#26 Takiyama Castle Ruins in Tokyo

Transcript

Alright, let's start off with a boring detail of visiting Japan that no one except me could possibly care about. I think it's first half I'll say, man. Insane weather, so good. Yesterday it was still awesome. I think yesterday was kind of a perfect day. See last episode for details. But it was overcast the whole day, just gray the whole day. But it just did not matter. I mean, I find that that gets me down when it's super excessive. You know, there's times in Vancouver when you don't get to see the sun for like over 20 days of the month. And that gets to be a little much. Maybe Japan gets that way too. I don't know, I guess we'll see. But at this point in mid-November, it's just intermittent cloudiness. So today, I think it's 12 degrees out, Celsius. Extremely comfortable. Beautiful, clear skies. I didn't even bring my umbrella. I do have a little... There's the train. I do have a little teeny tiny raincoat tucked away. One of those little disposable raincoats that you fold down into a teeny little package, just in case. But I really don't think I got anything to worry about today.

So yeah, weather-wise, holy jeez, what a nice day. Blue skies, just a little bit of clouds here and there. Pretty white, oil-painting clouds.

Very nice. I'm just walking along this along the side of a field in Akiruno with greenhouses and I don't even know what some of these vegetables are. It's like a shoot coming up from, looks kind of like Aloe Vera. I mean, maybe you decide. I don't know how that works. I don't know how anything works. And there's flowers, just freaking nice. But I went to 7-Eleven, start my day off, my suikikard ran out of money. I always just pay for stuff with a suikikard, so I don't have to get a bunch of change.

And I knew it was getting low. I was going to refill it yesterday, but I couldn't find, there might be a refill machine at Akigawa Station, but it's like a very tiny little station. So maybe not. So part of my route today, I'm going to go loop around to see a castle and then go to Hyjima Station and refill this here card.

But while I was there, I wanted to grab some cough drops because so far I've been living a charmed life. I don't know how I have not gotten sick at all. I've gotten a little tickle in the throat here and there. But even that was like in Montreal, not really anything in Japan. Been very lucky, but I like to have cough drops because I just find anytime I'm in a communal situation, mostly on subways around here. Just if your throat does get agitated, I've got a suspicion, I think, because the Tobu line that goes from Ikebukuro to Nakai Tabashi. That one train in specific always makes my throat act up. It did it four years ago, it does it now. It's like, what the heck? I think it might just be because instead of plastic seating, they have nice little covers on the seats. They have them on a lot of trains. But I noticed on that train in specific, I think whatever cleaning regimen they're doing at the end of the day just isn't enough because in the cracks, you know, at the edges of the seat, you can just see something, you know, it's just discolored.

So I think it's just, you know, mustiness building up. It's a rare case of the process. The daily process just not quite getting there. They need a little bit of a deeper cleaning because there's definitely something in that train that makes me cough. It's like undeniable.

So stuff like that, just a little cough drop. Just toss a little cough drop in your mouth and it's just, I'm surprised how much in just day-to-day scenarios, how much I like having them around. So I bought like the big bag with like 30 cough drops. I actually bought two of those and combined them. I had a bag with 60 cough drops. And I finally used them all up. So now I've just got my fisherman's friend and I want to save those for if I legitimately get sick because those are the nuclear blast, super-powered, you know, cough drops you can't get around here. But if we harken back to the very first episode of this podcast where I was telling the story of being sick in Japan, which actually got sick in the Netherlands and just was sick when I arrived in Japan, 5:00 and how they didn't have the black holes. They only had the blue holes. So again, just a tiny little pointless detail. Who the hell cares except me? But I saw the black holes today and it's just like, sweet, you know. It's almost weird buying cough drops because it sort of insinuates that you're sick and I'm not at all. I just want to have some tucked away.

But I got the pack of black holes and cough drops are distinctly different here. Holes are anyway. They taste like you're putting a piece of plastic in your mouth. They feel like they're not dissolving. But then they do dissolve. And anyway, I'm excited to try the black holes and see if there is harsh as our black holes. You know, there's this lady, Gretchen Ruben. She wrote the book, The Happiness Project. And I like her stuff a lot. And one of the things she brought up at some point was the idea that trying to be relatable isn't relatable. That it's one of these like weird counterintuitive things. But if you're just really idiosyncratic and you just present your situation and your experiences, even if they're not technically relatable to other people, you know, buying like the specifics of buying cough drops in Japan or even the reason why I buy cough drops. I like to have who knows if anybody else does that or gives a shit. And you can multiply that one example out by dozens and dozens of just random stupid shit that I'm yammer about on this podcast. But I'm hoping, hopefully, her theory that presenting your idiosyncratic situation is ultimately more relatable, even though the specifics are not. I don't know. I hope that's true. I hope this presents the idea of, you know, the larger idea of what it's like for some person to travel by themselves and just have their own little processes and their own little methods of how to make that work.

Even if the specifics are basically irrelevant nonsense. So today, my plan is, my little adventure is from my Airbnb, I stayed at this same place in 2019 as I met now. It's the legal mind taxi building, just a few blocks east of Akikawa Station. I would stand on my balcony and look south and see across the Akki River. This one specific road heading up into the mountains that just disappeared into the trees, but it was all lit and it just looked beautiful and I would see it every night and just be like, I gotta go up there eventually. What the heck's up there? Until one night, there's like 11 o'clock at night, but it was in the middle of summer at that point, so it was very warm still. I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna go, I'm just gonna go. I went and got a strong zero and I went for a walk, which that's something I've done very little love on this trip. It's not like I drank a lot the first time. But whenever I get that feeling of like, I ride head and back for the evening, I'm just gonna be hanging out at my little Airbnb for the night because it's dark as crap out.

And whenever that impulse crosses me, I should just get something to drink. Instead, I just end up buying yogurt drink or something. Because it's like fun in the moment, the moment of drinking is fun. But then an hour later, I'm gonna be like trying to fight it off. I'm just gonna be in the Airbnb. Oh, I wish I hadn't had drank that. Drinking, man, it's just not fun. I mean, I guess that's a good thing too, right? Because this is the definition of drinking by yourself. I guess drinking with your friends, that's a different equation. That's fun or not fun for different reasons. It's probably good that I don't think it's fun to just sit around and drink by myself.

But yeah, that night I walked up into the mountains and basically just spent, I don't know, 90 minutes going on a loop. It wasn't that big of a deal. It just came around to the west and back down to the Ackie River Valley where there's these big overpasses and all these trucks and a super cool crossback over. And that was, that was my random adventure for that night.

But then I was looking at a Google map, sometime during COVID while I was back home just like, oh yeah, remember that little walk I did? Let's look at it on a map. And I saw on the map, Castle Ruins. Let me look up the name.

Oh, it's noon. There's the noon jingle. That's the noon jingle. It's the noon jingle. 10:00 That's the noon jingle.

That's the noon jingle. That's the noon jingle. That's the noon jingle. Taki, I'm a Castle Ruins, T-A-K-I-Y-A-M-A.

And I was like, oh geez, you know, that's probably not as close as I think it is. I always have a hard time gauging things on the map. But it looked like it wasn't that far from where I was, which that night would have made no sense. It was dark as heck. It was in the middle of the night. But I put that on my docket of like, you know, I should go back there when I finally get to go back to Japan some beautiful day. That'd be a good excuse to go do that little walk again. This story might sound familiar because I did do this walk just a few episodes ago, just the other day. I did it in reverse. I started over by the giant overpass and did the loop again, but also in the nighttime. So today, I'm going to go do the walk in the daytime, although I've already gotten very off course. I'm still on the north side of the Aki River. Because through the twistiness of Japanese neighborhoods, I didn't see any good direct route down to the rivers. So now I'm just forcing it. I don't know where I am, but I'll get there eventually. It's a river. You know, it's all right. I'll hit the river. But yeah, I'm going to head up and see that castle because also last episode, I tried to get to the Ajiro castle ruins and completely failed. And I looked those up a bit and they are, in fact, on top of a mountain, way up on a mountain. And from what I could see just from, again, it seems like a pretty obscure spot. There's only like three reviews on altrails.com or whatever. That all said, it's pretty nice. But it seems that you're meant to approach from the other direction. I was kind of on the south-easterly side of it and trying to approach from there. I think you're supposed to be north of the castle ruins and then walk south to get up there, I believe. But I guess this is the case of how I've been using maps a lot more this time because I have much better GPS on my phone. And overall, there's no question this is better. I'm shocked when I think back to all the rambling I did in 2019, just roaming around. And it's like Jesus fucking Christ. I really had no idea where I was half of the time. It's way better to have my little blue dot that tells me what's going on. But I guess the downside is stuff like this. You can't just see something on a map. Oh, castle ruins, sure. And just walk there. That's just not how things work. Maybe in general, but especially in Japan. You can't just point yourself in a direction and go. So everything is circuitous. I heard, I don't know if it's true, but it would make sense, I guess. I heard that the original layout of cities this way, I mean, it seems like it also could just be, you know, just happenstance. Everybody just adds their piece to the city and it all flows together in this big tangle. I don't know how deliberate it is, but if it is deliberate, the thing I heard was that it was kind of to make it hard to get to, you know, whatever the center of the city was, whatever the castle was, or wherever the emperor lived. Or whoever's important, whatever was the important strategic part of the city that you didn't want people to capture, just make it really hard to get there and make it so if you're not a local, you don't know how to get there. And it certainly is that way. Even just this very neighborhood I'm in, I just remember last time trying to do the classic thing from last episode. Trying to do a shortcut never works. Always it's a dead end or twist you around somewhere you didn't expect. It's just like, wow.

So that totally could be true because it seems like it works.

So yeah, I think the Egero castle ruins, that'd be another one of those things that if I were staying here for what I did in 2019, when Airbnb's were just cheaper, and I just got places for long stays. I stayed at very few places for very long times. So if I was just staying in this neighborhood, then I would add it to the docket and I would go. But since I only got a couple more days in this particular neighborhood, it's not high on my list. It's okay if I don't go to the Egero castle ruins, and this will be the stand-in castle. I'm still going to go see a castle, and this is the castle that, you know, has been on my mind for the past few years. I also had this weird plan because I slipped in some mud yesterday and I was like, what time to do laundry? But actually, it wasn't that bad. I just wiped off my jacket. I mean, my pants are getting pretty bad. They're getting a little dirty. But I'm just walking through the woods and going to ruins, and like it just doesn't matter. It's not like I'm going to work or something. 15:00 But actually, I mean, I will need to do laundry pretty soon anyway just because I'm going to run out of laundry. But it's not like I have to run right out and do it. But that was one of my ideas. It's like, what if I double up these adventures? Are there any laundromats on the way to the castle ruins? That'd be weird, right? What if I made this a double adventure? I'll stop midway there and do laundry. But it just made no sense because there's a laundromat, a block and a half from my Airbnb in every direction. There's literally four of them right there. So why not just go do the laundry. Who's there and bring it back to the fucking Airbnb and then go off an adventure. It just would make no sense to carry my laundry two hours away. An interesting yet stupid plan. So I'm not going to do that. But all right, I'm at least at a major road. Let's take a little break while I figure out how to get to and cross the river.

Oh man, this day is just getting nicer and nicer. I actually kind of wish I didn't bring my weather-resistant jacket that I got in Montreal. It's a little bit too much for today, but everything is so variable, you know, it's hard to tell. Better to be safe than sorry, but this thing is a little too much, I think. So yeah, it just keeps getting clearer and warmer and sunnier and more gorgeous. So where I was walking by accident, I just happened to walk. It's the same place I went the first day I ever came to this neighborhood. Before I actually booked into my Airbnb, I came earlier just to scope it out to know where I was going, and I walked along this ridge before things really dropped down to the valley of the river, and I was saying that's where I smelled cow manure that day, and I was like, wow, I'm don't feel like I'm in Tokyo anymore. I've never smelled the cow manure again, I think it's just whatever time of year that they're fertilizing stuff, but I was walking along there from the opposite direction this time. And yeah, I just headed down a slope, and it's just legit farms. It's just farms everywhere. It's so awesome, it's so pretty. And man, this is just my favorite neighborhood, like I don't know. Obviously, there's a lot of places I have not explored yet in Tokyo, but I feel like this is very hard to beat this Akiruno city, as far as I, you know, a city within the mega city of Tokyo, because it's just so cool that if I had walked the other direction about the same distance, then I'd be in the big A on mall with two different Starbucks, you know, the three-story mall with all the stuff in it. As far as like just wild swings between super duper mega developed every store you could ever want. Burger King and Starbucks, you know, if you want to just like, I'm bailing out, I'm bailing out on all of this, I want to feel American. You can do that. And then if you want to just come to the the farmland, it's kind of nice that I'm just doing audio and not video. I guess people do video and do vlogs and stuff, you know, you just get used to it, but it is a little weird because it's sort of invasive, like there's a guy, I'm walking past a guy who's literally telling the earth right now, he's got like a hoe, but it's like a pitchfork hoe, it's got three prongs like a pitchfork, but they're curved inward like a hoe and he's just hoe in the land, he's just a farmer, he's farming right now. And I feel less awkward that I'm just describing a guy that I'm walking past, I'm not filming him, you know. And I just went up a little walkway right to the river itself. Nice and this has taken me to the bridge and this bridge, what's this bridge called? This one is not scary, I was saying a lot of the other bridges further west on the Aki River are pretty frightening, they're really high up. This is the one where I was saying like how did I ever cross the river in 2019, I don't remember, and this is why I don't remember because this one's not a big deal, it's a very, it's a very not tall bridge not enough to to wig me out. Wow it's so bright out, I can barely see my phone. He got Shia Kiyuru bridge, H-I-G-A-S-H-I-A-K-I-R-U bridge, yeah and that leads directly exactly to the mythical street that curves up into the mountains, so I'm just gonna walk up that till I get to the mythical family mart that I found at the top, where normally that's my cue to curve my way back down here, but today I'll be going a different way.

Yeah it's a little tough, I'm learning with these castle ruins in particular, you know, 20:00 they obviously just have to pick a spot on the map to be like, oh pure it is, but obviously it's a whole area, it's bigger than that, and I've learned the hard way that if you approach incorrectly you can forget about it, but it does literally seem like I just got to walk up to that family mart, hang a left, and that street should take me past a temple and then sort of kind of nearish the castle ruins close enough. Yeah and this is a lot less, a lot less stages than yesterday's adventure, still early in the day, I feel like in this case I can I can fail my approach a few times, if it doesn't work I can take the long way around, try again, I should be able to make this particular castle ruins happen, geez and I just walked out from behind some shrubs and here's another shrine, Psychoji Shrine, SAI, KOJI, literally man, it's not even, I guess this is where not having a proper GPS system before didn't matter that much because it is okay just a wander, literally anywhere you go, anywhere and everywhere you go, there's something cool and awesome.

All right I made it to the family mart that turns left so far everything's going fine, that was an extremely rare example of a washroom in Japan not being completely super duper, I mean there's quite a few men's washrooms that smell like pee and there's a little lot of signs like hey guys stand closer to the urinals please you're making everything smell like pee, but this one I mean very very slight, you know almost no smell at all but a little something which is only even something notable at all because Japan's just not like that, I mean Amsterdam on the other hand, I became intimately acquainted with what human shit smells like what I was there because like you just with the deep toilet bowls and the probably wasting of water we do in North America, your poop just doesn't have the opportunity to touch air that much, you know just doesn't smell that bad, where in Amsterdam there's a lot of these weird shallow toilets, the shelf toilets are the worst where it's literally like a flat shelf that you just poop on and it's functionally the same as pooping out in the woods or something except out in the woods, there's all kinds of open air around you to diffuse the situation, you're not just trapped inside a tiny little washroom, it's quite truly awful and it made me think like oh my god like that's what's inside everybody all the time, that's how bad it really is, oh it's insane and due to this horrifying cultural practice which I think is largely attributed to the Germans but from what I understand I've never been to Germany but from what I understand that style of toilet is very rare now it's the kind of thing that might be at your grandma's house in Germany whereas in the Netherlands it's probably more rare than it used to be but it's not nearly rare enough it's still extremely common in my experience and because of how it's set up like that the smell just lingers and it's very common for bathrooms to smell very bad and every washroom has like a scrub brush even in like McDonald's or something because there's going to be poop stains on everything all the time and you know the cartoon idea of a fly buzzing around poop that really happens in the Netherlands they really are just flies because everything smells like shit it's fucking weird I like a lot of things about the Netherlands the whole vibe of the place is very pretty and nice it's not directly on my docket but I got to assume I'll go back sometime because there's a lot of positives there's a lot of upsides but it's so strange to have like oh here's delicious black licorice here's the you know the chocolate sprinkles on toast here's the the waffles and even just like apple turnovers and stuff they have this stuff that's just so delicious and then alongside it is like hmm have about a little poop smell how about that how did I get on to all that yeah all right I'm at a drink machine I probably shouldn't get a coffee because there's not not a ton of opportunities to drain the old urine around here I was glad I found for all my complaining glad I found that family martin time what fuck it you see see cafe ole 110 yen 25:00 hook me up I have noticed that there were a lot more hundred yen machines before oh this one does have a hundred yen but it's black coffee but yeah the prices have all definitely gone up a little wee bit which I don't really follow economic trends all I know is that my money is going further my Canadian dollar is going further than it used to around these parts and apparently American money is amazing but I mean it's amazing everywhere but I saw some machines in Senganjaya with signs in them apologizing apologizing that they had to raise the price 10 or 20 yen so yeah it just hits that point eventually 100 is a nice number it's a nice easy I'll just put in a coin but I guess it just hits a point where it's like we just can't anymore we've got to got to make a little more on the margins here yeah and stuff like that is neat to know it's neat to be able to just get the gist of these signs even though at first I was like wow this thing with Google translate we hold up the camera and it translates like it's like magic this is amazing and then I've come to find that it's pretty spotty doesn't really work most of the time but it's still something I would way rather have than not have because there's stuff like that just random little signs but also on the way up here so this one thing that's interesting I've never taken this walk in the daytime and it does feel a lot different where at night time it's it is just it's prettier it's like beautiful and you feel like you're more like a dream because it's more like conceptual everything's dark but there's street lights and there's a lot of forest but then city as well and you're like winding up through the through the trees it feels like a farther distance and it's just more spooky and mysterious you're just like swimming your way through weird darkness and you know from landmark to landmark where in the daytime it feels much more like I was just a place just walking to a place how at night time like I was shocked to see that that family mark because I felt like I was just you know I mean I was going up through a mountain pass into the woods and it's like anything could be here this feels so crazy and then oh it's just a new neighborhood with a family mark so in the daytime it just feels like that the whole time it's still very nice but it's much more normal but I noticed on the way up a little path where the road curves up the mountain there were little footpaths that I never saw at night one of them is just a little detour quite overgrown but the other one it's just kind of weird that there were steps there at all to even start you off because you go up these steps and there's like a tiny little shrine and then it really was just like walking through a gorge way overgrown and it's just like this is not even a path this is very I don't know I feel like I would normally never walk down this it's only because the steps got me started that it's like well let me try it a bit and there was a big spider webhead to duck under with the joros spider in it and it does feel a lot better now that I know they're not dangerous so it's just like hey buddy how you doing hello neighbor you're good you don't scare me anymore but I got a little further and there was a sign where this is a great time to have google translate where again it's a very unclear translation overall but I got the gist of it which was they have traps set up to try to trap wild boar and it said the area can be dangerous and it said don't stand around basically don't stand here is what it said but I think what it was meaning to imply is just don't go through here at all that's certainly how I took it and it's like hey you don't need to tell me twice this is very this path I mean I really feel like I shouldn't be on it anyway any mention of wild boars I mean I came into a bit of contact with some wild boars in Fukuoka and they're not not scary you know they could fuck you up for sure but that's interesting too I didn't know there were boars on this island it's one of those things like I would be interested to know but I always just learn stuff in it vertically by wandering around when it's time to look stuff up when I get back home and have internet I always forget you know I'm meant to look up about bears too hopefully I'll remember but I'm always just doing something else and then it slips my mind but yeah even just to get the general gist of like hey boars and I was kind of surprised because the area of greenery can't possibly be that big because like I already I'm just back in the city so I'm very surprised there were boars in there and I kind of inferred so trying to catch them maybe they don't want these wild boars either maybe it's not like hey just live and let live maybe it's like hey we're trying 30:00 to catch these things and move them somewhere else because this is too close to town and I guess in frederton where I'm from I mean on the north side there's like a park behind the superstar that's not extremely big it's like a protected wetlands but it's not that big but I've seen deer in there several times so I guess you don't need that much space to find some surprisingly wild animals in there but yeah my my friend Ken the Dixon James podcast he came to Japan I believe it was the eighties he went to Africa first in the seventies then Japan so it might even have been the late seventies but I think about that sometimes of like man that'd be a different world I got my little GPS and I got my little google translate and it's like oh no I can't find Wi-Fi I have to wait for a couple hours like again I guess carrying on from what I said yesterday about just life being easy it really is this type of traveling would be I mean possibly more like I bet he felt a lot more accomplished having pulled that off it's a much wilder adventure but I think it's too wild of an adventure for me I just wouldn't have done it moving to Africa that moving to Japan just like just waging it low level excitement is plenty enough for me man I remember I was initially wondering like am I going to have enough stuff to say or some of these podcasts going to be really short but just like every little thing makes me think of another thing I wanted to bring up or another thing and then I don't quite get to this stuff I was going to bring up because something else happens and I think there's no worries there there just seems to be infinite rambling possible about walking around Japan but this road is just slightly too busy I'm trying to pause as cars go by so it's not too obnoxiously loud but theoretically I'm on the way to the castle so let's pause till I get there Alright, sweet. I definitely, I gotta be going the right way. I'm going through, uh, it's like this cavernous path that's just surrounded by bamboo trees. Like, to the point that they're like curved, well, the bamboo doesn't curve. The other trees that are here kind of curve. So it feels like I'm going through a tunnel of trees. Even if this somehow is not the right way to go, it's worth it on its own. Permanent, this is a perfect example of how having the, uh, the phone sure is a godsend because this was just little green dots on the map. It's like, you okay? Turn, uh, turn left at the Family Mart, pass the 7-Eleven, pass another Family Mart, and if you get to a Lawsons, you've gone too far. So I saw the Lawsons because even though I saw this green dot on the map, I was ready for it. I walked right by. I would never have found this because you have to go down just a normal street of a normal looking neighborhood for only like a block and a half. But it's enough to not notice from the Main Street.

So yeah, even with the phone, I walked right by initially, and my old 2019 method of just literally wandering around and seeing what happened, I would never have found this. This would have been one of those cases where I would have looked it up later and been like, what? How did I walk past Castle Ruins? How's that possible?

So, man, so anyone who listened to last episode where I went to the Congo Falls, and I did not, this is the craziest thing, where I journeyed all day long. I got to these falls, and I just tracked it up to, I guess I just wasn't thinking in general. I talked it up to maybe the time of year, but they were so small. Just a tiny little thing, and it did not occur to me that I had to go further. I mean, to give myself a little bit of credit, it was pretty weird. You got to go into a cave that's been, I assume, a hune in the rock. If it is natural, that'd be pretty crazy, but you got to go through this cave where there's a chain attached to the wall, and climb up through the cave to get to the actual waterfall. I was just seeing like the little after waterfall, the final little, little few feet. But what I was thinking about that is, is like there's just no way to spin it, really. It's just, it's just dumb. 35:00 That I would see Congo Falls on a map and follow signs that were posted many kilometers away, guiding me to this thing, and then down these really complex stairs. Like I just was not applying any, and not enough thought to the situation. It's just so strange that I would just take it for granted that, oh, okay, I guess these, I guess this waterfall just sucks. I guess it's just so dumb. What it made me think of is, because I think this often, when I see other people doing dumb things, it's that idea that, you know, a large percentage of the population are dumb. I mean, if you just want to go by averages, half of them are dumb. And that's like a weird term. It's all relative. I mean, what does dumb mean? You know, you can get by in your life. You're still the dumbest person in the world is massively intelligent. I guess what I mean when I say dumb is like when I see people being not quietly dumb. If you're just being dumb to yourself, just I'm just gonna be dumb over here in the corner. That's fine. It's when you're loud and obnoxious and you're bellowing your dumbness and you're insisting on something that is wrong. That's when I'm like, I've what a dummy. Shut the fuck up idiot. You know, that's when it's annoying when people are dumb. And I always think in those cases that it's like, I know that person also thinks a lot of other people are dumb, you know, like that person also thinks like yeah, I bet the average person is dumber than me, but they never apply it to themselves. You know, like if that many people are kind to dumb, what are the chances that you're not one of them? You know, if you're just doing something obnoxious in the world and you're never considering that you're the dumb one, it's just funny. It's like, like we all think that a lot of people are dumb, but we never think it's us. But statistically, if half the people are kind of dumb, it's gonna be you a lot. You know, maybe not everybody thinks that. Maybe you're an angel, but can't get out of here. I know you think that, you know you think that. But anyway, in a case like this, it's just interesting that you just, it can't be denied. It's like, wow, I'm fucking dumb. I'm just dumb. There's no other way to describe that. Who else would spend the whole day hiking to a waterfall and get 10 feet away from it and then not go to the waterfall to think they already got to the waterfall, except a dumb person. I don't know. It's just it's, it's to have such incontrovertible proof is interesting. And you know, it was like, you just got a role with it. It's one of those things like if you think of a life where nothing went wrong, just someone who just succeeded at everything for their whole life and then passed away perfectly at an old age. It's very hard to imagine because it's impossible. It's not how anything works. You just got to take your dumb failures and apply them to the future. So that's how I'm looking at it. It's the two upsides. Our one, I'll go back there now for sure. I have to go back. I have to redeem myself. So it's a reason to go back to those waterfalls at some other time. Although apparently in the summer, it's got a lot of insects. The only bad reviews I saw were that there were enough insects in the summer that it was unpleasant. Where in the fall here, I didn't experience any at all. More and more, I'm definitely seeing that fall is the time, man. Fall is amazing in Japan.

But the other one is, I mean, it's just a good wake-up call. It's like, dude, just apply a little more critical thinking to the situation you're in. Just a little more. I mean, maybe you could tie this into what I was just saying about like presuming other people are dumb and not thinking that it's you. In a way, I guess that's what I was doing. It's like, well, I don't know. I know there's hundreds of waterfalls in Japan. So maybe I was thinking that as well. Like, well, if there's over 100 waterfalls or who knows how many waterfalls, maybe they count everything as a waterfall. But even just applying a cursory amount of logic to it.

I walked way down these really treacherous steps for a long distance. I took these amazing pictures of this giant gorge I was in, this huge valley with these giant sides on either side, falling rock danger. Looked so cool. Looked amazing. I felt like I was in shadow with the colossus. Crazy shit. Where's the water coming from? If not from up there? I just, it's like it is sticking in my mind a little bit of like, God damn, that was fucking stupid. What a stupid day. And I mean, 40:00 overall, for the overall shape of the day, I honestly don't care. I don't care. I mean, the journey of the day was so good. Trying to get to that other castle and failing and going over this super rough path over the weird mountains to Kamene Park. Finding the forest re-road to exit. Oh, and the other thing I didn't mention on the way out as I was going back to the station. It's really close to a Musashi, it's Fukai-shi station. It's this, I wonder maybe I have the name here because a business card came in it. It was this like boutique sweet shop that was closed because it was Sunday evening. Okashiyapage. Okay, a-s-h-i-y-a-p-a-g-e. And it's this little store that sells custom-made candies that has a very French aesthetic. And they had a vending machine out front that was like a custom vending machine that looked so cool. Just the whole machine was like custom designed, obviously, by this person. And it looked like inside was like like a little diorama of like the nutcracker. It just looked so cool. And everything was horrifyingly overpriced. I was going to get the head of thing that was just like some little miscellaneous cookies and stuff that was like four bucks. But I couldn't figure out if I could use my card. I probably could use the credit card part of my debit card. I don't know. It took a lot of credit cards, but I just put in a $10 note and then I could only buy the $10 item because I just assumed there's no change. This machine just doesn't really make change. It definitely works more on credit cards because this is like boutique stuff. So I spent a thousand yen on a little box of chocolates, which is, you know, it's too much. But it came with like a custom bag with their design on it. And the cool little business card that I just have in my wallet for no reason just because it's cool came in this little red container. And it's these like little chocolates and a little plastic sword inside. I'll carefully wrap and use the little plastic sword to skewer each chocolate to eat them. So I mean, yeah, it was pricey. I only bought it because I've just never seen a unique vending machine like that before. It was really cool. I think it's more intended as a gift, you know, because it came with a little bag and everything. It would be a great thing to give to someone else. But even for me, once I eat those chocolates, I mean, I'm going to keep the little box it came in. It's like really cool. And I've got some like very obscure extra cords and stuff that I'll probably never use like for my pixel phone since it doesn't have headphone jack. I've got this stuff that it's like a USB 2 headphone jack adapter. I've got two of them just in case. But I never use it that way. In fact, the last time I tried it didn't even work. And even when it does work, it sounds kind of static. It's just shit. I guess you're just supposed to use Bluetooth. And now I have a Bluetooth headset that I get there the day. So I'm probably never going to use those cords. I have a feeling I might just ditch them somewhere. But for now, they're just floating around. It's a good excuse for me to keep the little box without it just being something I'm keeping for no reason. I'll just put my like cords that I'm never going to use in the box. And maybe that'll be a test. If I put something in my little special box that I got and it just stays in there for weeks and weeks or a month, then that's a good sign that maybe I can get rid of that thing. Maybe I don't need whatever's in there. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is I still feel like that was a perfect day. I just loved it. Everything about about yesterday's little adventure was so cool.

So I really don't care that I didn't see the waterfall because even the guy in YouTube where I saw what you're supposed to do, he still like literally was there for like four minutes. And he just posted at the bottom of the video like, all right, after a few minutes time to keep going on. But yeah, you know, you see the waterfall. Not a big deal. So it's weird. It's like it didn't detract from the day. But just as a separate thing in a separate part of my brain, it's still, it just disturbed me that I could be so dumb is all. But there's the good thing about that is like that's like a little wake-up call of like, don't just presume you know what's going on when nothing about what you're presuming makes any fucking sense you more on. You know? If you look to your left and you look to your right and at least one of those people is kind of a dumbass. And you never presume that that's you. That you might be the one. It makes you a double dumbass. Like just presuming you know what's going on is like the worst. There's no no better way 45:00 to be dumb than to just assume you know better than the situation. So it's a nice wake-up call in that sense of like, hey dude, wake up. Wake up stupid. Don't do that anymore. Don't walk up to a waterfall and then not go. I just I can't even think of an example better than this of just a stupid guy doing a stupid thing that you could probably send a thousand people on that little adventure I did yesterday and not one other person would do that except me. It's just like Jesus Christ. All right, I gotta go uh continue on. See if I can find this here castle. Now that I've graduated myself for a while.