new.

Man, yeah though, I'm very bad at judging distances on these freaking maps. I did just have to take a big detour that maybe I didn't need to take, but I didn't know how else to get over here. But that park's not that close. If I do make it before the sun goes down, it's going to be a close one.

Alright, I did not make it while the sun is up, so this seems pretty nice. I'm walking around a small lake right now. It's got some of those like paddle boats that look like geese. I finished just people walking around at the cyclist and stuff because it's still so early. Time is it now. Damn, it's only 5.13 and it is so fucking dark.

Especially here, there are lights but I feel like there's less lights than there would be in the city and when I was just on the road before coming into here, big stretches with no lights. Super dark. It is neat though because it gets dark so fast. It is light pretty much right up to the moment that it's not. So I knew I had about 10 minutes left or 15 minutes maybe. So I made a b-line straight for this park even though there was nothing on the only road that connected to the park. Also went across the river so I rightly assumed that was a bridge. That doesn't connect to the park. I tried to go down through a little neighborhood into the park but it was all fenced off. There was no getting into the park but it was really cool because it's amazing how, you know, again, I don't know how long I was on the train half an hour maybe, not really that long. But it really feels so different. It definitely doesn't feel like Tokyo and again, I mean, I'm not actually sure if I'm in Tokyo anymore. It might technically be Saitama or some other prefecture. I have no fucking idea. Anyway, this neighborhood I cut through is one of those little things that even though I failed to get to the park, I'm so glad I went in there because it's so agricultural. It was just fields everywhere and people were out doing actual farming type gardening work and a flatbed truck went by with like a little backhoe on it and then another one or two of those went by. And there was even one western style house that looked like a farmhouse. It was like little house on the prairie all of a sudden. It's like, man, it's amazing how fast everything changes. Okay, here's a big map of the park but not at all lit. So let me turn on my little phone flashlight. Man, phones are useful. Even though my phone doesn't work as a phone and it doesn't have a data plan so it usually doesn't work even as that just as a map slash flashlight. And then I use the other one that I have for MP3s and podcasts. That's even better because now I get double batteries. But it's just like, man, you remember the the tricorder from Star Trek? That thing sucks compared to this. This is so much better. All right, there is the lake. I love those little washroom signs. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. There are ten fucking bathrooms in this place. Amazing. Wave pool, 20:00 multi-purpose pool, diving pool, flowing pool. Linear slider, Chibico pool, infant pool.

So anyway, this is clearly swimming. This is what this place is all about. Probably when it's warmer and brighter. I'm going to try to do a little walk around the outside edge anyway.

But yeah, that was cool because the next day at B&B I'm going to in Akiruno, it's pretty, has this feeling as well. It also feels pretty rural in a sense. I don't know, it's always hard for me to determine what I'm trying to say because nothing here quite fits into the North American archetype where you get to an industrial area and that's what it is. You get to a farming area, that's what it is. Obviously, everything here is a little more subtle because, for example, I was just in that neighborhood and I was like, man, I feel like I'm a million miles away. Everything is a farmer around here. But then when I got back to the main street and the sun was fully down and it's like, I didn't make it. But then there's a loss. There's something about this little weird random journey that feels kind of like, whoa, where am I going? Into the great unknown. But on the other hand, there's the loss. And it's not the great unknown at all. It's just fine. It's like I was saying when I went from Shibuya to Itabashi, the easiest hike ever. That's what this is. It's like I'm, it's like it keys off that part of my brain. It's like, if I was back in the day, would I be in Magellan? Would I be some kind of explorer? Would I be a cartographer? Maybe, but I'd probably also die. I'd die of starvation or I'd get mulled by a bear. You know, this way I get that feeling. I get that exciting feeling of like, oh, what's next? Where am I going next? But there's a Lawson's right there. And three blocks later, there's a 7-Eleven. It's like awesome. So easy. Here at this park, I've already walked by multiple drink machines because I just don't want. If I drink a can of coffee, it'll make my mouth make, you know, gummy clicky sounds. So I'm just going to wait until after the park gets. I think though to get back, I think I'm just going to walk. I'm going to try to take a different route, but I'm going to go all the way back to the station I got off at because I did pass that other station I mentioned on the way, but it's so small that if I didn't know it existed, I wouldn't have noticed. It seems extremely super local. Not sure if that how that works or where it goes or what. Better to just go back to where I started because I know for sure that train goes back to Ikebukuro. I don't quite get where all these pools they're talking about. Maybe that's a separate park. Maybe that's why that other end of the park was all fenced off. Maybe it is like a whole zone. That would make sense. You know, you got to like pay for entry to the park with all the pools and stuff because I do not see them. But yeah, I saw that Lawson's and then I was walking along and I saw the 7-11 and that's when it really became clear. I was like, oh, now I see what's going on here because at the 7-11 was an intersection and there was a whole bunch of fields all around the intersection and way in the distance you could see the city to get through the magic of my phone. I will remind myself the name of Kawagoe, K-A-W-A-G-O-E.

So you could see in the distance the silhouettes of all the buildings. But then at this intersection because it was all fields, you could see in every direction. I could just see cars. Big lineup of cars in all four directions. It's like, oh, I see. That's what's happening in this neighborhood. You don't just ramble into any random part of the park on foot because this is a car neighborhood. We're in the car culture now. We've drifted far enough away from public transport that around here you're supposed to have a car. So then I found the major street that led into the park and indeed it worked. Here I am because you don't come in here on foot. You come in here in your car just like North America. Oh yeah and so as I was walking down that road, the final road to this park and it was really dark because there was no street lights on that run. So it was just basically headlights lighting everything because why would you be walking?

And somebody in one of the, you know, just farmhouse type properties 25:00 with all the flat fields around it just had a big bonfire going like a big barrel fire and it's like, whoa, that's scary. Now I feel like I'm in in some kind of gothic horrors scenario. That is one thing though that I find my mind mostly tends to wander to old Japanese like romance comics that I had read in the past. Things like Maze on a Cocoa or even Marmalade Boy. When I see people just kind of walking around these different neighborhoods, I kind of imagine the little or like at the claw machine place that the UFO catcher place in Hikibukuro as if there's one. And one of the many, you know, like going on dates or just trying to imagine the kind of inner personal situations that happen between people here or even if you just work at the 7-Eleven at weird hours like I went to one really early the other day like before 7am and I'm sure it's probably just some dude and some chicken work there and it's just whatever but what if what if it's a job meet cute. However, the other thing that my mind doesn't wander to that often personally but it would be understandable if your mind did is Japanese horror. You can really kind of feel it at night especially where that specific kind of brand of Japanese horror story comes from because it's fucking scary here and it's full of trees and overgrowth and weird insects and and just like you'll be in a neighborhood and they'll be like oh there's a new building and then there's all the semi-old buildings and then all of a sudden there's this super-old building that looks like it's from a whole different world that's from so far back and at least if it's in repair it's that that's one thing but you'll see the ones that just seem to be basically abandoned but you can't say for sure maybe somebody lives in there and it's so fucking creepy and scary. There's the guy Junjiito he did who's a Mackie is his really famous manga but he did one called Gyo Gyo about these fucking weird fish and that have mechanical legs that come out of the ocean it's also really good I recommend it as well but he has all these really weird short stories and one of them was about this house where if I remember right it was like a teenage girl who lives there with her dad and her dad runs some kind of restaurant that involves deep frying and the house is just covered in grease stains and to the point that there's like grease stains outside of the house and then the people inside they just start to grease just this like comes out of their pores and they can't stop it and they can't be washed away and it's just grease and I walk by houses sometimes that just remind me of that just the grime in the build up is just it seems like it's so ancient you know like the building is a thing of its own and it's just fucking like creepy as shit and even right now so I found kind of like when I was at the Arakawa River Heather was the elevated part by the shore with a path along it that you could walk along this is similar but smaller and there is a river somewhere to my right that I can't see because there's trees in the way so maybe it's a similar idea but this thing it's just a paved path that seems to circle all the way around the park and I see some fences to my left so there that must be all those pools they were talking about that must be the pool area one lady walked by me while I was up here and that's it and there's no lights up here it is completely dark and oh man holy shit the time you couldn't be better okay well I have to go so to my left is the park with some lights and there's a jogger I can see and there's someone else walking their dog there's a little light on the leash there's another dog walker but to my right there's just stairs stairs that go down to a path into the woods it's completely black through the trees I can see some lights that I presume are whatever the city is on the other side of the river and I can hear the bridge and the highway and the distance I mean I have to do it now right I'm talking about it I got to go down here and not turn on my flashlight oh man I'm already this is scary man because I even remember like the what's that park in Surrey it's called 30:00 the Surrey green space or something in British Columbia even just walking through there at night it's not an especially big park and it's surrounded on all sides by city but walking through there you just scare the fuck out of me I would do it just just just to scare myself I think I can see so this path curves to the left I can see a sign I think that's another sign just trying to let my eyes acclimate like this would be where if a junebug flew down or god forbid a bat or something I would lose my fucking shit it would be so scary I can see lights I mean they're in the fire distance these woods who looked they looked very sick from up there but they're not they're not that bad they're pretty sparse I can see a lot of sky above me can still see the path pretty clearly a lot of leaves on the ground I guess fall really is coming one big tree in front of me just a big dark silhouette of a tree oh I just had the thought of I know there's a river over here somewhere my leg just kind of caught for a moment of like what if you walked in the river like I'm not gonna just walk in a river out of nowhere it sounds like a train OK, I think I'm coming out to a road that goes left and right. OK, so yeah, the paved road is ending. OK, now this is like brick. See, like in the daytime, this would be nothing. It would be no big deal. But at night, this is so fucking scary, man. The fucking. So I mean, yeah, that could be another reason to come visit Japan if you're a fan of Japanese horror, who it who isn't. Walk around the pseudo countryside. You don't even have to go to the real countryside. Just go a little ways out. Yeah, now I'm just standing at the crossroads because I presume if I go left, it should generally take me back to the park, to the right. I just can't see anything. And then it's really overgrown between me and the river. I definitely can't go there. But I don't think I'm going to go in any of these directions. I think I'm going to go back because that's all I wanted to say. It's just, it's fucking scary. That's all.

Hmm, according to my little map, across the Aruma River is Matoba. And the Tokyo International University campus too is what I'm across from. But you sure wouldn't be able to tell that. Whatever I'm looking at looks like a big. Again, it just looks like a cultural thing, a big grain silo or something. I think I'm definitely inside time, though. It seems like. But yeah, I'm going to go back to the land of drink machines and washrooms and dog walkers. So this is enough fucking adventure for today. I'm going to walk around this park and then just walk back to the goddamn station. But this is cool. What a weird. I do need to try to make sure I do these things a little earlier in the day. But oh, yeah. So I didn't explain this idea of just going to the end of the train, which I didn't get to the end of the train. But you know, I get to halfway the conventional end of the train. What kind of put this thought in my head is when I was staying by Akigawa station, I was there for like three weeks or so. And I walked all over the place. That's where I'm going tomorrow. Super cool little neighborhood. I love it a lot. But it's a, I don't know, maybe four stops from the end of that line. And I walked and walked and I walked all over the place. I walked to the second to last station. So I just felt like, okay, I've done it. You know, like, I don't need to walk one little extra station further. Like, what's, how's it going to be any different than this? It was right at the border of where a bunch of mountains started and stuff. So I didn't expect there to be anything different at the next station. And it wasn't until the last day I was in Japan that my friend 35:00 Brad was visiting, because he was living in Fukuoka. He came to visit me before I left. Okay, there I went back up the stairs. I'm back on the trail walking around, which seemed freaky initially. Now this seems very fucking not scary, compared to where it just was. So we figured we'd try to go see a waterfall. That's, that's where it's kind of good to have somebody around, because that's not the kind of thing I would necessarily do on my own. You know, if I happen to accidentally stumble upon a waterfall, that'd be great. But that's extremely unlikely, if not impossible to have that happen. You really gotta go to them. Similarly in Fukuoka, there's a giant reclining Buddha. It's quite a famous landmark that again, I just wouldn't have done that on my own. But because Brad was there, we went and did it and it was cool. I'm definitely gonna go back. So to get to the Hosawa Falls, we had to go to the end of that train line that, in all the time I'd been there in like the three weeks, I just never went to that one extra stop on the subway. And it turns out that final stop is way further away than all the other ones. I don't even know if you could walk there. It's just like curves through the mountains and through all these trees. And then you get to the end of the line and it's this whole new neighborhood. And I was like, what the fuck is this? Shit. This is my last day. I don't have time to explore this. And I'm not sure if there's anything there. It's probably kind of like what I'm doing right now. But that's definitely what I'm going to do this time. I'm going to fucking go back there and go to that final station and go look around because I could not believe how much difference a single stop made. And that's what put the idea in my head of like, don't just presume. Because I wasn't the end of one of the other lines in that area. And it was nothing. It was literally just, just stops, boring neighborhood, nothing there. But you never know. You just never know what is going to be at the other end. But from there we got on a bus. And that was amazing too. Going up through the mountains. God damn, just the geography of Japan is so fucking awesome. I mean Tokyo in general is generally one of the more flat areas as I understand it. But once we got that far west, man, this bus was just winding through these mountain roads. But we'd be on the mountain road and there'd be like a gulch that went way down. But it's all like lush and green and all this greenery. And there'd be like somebody's house built down partway into the gulch. And it's like, that's fucking magic. That is fucking amazing. How does that reel? How do you really live there? That is so fucking awesome. And then we got to the falls and they were all right. I don't know. You know, they were fine. You know, one of the top 130 waterfalls in Japan. There's a lot of waterfalls. And in that case too, we took a wrong turn at first. And I just wanted to keep going. There's a little path here. Let's go up into the woods. Where could this possibly go? But I looked into it and it seems like it is just a hiking path that would have taken forever. And I'm glad Brad turned us around because it also started raining, crazy hard as we were leaving. We got to the cover of the bus stop just in time before this big torrential dam pour started. If we had been even a few minutes later, it would have sucked hard. But yeah, that definitely put it in my brain that it's like, don't just presume. Even if it's only one extra stop, you don't know. You don't actually know what's there because it was like a different world. So that's why I decided to do this today. Instead of going back to Ikabukuro again, because even though I was here for all this time, you know, I pretty much just took the train into Ikabukuro. And at most, you know, if not to eat the bashy where I was staying was stop five, if I got that right. I think the farthest ever went was like seven. You know, I'd get off at six, get off at seven, just double back, just to walk through a different neighborhood, just to explore slightly. But yeah, now I'm at like 21 or whatever. And yeah, I don't know. Again, it's like there's no point to this. I just like it. I just like exploring places. I cannot imagine that I'm going to ever come here to go swimming. It's a lot of, you know, my inability to speak Japanese and my just disinclination to try to, you know, I just feel so uncomfortable and so easily embarrassed trying to talk to people because nothing ever, because it's my own fault because I haven't learned anything. Well, I can see a bridge in the distance where some cars going by.

But yes, similarly, there's like a pretty famous onsen right by the place I'm staying now. And the Airbnb people left a whole guide. If here's how it works, in case you want to go, but I'll just take my cold shower. Thanks. I just don't have even remotely the gumption. I mean, 40:00 that's one of those things too. It's just so much easier traveling with another person. They can just get you over these humps and they can convince you to go do stuff. Traveling by yourself, it's just a lot easier, I find. Just do your own thing. Just stay on your own. There's different kinds of comfort zones, I guess. Going to this random station I've never been to before and just walking into some neighborhood I've never seen before. My son's going down and now I'm in this park and I'm walking around the outside edge of it and it's dark as shit. This is comfortable to me. I like this. This is fun. Going and trying to like figure out how a system works, you know, the process to do anything. I hate that. I hate it. It's miserable to me. It's not worth it. I'd rather just not do it. I considered calling this podcast introverts holiday because I ain't here to do stuff. I ain't here to meet people. I'm literally here just to walk around by myself and gradually write a book. That's another thing too, actually, that I missed a bit about subway travel. Is it's a lot easier to get some writing done when you have that enforced downtime, like doing laundry or sitting on the train. I got a nice little chunk of writing done on my way out here. At first I was like, oh, maybe I should look out the window, see what I can glean. But it's just Tokyo going by. I couldn't glean shit.

There's some kids playing a football soccer. Yeah, I find it a lot harder when I'm walking. When I'm walking I just want to keep walking. Theoretically it'd be nice if at each 7-11 or at each drink machine or at each little weird whatever if I would just stop and do some writing. It's just very hard to switch gears in my mind. Once I'm walking around I want to just keep walking around possibly excessively to the detriment of my poor body. But when you just have to stop, you just have to stop because you're in the train. Then it's easy. Then it's fun to write because it makes the time go by so fast. If anything you're like, oh darn, we're already there.

Alright, I'm pretty close to this bridge I saw in this highway. So now I think I got to go I got to go down and reconnect to the real path. It goes around this park. The lit one.

I am down at the southern end of this park and I can see on the Google map a big blue artery.

This is some kind of pretty big highway. Let's try to get away from this thing away from this noise. But yeah, so for the record for anyone interested. So this is the Kawagoe Aquatic Park. K-W-A-G-O-E Aquatic Park. In case you know what if what if I do mysteriously disappear at some point in the future? What if I what if it's like a big thing? Like I am somehow I'm on TV for something and I dissolve. I just disappear and no one knows what happened. And then it turns out that my psychic energy has scattered across the world and in order to recollect it to figure out what happened, you have to retrace the steps of where I was on the earth.

If that happens this podcast will be very useful.

Yeah I think if I go back to the main entrance where I came in and walk along that it'll take me more or less close enough to the train station. I can start heading my way back because yeah even though it's still not even six o'clock yet it's just so dark. This is a neat adventure but I think that's enough exploring. It is just too freaking dark.

And if what I saw on the way in here is any indication I'm not going to find anything else anyway. It's a creepy farmer fields with big bonfires going.

I know I've said it before but it's so true that this time of year this is what I'm finding so weird is that it's warm out. It's not technically actually very late so there's all these kids and families and just people doing stuff but it could be fucking two a.m. right now. It is so goddamn unnaturally dark.