#204 The countryside feel of Sakura, Chiba

Transcript

Alright, I'm at Funabashi Station, and it seems pretty nice. I like this neighborhood. It's cool. I haven't really been around here a lot. I transferred here yesterday, and I'm transferring here today, so it's just a little walk between train lines. But this seems pretty cool. However, new segment, station shaming. So, because I spent the last three months in Taipei, and then six months before that, traveling around South Korea, that was long enough to totally forget Japan's little issue with not having hand soap in washrooms to an unfortunate degree. Because that just never happened in those other countries. Like, I don't know, maybe once or twice ever in that whole time. I guess I'm thinking of, there was like this one mountain I was on in Busan that, like the washroom was super rustic. It was way more than just like a weird outhouse. Like, that one definitely didn't have soap. You know, it could happen. But Funabashi Station, where like, there's just tons of stuff around here, tall buildings, hotels, Mexican restaurant even. Those are rare in Japan. All the mod cons. Funabashi Station didn't have soap in the washroom. What the fuck, man? It's so weird. I know I'm hung up about it, but I just don't like it. I even, let's just get on, way too great. I stopped in the washroom and it turns out I didn't even need it. You know, I sat down on the toilet and did not even partake in a poop. But, you know, still gave, still pressed toilet paper to my buttocks just to be on the safe side. It's so, you know, it's pretty much, I guess, I guess the best situation for not having soap. Really all I did was touch my fingers to toilet paper. Not even a poopy buttole. But I still, I hate it. I hate it. I hate touching my own butt and not being able to wash my hands. I fucking hate it. I'm not going to live that way. So, yesterday I bought a little bottle of soap for 150 yen, little teeny one. Hit it away in my inside pocket where my little retractable umbrella is. And I got to use it already. So perfect. I just reached in to the inner pocket, took the thing out, put a little dollop of soap on my fingertips, washed my fucking hands. Awesome. Awesome. So worth it. I legitimately recommend getting yourself a teeny tiny little thing of soap.

Because maybe you'll get lucky and you just won't run into these stations that don't have these washrooms that don't have soap. But it's totally unpredictable. Like I said, it's not, this is not an obscure station in the middle of nowhere. I mean, it's, you know, between Chiba and Tokyo in that sense, you could say it's obscure. But it's not obscure like you're in the fucking woods. There should be goddamn soap in that washroom, man. My like top complaints about countries are always so stupid. And Taipei, it's like, why do the buses beep so much? In Japan, it's like, why is there not hand soap? In South Korea, it's like, why do the convenience stores only have sort of generic cookies and chips and stuff? They're just like, why are the convenience stores so uninspiring?

That was like off the top of my head. Those are literally my biggest troubles within these countries. So stupid. But hey, whatever, problems are problem.

So yeah, just that it already paid off literally the next day. I think confirms that it was the right thing to do to tuck away some soap. This would bottle of soap. So the reason I met Funabashi is I thought I might try to get back to this lake I went to yesterday or I almost got to yesterday. Lake Inba Numa, INBA-DASH and UMA. So there's this Kase line. It seems like if I go to Kase, Usui Station, K-E-I-S-E-U-S-U-I. I found out about this lake from the YouTuber Ramblek. I like his walking videos. And he was in Chiba walking to this lake. And I filed that away in my brain because I knew I'd be back in Chiba soon. But I rewatched his video and it's like, oh, that's why the lake didn't stick in my mind. It's because he went there at night when it was pitch black. Kind of a strange choice so he couldn't really see the lake. But I watched someone else's lake video and I'm like, oh, this actually looks kind of nice. There's like a nice walkway around the lake. 5:00 And a windmill and stuff. Why not? Let's go give that a shot again. And yeah, Kase of Usui Station is where Ramblek started. It seems like the best place to start. But it turns out this Kase line, it is its fully-owned line. It's totally separate. So I just went and wandered into Chiba Station just assuming everything would be hunky-dory. But there's actually a separate entrance for that line, which I don't know where that is. But I had already checked in at Chiba Station and even though there's like 10 different lines or something, it's like, oops, none of these are the one. And that's when I realized it at its own entrance. But I've learned the hard way that once you're in a station, you just, you can't go back out. They don't like that. You gotta go talk to a person. It is not worth it.

So I was like, well, fuck it. It actually wouldn't even save that much time to directly take the Kase. I can just go to Funabashi and transfer over here as I'm doing now, though I walked the wrong way briefly. So now I'm recalibrating and then head over. Yet another overcast gray day. As I've been saying since I got back to Japan, this is what I always expected the fall to be like, just based on seeing other people's YouTube videos and stuff. And then last year when I visited Japan due to Al Nino weather, I just had the best time ever where it was like ludicrously summertime weather all throughout the fall.

So far, that's not the case this time. But you know, whatever, that's fine. It's just nice that it's cold. I mean, I'm still in a t-shirt, but it's not like deathly because it actually was like last year when I was here. It was legitimately too hot still. Like, it's nice that it was pretty out, but I was still just sweating to death. Like, deep into December. And I was like, what the fuck? Come on, dude. I'm a Canadian. Give me winter. I'm willing to complain about that. That it was too nice. But if I'm willing to complain that it was too nice, I will not complain that it's overcast now. It could be overcast every fucking day. It's fine with me.

But okay, I'm on the right route now, walking past one of these enormous Don Quixote stores. On to the KSA line. Off to the lake.

Alright, I started the episode in slight crank mode, just complaining about soap. Though here at KSA, Usui, very small station, very small little neighborhood. Now I'm just walking and we'll just see if I can make it to this lake. Doesn't seem too tricky, but we'll see.

Seems nice though. Nice in a wee way. And that little wee station did have hand soap. So cheers to you.

But I thought I should mention that when I got up and left the house today, I still got that charge, that little charged feeling of like, you know, when I'm in my little Airbnb room and I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing for today and checking train rats, but obviously not checking them well enough.

Oh, and figuring out logistics of Airbnb stuff. I'll talk about that in a bit. You know, it's just like, whatever, I'm just travel logistics. But as soon as I got my shoes on and stepped out the door, I just felt that little, that little thing, that little charge is just like, yeah, I'm fucking yeah. I'm in Japan. Fuck yeah, man. And I just felt it again just stepping off that train. This is not a super long train, right? You know, the first bit, the Funabashi is like 20 minutes. The second bit was longer than that, but not terribly long, but long enough that I've just been standing for a bit, staring at the window. Once I get moving again, once I get some fucking action in my veins, I just feel that Japan excitement.

It's just like, such an intangible feeling. But so cool. And such a unique Japan thing.

I even noticed as I was walking, trying to walk to Chiba Station, I got a little turned around. It's very surprisingly tricky to get to Chiba Station. But again, I just smelled something. I don't know what. I remember last year when I was here. And again, the weather was way more summer-like, but there was a smell in the air that kind of smelled like laundry. Some kind of, you know, flowers or something in bloom. But that was a very uniquely Japan scent. Today it wasn't that. It was much smaller, very subtle thing. But again, it's just something that it's like, whatever that is, that little scent memory doesn't happen anywhere else. Just here.

It's just cool.

Do miss my boots though. I'm just saying, putting on my sneakers. One thing I just really, you know, I got the biggest shoes I could find just so I'd have more tellroom because I have to wear spacers so that my big toes don't curve inward to form bunions.

But even these shoes.

I am thinking maybe I should have been a little more careful of trying to find shoes that just don't have a pointed tip at the end.

I've definitely got less room for my toes than I did in the boots and I can tell. I can tell my toes are not especially comfortable. They're hurting a little bit. Something to be mindful of in the future. Just, it's worth it to take the time to find some shoes. Because again, it's just a bizarre thing. When I looked this up online, nobody had any explanation for it. Why is modern shoe design like this? Why does it promote pointy toes that get crammed together? It's not healthy for anybody. It doesn't help. They're strange. But so far a minor problem and I'm assuming these shoes are not going to last me especially long anyway.

But yeah, I had to set up some future travel plans. I need to buy a flight back to Canada too. It's just weird because there's just something I don't really like setting up travel. It's just one of those things that's like it's not fun to technically go through the motions of doing it. So I just put it off. It's like, oh, I don't want to do that. But putting it off never helps. It's always a better deal with more options the sooner you do it. So now that I know I'm back in Japan, just got to get me a fucking, I guess a flight back to Toronto. Better on the other hand, I have 85 days or something. I'll get around to it. But I didn't need to book more Airbnb stuff because both my previous trips to Japan, I booked the whole 90 days ahead of time. And it seems like with Japan that is a good policy because there's, there is a lot of options but there's not a ton of affordable options, especially if you want private rooms. And then I lose some things up a lot in South Korea and Taiwan because it just wasn't that way. There were all kinds of options. And even if the private room was like a little teeny tiny thing in like a share house, just packed in. Still a room with a door. It's fine.

Hmm. I'm at a crossroads. I have no idea specifically where I should go to try to get to this lake.

But I'm going to try to curve around a little. I'm just going to try to basically beeline straight there and see what happens. Because there's a little river that runs alongside the lake but there's a little green dotted line that hopefully is a walking bridge.

And then I'm going to make my way east to Sakura for a Satosquare because I believe that's where the windmill is. And then I'll just walk around as much lake as I can squeeze in but it seems like the windmill is kind of the main attraction there. And then I'll just get in as much lake walk in as possible.

But yeah, while flexibility in South Korea and Taiwan seemed to be no issue, I can't really say I've had that experience anywhere else. I'm trying to be flexible in North America used to kind of work but since COVID, it seems like Airbnb's have changed a lot. A lot more expensive and a lot less numerous. And I tried to do that a bit in Amsterdam the first time I went and it was just a terrible disaster. So the second time I went back, I booked everything ahead of time and it was a lot less stressful but not cheap. Still not cheap.

And in Japan, yeah, it seems like just booking stuff out ahead of time. Doesn't seem like there's any downside to that. Seems like a good idea. But I didn't do it this time just in Keise. Just in Keisei wasn't able to get back into the country, you know? I just didn't want to have all this stuff booked out. It would have been embarrassing enough to have to cancel just this place in Chiba and the place in Yokohama. But it'd be a lot better than having to cancel like nine places.

So yeah, I got here October 24th and between Chiba and Yokohama, I've got those booked out until November 9th. So a bit of runway. But again, now that I know I'm here, I should really start booking some places. But again, it's just kind of a little bit of this weird stress of like, so what exactly am I doing now? What is the plan? My basic plan was to pick up where I left off last time because I was in Yokohama. And I kept going further and further down the coast. 15:00 I think Atami is the name of the farthest place that I went. And I realized like the trains just connecting, connecting, connecting. And it seems like you can just keep going with just a normal sweep up pass. So that's what was in my mind of like, well, I want to keep doing that.

So Chiba is a good starting off point because of Norahiko in this place. And I know him and it's easy to get to from the airport. Then Yokohama kind of, you know, again, just pick up where I left off. Yokohama is one of those places I didn't know anything about and I ended up really liking it like a lot. And that's when my friend Ken who used to live in Japan, he told me Yokohama was his favorite city in Japan. And it's like, yeah, I can see why. This place is great. The bluffs and stuff. So I'll be going right back to that. And then I was like, all right, so I guess I can just do that plan. I can just go down the coastline. But technically, I haven't really gone that far down the coast. I'm really not sure if you can just keep going. And I'm looking down the coast and I'm like, so what is the, what's the goal? Like Osaka, I guess? The only thing I know about Osaka is that one famous stretch by a canal where there's all these big famous signs. It's literally just like probably a few blocks of the city. You know, it'll be cool to see it, but then it'll be like, all right, well, I saw it.

And then by there is like, it's not that far to Kyoto and Nagoya and all these other famous places. But that has not exactly ever been my MO. I don't necessarily need to see the big famous place. I might not even like it because it's like a city, you know? Even just the other day, Hannah, currently Hannah. She's this Australian YouTuber that I watch. I didn't even realize she lived in Osaka, but she just moved to Tokyo as of this recording. And she was like, I'm in a Miss Osaka, but she admitted she's like, as a tourist, I don't know. It's hard to recommend Osaka, but as a place to live, she said it was excellent. So yeah, I was just kind of like, okay, I mean, I guess I could go. I guess I could not go. I don't know whatever. Look, I don't know. This is going pretty well. I'm pretty close to the lake already, but I really am just walking down residential streets and I kind of got caught behind a family walking their dog who was walking real slow. So let me just turn off this recorder while I pass them because it's awkward to talk to myself.

Oh, wait, perfect. They went the other way. They went the other way. I'm heading right to the lake. They went left. Perfect.

Yeah, that first road I was on was a little bit busy, but already it is super quiet. Yeah, as much as I like Rambalak, his YouTube video was not helpful because he did this walk at night. Again, strange choice. Like, everything looks pretty at night, but the lake part. Like, why would you go to the lake at night? But that's, I guess, what makes him a maverick of the YouTube walking game. Now the road is narrowing a bunch, kind of through an overgrown field. There's some greenhouses in the distance. I know I said this last episode, but it's really surprising how rural Chiba gets so fast. Or I guess I'm in Sakura now.

Or I guess Sakura is part of Chiba, you know.

It's neat to finding these random places. Like, this reminds me a lot of saga, where I only went to saga once when I was in Fukuoka, because I was just going to a waterfall. I didn't even actually realize that I'd passed into a different prefecture. But it's cool, I got to spend one day on the outskirts of saga. And I was watching, speaking in YouTubers, Nomad Push, who's a Japanese YouTuber, who is trying to go to all the prefectures on a moped right now, as I record this. And he was in saga, and he said he read that saga was on some list, voted number one prefecture you'll probably never get around to going to in your life. Because if you're in that northern part of Kyushu, you'll probably go to Fukuoka, or you'll just skip all the way down to the south, just because it's the one next door. It's just easy to miss. It made me feel a little happy that I've been there technically, you know. I spent one evening there.

Sakura feels a bit like that, like now that I know this is a place. I looked it up briefly. Top 10 things you can do, top 15 things. TripAdvisor, I realized, has those lists. You know, you can find those top lists all over the place, but TripAdvisor is just very reliable. They seem to have the best advice about stuff. Though nothing they recommended stood out to me necessarily, because it is, you know, a lot of museums and that type of thing.

But it did stumble me upon the sort of official Sakura Tourism page, 20:00 where they were like, it's the hidden gem between Narita and Chiba. And yeah, I mean, that's just like, I guess it's all the gradations, right? Like obviously Tokyo is the big wig. People know Narita, but just for the airport. People know Chiba, but Chiba again is like on the way to the airport. Central Chiba again, because as far as I understand, it's all Chiba. But the Sakura is like, hey, we're in there, we're in the middle. We got some cool shit, you can come see it. And it's like, yeah, dude, I mean, I don't know how much cool shit you really got, but I was at the museum yesterday, even though I was only on the grounds, and I didn't go to the proper museum. But it was very nice day, nice walk. Now I'm heading if all is correct. I mean, I'm just, it's very overgrown here. I don't see the lake, but if all goes well, I should be at the lake any time now. I'm seeing Sakura stuff, you know. I can add this to my little index of like a place I didn't know anything about a few days ago. And now it's gonna, I'm added to my little brain list of like cool places that I went.

Places where I have little memories. And yeah, so I guess that ties into what I was saying as far as going down the coast. Osaka seemed like an okay goal just to have a goal.

But I don't really care about the goal, you know, on a mini level. Or a macro level.

Oh, here we go. I made it to a walking path. I can see the lake now. Cyclists going by, old man behind me, old man ahead of me. Got to talk a little quieter till I get some distance. Yeah, it's really overgrown around here. So I just got a little view of the lake, but now I already can't see it again. This lake's pretty fucking big, actually.

Maybe this is partially why in the Ramblaque video I couldn't see anything, because he was walking this at night. But even in the daytime. This is like, yeah, overgrowth city.

It's very nice, but at this point at least. Certainly no lake views.

Had one brief one. And that old guy's still there drinking it in. That's why I didn't stop to take a proper gander. There'll be another view at some point here.

But yeah, it's always the journey that's the fun part. You know, it doesn't matter about getting to the waterfall or getting to the lake or whatever. It's just like an excuse to go somewhere to just go flow through Japan and just get wherever. So yeah, micro level and macro level. Same thing. I want to go down the coast just because I liked that feeling of just going further down the coast. But I don't need to worry too much about getting somewhere. If I just wanted to go to Osaka, I just go there. I could just buy a flight probably or a fucking try the bullet train or something.

So that helped to kind of remind myself of that. It doesn't really matter where you end up. And it doesn't really matter how fast you get there.

Because I was also thinking, for example, when I was here in Chiba. Last year, I was only here four or five days and it felt like a lot. It felt like, well, I got enough out of Chiba. But then just due to the circumstances of coming back, because I had time to spend before my Yokohama place was available to go back to the exact same cool little place I was at before. I booked plenty of time at Norahiko's. Nine or ten days or something? Too much, you know?

As soon as I did it, I sort of regretted it. Because I was like, what am I going to do for all that time? That's too much time. There we go, things have opened up. Lake view. There we go, and as a huge lake view. Wow, that's actually really big.

It's Lake's fucking giant, man.

Oh, and there's a car bridge way over there.

And then just a smattering of little homes and stuff on the other side. But mostly just trees. Certainly won't be circumnavigating the lake or anything. This will just be walk around for a bit.

Aim for the windmill. Soak in some, and that's enough for today.

But yeah, definitely I've realized, you know, slow is fine. Slow is good. Because even like at the end of my trip last time, having never been to Yokohama, I was like, hmm. I was going to burn down on booking different places. And I was just like, whatever. Last two weeks, Yokohama, I found a place, good deal, whatever. But having not been there yet, I was like, is that way too much? Well, I guess I was concerned because I was leaving West Tokyo with all the cool mountains. And I was like, I hope Yokohama is not just a boring city. I don't want to finish Japan like that. But it was actually a fucking rad city and had all this access to the coastline. 25:00 It was awesome. Fucking loved it. So two weeks was fine. And then I'm noticing that same thing here. Nine or ten days in Chiba, whatever it is. It's like, oh, what am I going to do? It's fine. There's plenty to do. And even if I just do nothing, who the fuck cares? I got 90 days. Like, again, where am I trying to get to? I'm already here. I'm not trying to get nowhere. This is fine. Just anywhere that I go is fine.

And this is kind of extra nice to really spend some time here. Because I really did pass through pretty fast last time, relatively speaking. Relative to how long I'm in Japan. I barely got to experience Chiba at all before. Now I'm going to these fucking random places, Sakura and stuff.

And I haven't even started going south down the coast. Because again, those trips are wicked long, but I assume I will at some point.

So I had that stuff in mind as I was searching Airbnb for stuff along the coast. Around Atami. And again, also just because I haven't done this yet, I'm a little reticent to just book a place and just assume I can get there on the train. Because I'm just not sure. Like, I think you can just take trains all over the place down the coast. But what if I can't? What if I get stuck somewhere? I have booked a place and I can't really get to it. What if I fuck something up? So I want to take it a little slow in that sense. And then I was looking around that Atami area. There's like a little peninsula down there.

And I wasn't really finding a ton of stuff, at least not affordable stuff. I was a little like, oh well, I might have to go back to bunk bed land. Which is understandable because, you know, I am booking stuff late. I didn't book stuff two months ago.

But I was looking and looking and looking. And then I found a place a little even farther beyond.

The place is called and technically they have not confirmed it yet. Because I just booked it earlier today. But hopefully it all goes well.

The place is called Yaizu. Why AIZU?

And it's a little further down the coast than Atami. It's a little past that peninsula. But it's a place where they had the bunk beds, but they also have like a private room. Although it seems a little strange because the price was basically the same for both. But it does say it's a private room. And then what really tipped me over is just three months ago. A Canadian lady from Ontario left a really nice review about how much she loved it, how easy it is to get to the coast, how she had more time in Japan, like next time she wants to come back to that place, just nothing but glowing. And not only was she Canadian, but she, based on her profile picture, seemed like she was also in her forties like me. So that was the final cherry on top. Because they did notice the other day. I had to fill in Noriko's little guest book. He has like a guest book just to write cool messages to him. But also I forgot that like each place in Japan they want, you know, they need your info, they don't want. They need your info of like what's your passport number, what's your birthday, what's your name, what's your address, where you've been, where you going, all that stuff that they have to supply if they're an Airbnb person. But I was looking over his list of just previous people that have been there recently. And you know, people in their 20s, quite a few people in their 30s. But on the whole page, the whole previous page, I'm the only person above 40 that is stated is place. You know, we got some 37s and some 38s.

Which I mean, at that point in life, what's the difference? But traveling is, or at least traveling the way I travel is a bit more of a young person's game. I guess most people my age probably just stay at hotels and stuff. Which I'd be happy to do if I just had all the money in the world. It would be great. But so expensive. So yeah, that this lady left this one place in Yaizu that she left such a glowing review. And that she's in such a similar life circumstances to me as a Canadian of a certain age. And I was like, all right, fine. And again, like cheap is like 24 bucks a day for apparently a private room. I don't know. It's one of these things that if I'm misunderstanding somehow and it is bunks, I don't care. Fuck it, whatever. I'll take it. It's fine. And since it's beyond a tummy, a little further down the coast, it's cool because I can just use that as a new home base and it's still not that bad.

Something like two and a half hours on the train to get there really not a big deal. And from there, I can explore around there. You know, it's a bit beyond Fuji. So I can just see what's around there, but I can also backtrack whatever I missed down in that peninsula. I can just go do that. 30:00 If I wanted to, I could go all the way to the fuck back to Yokohama. I don't know if I would, but it's not that far, you know, it's doable.

And yeah, it just seems like instead of just like the vague apprehension of like, okay, now what's next? Gotta set up the next thing. I felt very good about it. I definitely hope this goes through. I hope I get home and have my confirmation. Because yeah, I mean, private room, quite affordable, further down the coast. And also, I think this might just be a proof of concept that this is going to work because the place was like available. It wasn't just like a little spotty. There were some places down by Atami, but they were like, I need to find another place to fill in the gap for two days. And then they're only available for these five days and all this, you know, because other people are booking stuff and turning it into a little Swiss cheese mosaic of available dates. Where this place was just available. Maybe it's just a little too far down the coast, a little bit too, not anywhere specific, you know. Which like I was just saying last episode is like this idea of the overtourism in Japan, just how little I've experienced that. And when I do, it's such a shock of like, fuck, Harajuku sucks. You can barely walk down this street. Fuck mount the cows crowded. What's going on? There's so many mountains. What's up with this?

But if you avoid those hot spots, it's not that bad. And then if you go to the cold spots, it's the best. I mean, right now, you know, a couple people have walked by me some bicyclists. Though I think it's starting to rain. That could additionally explain the lack of people.

But yeah, apparently this lake, there's the windmill. Nice. Apparently this lake, not a hot ticket item. Not exactly a bunch of people all over the place. And it's just nice. There's so much stuff you can do in Japan. That's just nice and it's not full of people. Taurus or otherwise. Whoops though. I'm definitely getting rained on now. Yeah, that windmill is not that far away. But I'm going to put away this recorder, take out my jacket, maybe even consider pulling out my umbrella. See how bad this gets. And there goes the train going by. That's the train I was on yesterday where I could see the edge of the lake and the windmill out the train window. Cool. So that'll probably be my plan then. Since I got off at Kase Usoi station, I'll get back on at Kase Sakura station. Perfect. Perfect.

See a very gentle rain. Maybe you can hear a very gentle pitter patter. It's so gentle. Just a little bit of rain today. But again, I got my weather resistant jacket, got my umbrella. And yeah, this is another case of how things were actually quite weird last year. Not only was the weather amazing, but yeah, it just didn't rain. I remember feeling that way after like 70 days in Japan where every day I was going out and hiking up mountains and stuff and I was like, man, like it's my own fault for pushing myself so hard. But normally there's a little bit of natural push and pull where you just end up staying inside once in a while because the weather's bad and last year just was never bad.

So already we're getting a little rain, little rainy days. The other windmill was pretty cool, very strong Netherlands vibes. A lot of colorful flowers, not actual tulips. At least not this time of year, but it very much had that Netherlands feeling. What a strange thing with the Netherlands that people call it Holland. And I mean, I did too. I just thought the country was called Holland until I visited and realized the Holland is just an area of the Netherlands. It's just strange. It'd be like if people called America the Pacific Northwest. You know, like why? Why'd you pick this one area? Yeah, you can also go in because it's the weekend. It's the Sunday today. On the weekends you can go in and get a little tour of the windmill. But it's quite small looking in there and there were several like Japanese families with their kids. So let them have at it. I don't want to try to cram in there. And yeah, again, this ties into good old, like having a goal just to have a goal, but not caring about the goal. Because I was like, cool, all right, let's just keep going. Turns out it's actually quite a ways to the KSA Sakura Station. It's going to take me a little while to walk there. But that makes sense. Obviously you want trains to take you a significant distance.

And especially out here, this stops get even longer and longer. Yeah, this is just kind of nice. I'm just walking along the water. It's going to take a while, but just get a nice little overcast rainy day. Walking along the water on one side, field on the other side. I'm still by the train line. So a train goes by once in a while. And I'm really surprised. I mean, I mentioned this last episode out here, but this Sakura area of Chiba, how much it does remind me of a lot of the outskirt areas of Fukuoka. I mean, the benefit to Fukuoka is that it also has hikeable mountains that are easy to get to. But this is just kind of cool. If you do just want to experience, you know, a little bit of the countryside feeling of Japan without flying across the country. I mean, this is literally as the Sakura Tourism Board themselves say in between Narita and Chiba. You can just stop here and get this feeling. And I think that's a worthwhile thing to do, even if you're on a shorter trip to Japan. If you want to get a taste of this, just walk in along a quiet country lane. There's some traditional houses in the distance. Yeah, it really reminds me of that or of Saga, like I was saying. And weirdly, it actually reminds me quite a bit of when I walked along the river in Ulsan in South Korea. That was kind of a weird experience because I just went to the end of the train line just as an experiment. I never heard of Ulsan. I didn't even know that's what it was called till I got there. But I immediately had this feeling like I like Ulsan. This seems cool. I had a feeling that my future was probably leading me to spend some time in Ulsan. But then I went to Jeju and I never left. I stayed in Jeju the whole goddamn summer, walked around the whole fucking thing. But it's like, oh yeah, Ulsan. I remember you, Ulsan. It had a surprisingly large impact on my brain for only being there for one afternoon. I just turned around. There's the old windmill in the distance getting small at this point.

But yeah, really, this is kind of perfect. And I guess also because of the rain, but there's like one person away ahead of me. Is there anybody behind me? There were some, but they've turned off at some point to go different places. Just a quiet, slightly rainy walk, just from nowhere to nowhere. Feels fucking good, man. Feels very fucking good.

I was going to say I didn't expect this, but I guess to be fair, even when I was in Chiba before, even just taking that monorail where I took it to the mid and pile.

What was that called? The Shell Mound. Even just walking back from the Shell Mound, it was actually surprisingly rural feeling.

So I guess I knew that Chiba does give way very quickly to nature, but especially here, just coming a ways out.

It feels like a lot of other places I've been in Japan, but I think importantly, it feels 0% like Tokyo.

So yeah, if you are just in this area, if you're just in the Tokyo area, this is totally a nice place to come to just have a nice quiet afternoon walks through the countryside vibe, but still with a train.

There goes the train. Because yeah, that was one thing about Saga. Wow. I was really in the middle of a goddamn nowhere with Saga. I don't mean to be fair. There were still trains there too, but yes, Saga was a tricky one.

There's some signs. Okay. Two and a half kilometers to KSA Sakuya Station. That's really not bad. Sakura Furosato Field is where the windmill is. 1.3 kilometers. Apparently, if I wanted to go 4.2 kilometers away from the train, in Bonuma, sunset hills. If it wasn't raining, I don't know what that is, but it's got a little, oh well, I guess it has a little, a little tent symbol. So maybe it's like a full campsite. Maybe it's not somewhere. You just go and wander. But sunset hills sounds pretty fucking nice. I predict there's a cool view there. That is, I guess, one thing with this lake. Like I tried taking a couple pictures, then they're just pointless because you're not elevated. In real life, you can see the lake pretty well, but the pictures don't look like anything.

But I guess it's nice that the windmill is here to focus the picture-taking energy. 40:00 But all right, so now this trail has taken me away from the water right over by the tracks. So I predict that's what I got ahead of me. A couple of kilometers of walking next to the tracks till I finally get to the station.

That is a surprising thing about Japan is even with the population density and stuff. I mean, it really is just like super duper focused on specific places.

Everything's focused on Tokyo as soon as you get outside. It's not full non-non-biori because like there's apartment buildings in the distance and a train, for example.

But it's pretty close. It is non-non-biori adjacent. And it being literally city adjacent is pretty fucking cool.

Okay, now I gotta decide, do I keep walking along these fields? I hope you know if I do not, the decision is made for me.

Because I can also cross across the train line and into the city proper. And yeah, there's a little, I'm not even gonna bother Google translating this because there's a little diagram with the little arrows that says if I continue on this way, it is a dead end.

So yeah, crossing the train tracks. Nice little country roads. Nice little traditional houses with the cool traditional roofs. Yeah, this feels specifically right here. Man, this feels like saga like crazy. This feels like when I first got off that waterfall. And I was just walking through fields next to the houses.

Fucking charming. But I'm getting the sense that I just said the same thing about eight times in a row. So perhaps I will just focus on walking and shut up.

It's been a while since I've been to the station. I'm in to the city proper now, but still has that nice countryside vibe, both just like little tiny sidewalks, very overgrown stuff. Not a ton of pedestrians, probably, around these parts. But I'm just doing the classic standing outside the 7-Eleven. It's delightful. I'm trying to think like, why didn't I just stand outside at the convenience stores more in other places? And I guess it's because in South Korea, they often did not have garbage cans, and also in Taiwan. Yeah, it was kind of like a third of the time, maybe they'd have garbage. You could always give the staff your garbage. But I did a lot more walking and eating in those countries, whether I was supposed to or not. But I know in Japan, it's not a rule or anything, but it's a little frowned on, and it's just easier. Because even getting my countries mixed up, but when I first got back to Japan, I was like, oh, I got garbage in my pocket, but I'll just throw it away at the subway station. And I guess that can happen. Hi, Jim, my station has garbage. But oftentimes, the stations do not have garbage. It really is the convenience stores in Japan. This is the trick. So I got to stand here, eat my stuff. It'll make my life a lot easier to get rid of this garbage after I'm done. Yeah, just a little things about Japan are coming back to me of, well, first off, I remember when I got here last year, I loved these little delis where you get a salmon onigiri, a tuna onigiri, and a little piece of chicken, and a little sausage and a little tamago.

I just had one of these yesterday, and they had them here, too. I was really having a hard time finding that last year. This year, they're back with the vengeance, and I just love it. It's just such a perfect little thing. Get a couple of onigiri, fill it up, and large amounts of fried chicken is kind of gross. And I got food poisoning last year. I keep seeing the family mart chicken. It's just fried food. There's always going to be that part of your brain that's like, oh, you should get that. It's good. Even though I never actually liked the fried chicken very much in Japan, it's just like Chris Broad, getting in my head, telling me it's good. But I also got food poisoning, like really bad. So just don't do it. But there's one little piece of chicken is really good, because then when you have like the corners of your onigiri left with just some rice, you can just eat it with the chicken and with the little sausage and stuff. And also the guy gave me, I forgot about these, the little individual hand, you know, moist, how-let thing. They don't really do that in the other countries that I've been to recently. But in Japan, they do. Though I'm not going to use this, I'm going to tuck it away. But yeah, I love having some of these tucked away in my day bag as an emergency, because I have a little packet of like tissues, but these ones are moist. You know, that's excellent. 45:00 And I also got a spice chai from the hot drink section, just because I've never had this before. In fact, let's crack this right now and just see what it's like.