#31 Kasori Shell Mound in Chiba, Japan

Transcript

So last night, the wind in Chiba was picking up like crazy. It's a little less now because I'm not by the the bay. I'm not by the water now, but it's still pretty windy. It hasn't got especially cold, a bit colder. But I'm glad this is the first day I'm wearing my bigger jacket that I kept thinking I was going to abandon because every day that I've been here in Japan, it's been so insanely warm. I'm just sweating to death every day. Why do I have all these different layers of hoodies and jackets and stuff? But I'm glad I held on to it because just to stop the wind, it's pretty handy today.

So there's a monorail that goes through Chiba. And I don't know much about Chiba. I've just heard people say the infrastructure is a little bad for trying to travel around without a car. The guy I met at the Izakaya, who I was calling Shoda, because I couldn't remember his name. It's Satoru, like Satoru Iwata from Nintendo. Rest in peace. But he mentioned that he had to take a bus to get to his place that was a 20-minute bus ride by this area's standards. That seems like a lot.

And there's a YouTuber named Tikiyo Sam, who used to live in Chiba. He would do these videos where he would ride around on his motorcycle and just ramble about whatever topics. And he was driving through Chiba a lot. And it didn't mean anything in particular to me at the time. Now it's like, I kind of wish I could, I'm not going to go back and listen to Sam ramble about a bunch of stuff again. But it's like, I wonder if I would recognize stuff now. But he mentioned that as well. And specifically with the monorail, he said like, there is a monorail, but it's not really that big. It doesn't go enough places. And I can see that, because I think there's 18 stops on the monorail. I was very near the start of it down by the bay. And I was just going to go all the way to the end. But I stopped a little before the end, because I saw something on the map that seems interesting.

But I'm only three stops from the end. And I don't think it would change wildly when I got there. Although I've made that mistake before. And that I think, I think it's all going to be the same. And then I find if I go a little further, it's even better. But the one I stopped at is Sakuragi Station, S-A-K-U-R-A-G-I. Because it's near the Kasori Shell Mounds site museum.

Which apparently I'm walking past right now. And I just stop because I don't know what that means. I don't know what Shell Mounds are. I have no idea. But if there's the Shell Mounds site and a separate museum, it must be something. I guess I should stop in. But I don't even know where it is. It's like here somewhere. But I don't know what I'm looking for. I know nothing. It's just an interesting thing on the map. But more importantly, there is a path. Because mainly what I saw riding on the monorail. It's kind of a cool little monorail. It's a bit like Vancouver except it does go a little higher up sometimes. So it's kind of cool being on a monorail and just looking down at the city going by. It feels like your magneto. You're just floating along. But when it goes a little too high up, the Vancouver one never makes me feel this way. But this one, I'm so pathetically scared of heights that sometimes it went a little too high up. And as I go, this makes me a little uncomfortable. I feel like I'm too high up. But kind of cool. And I mean you can pretty much ride the whole thing for five bucks.

But I did just see kind of city, city everywhere. It reminded me of super specific example. But if you go to the station in Toronto that's all the way east, I believe that's Kennedy. But then there's a little extra line that goes four more stops on a little monorail. And that's what this feels like except instead of four stops, this goes like 18 stops. But it's just kind of going over residential stuff. And here's a baseball field or whatever. But nothing really stood out.

Chiba Park was probably the most notable thing because it's just got a big pond. But you could easily walk there. You don't need a monorail to get there.

Alright, I guess I'm here. This is definitely not an especially developed park or whatever. But I mean that's cool. But it does say on the little you are here sign, there's a washroom at some point, which is good because I bought a coffee that's just in my back pocket. Didn't want to drink it yet just in case. But if there's a washroom coming, that's helpful.

But I think what I'm gathering, I mean my Chiba experience is only a couple of days so far.

But it seems like going to the waterfront, kind of a bad idea. Whenever I see on the map that I can go to the waterfront, especially if there's a park there, I'm going to try to do it. But the waterfront is similar to Toronto in the sense that it sucks because it's all just built up developed industrial stuff. It really just like hang out near the water or walk along the water or anything. And here in Chiba it's lots of big trucks and traffic and crazy highways. I wouldn't recommend it. It's really kind of not worth it to try to get to the beach. Or it doesn't get to the water or whatever. Maybe in the summer, you know if it's an actual journey or you drive there to get to the beach, but on foot it's tricky at best. And then out here, it just did seem like just houses and houses and houses and houses and houses everywhere. I'm glad I found this little nature path because there did not seem to be an abundance of this either so I feel kind of lucky that I found this one. So it seems like if you go too close to the water, it's all the traffic. If you go too far away, it's just residential. But there is a happy medium that I found on my way home yesterday where I was walking back from Inage Park. And once I got past all the industrial stuff, which I guess is pretty evident on Google Maps because it's just kind of nothing. You know, it's just big gray spots where there's no traffic or anything.

So you get past that because it was quite a long walk home. It was longer than I realized I'd gotten really far. And I was a lot more hung over than I thought I was, too. It's similar to the night I was drinking at the Izakaya and how as long as I was talking to somebody, everything seemed fine. But once I was left to my own devices, I fell apart immediately. It was a lesser version of that last night where as long as I was doing the podcast, I felt fine. Once it was just me with two and a half hours left to walk home. I was a lot more worn out than I thought. That was a tough walk. It was long. Like I would feel good and excited and like, I'll look at this cool place I met. And then I would just be like, oh, and it would just go back and forth.

Man, though, being in an Airbnb that does not have a train going by all the time. What a dream. It's like a cemetery in there. I haven't actually been able to thank the guy who runs the Airbnb for taking me to the Izakaya and stuff. I haven't seen him since and I can't even tell if he's home or not because it's so quiet in there all the time. But there's definitely no question there if you have to choose between quiet and dry. And trains. Very obviously quiet is better. Okay, so I met restored village. Oh, did I walk past traditional Japanese house mid-Ido period? Hmm. Where was that? Well, I'll try and catch it on the way back. This is not an extremely large park. So there's restored village. Then I'm heading towards Southern Shell Mound, cross section of Shell Layer, Northern Shell Mound. Like, do they mean shells like military shells? What does this mean?

I don't know.

Anyway, walking back last night, definitely Chiba is one of these areas where night time is prettier. Where Japan is a little 50-50, it's beautiful in the day and it's beautiful at night. But I think because Chiba is just, it is kind of a more generic residential zone. It's definitely prettier at night. At night, it's goddamn beautiful. And in the day, you know, it's just a little bit, it's a little bit of just a normal place where people live.

But yeah, I walked through this whole neighborhood. Once I got away from the highways, I just walked down toward Chiba Station. And pretty much everything was great. I was like, man, this is all wonderful. Like, it's all just like cool, hip, downtown-y-type stuff. Cool stores and people hanging out and just like, it's very, very nice. And partially what led me there is I'm always looking for my incredibly mundane traveling that I do. I'm still looking for laundromats that are not too fancy. Because the really fancy laundromats, it's all included. Like, the machines have their own soap. But I bought some detergent, you know, when I first got to Japan. Not realizing I didn't need it. And this is my last chance to use it. Because I'm not going to take it to Fukuoka with me. So I've, you know, done like three loads of laundry. This would be a fourth one. It's not that big of a bottle. I would use like half of it. That's not bad. Or, I don't know, a third of it. At least I use some of it. So I was looking for a smaller laundromat where you have to put in your own stuff. 10:00 So I found these ones that are aways for my Airbnb, but that's fine. It's a good excuse to walk back to that cool neighborhood. Just the tiniest little laundromats. I guess there was two of them around the corner from each other. So I think it's like maybe owned by the same person. But just really tiny little buildings with just a couple little washers and a couple dryers. And just kind of cool though, really small. And yeah, you can do a small load of laundry for 200 yen. So definitely, definitely that does not include the soap because that's a good deal. That's cheap. So I'm going to go there.

All right, no English in this park, but let's see if I can figure out what anything is. See how Google Translate does.

So this ancient village is from the Jomon period. I'm not heard of that period. So I have to presume that the translator is right.

So I mean, I guess this is the area approximately where they've recreated these houses is approximately where this ancient stuff was found in the first place. I still don't know what they mean by shell, but it doesn't seem like it's a military thing. I think it is something to do with maybe that's, I mean, these houses they are, is this like a shell house?

Because it's like a house that, it almost looks like a teepee in the sense that it's sort of circular and it comes all the way down. It's like a roof that goes all the way down to the floor. I don't know. God, this is like, this is the world's most ignorant podcast. I never know anything. And if I at least had data, I could just take a break right now, do some reading and pretend that I know, but I have no way to know what I'm looking at. I guess you get the, I don't know how valuable it is, but you get the mind of the beginner, right? You get the total absolute beginner, just the idiot with no sense of what's happening experience. So it is pretty cool. So it's like the, it's like these roofs, now that I'm up closer, they're all made out of sticks.

Little hollow sticks, just a crap ton of them, and there's little window openings at the top, which is all just like again woven sticks. Then it's got a little door in the front that is closed. I mean, I guess I would say it's like a wooden igloo is basically what this is.

Oh, the other house you can actually go in, but there's a Japanese family in there right now.

I'll wait till they wander away. I'm glad I saw them go in though, because I wouldn't presume to go in by myself. I'd be like, am I supposed to be doing this?

All right, the other hut does have the open door.

Wow, it is weird, it's so hard to... I mean, this looks kind of like I guess like Mongolian huts or maybe not Mongolian. I don't know where I'm thinking of. Again, I'm so shallow that as far as travel type educational programming, I mostly only watch Carl Pilkington, but I remember he went to a place that felt a lot like this where they fed him a boiled goat's head, but it's just like in the hut. There's packed earth inside. There's a little central area that maybe is like a fire pit. Yeah, I guess there's a little opening at the top. I don't know if I would love having a fire going in here, but then little stumps to sit on and some pottery and then around the edges are planks to sit on. Those look more modern. I don't know if those are part of the original deal. And there's a fire extinguisher.

That's a good idea. Better safe than sorry. But yeah, it's a little hard to imagine your whole life just living in a place like this, but I guess if it's all you know, it's probably a hell of a lot better than being outdoors. You know, it's like, how nice this is. We get to go inside and not be pelted by the weather. And then presumably, I guess you would still spend most of your life outdoors anyway. It's not like you're hanging out in here all day working on your novel. Well, this is a pretty cool thing to just find because I was like, I'll just ride the the monorail. Like I definitely get what the guy meant who runs this Airbnb as far as like kind of questioning why are you coming to Chiba? There's nothing here, you know. He said it twice. Like Chiba's boring. There's nothing in Chiba. And yeah, I guess it is one of those things. In a traditional tourism sense, I don't know so much what I would recommend about Chiba. Like, I'll go see this, go see that. If I come back a second time, 15:00 I mean, just because that guy's so cool, I might come back and just stay at his Airbnb again because the guy's red. But it does seem like his own where there's not a ton going on. But even places like this, like I think they're really fun to visit one time, you know, or like, I'm not sure how long I'm here. Five days? Six days? I don't know. I'm here till Tuesday. I'm here longer than I thought I was Saturday today. But I feel like almost any place is interesting to go to the first time. Because just by wandering around, you'll just find stuff that's neat. And I mean, especially in Japan. In Japan, there's always something.

Every area has something cool and interesting about it. Man, though, I really do take English signage for granted. Usually when I go to museum type places, I do tend to glaze over a little and I don't spend an a special amount of time like reading informational plaques or anything. But I'm probably absorbing information inadvertently, a lot more than I realize because when it's not there, it's a strange feeling. Like, I just need a nice plaque to just lay it out for me. What is the shell mount? What does that mean? I mean, it seems to be some kind of historical dig site, someplace where they found ancient stuff. They recreated some ancient houses that's extremely interesting and neat. But I guess also this is a good example of how the internet age has changed stuff. You young whippersnappers, you don't remember at the time before the internet. But this is how it always was. You had to legitimately go to the library and look up shellmounds and then possibly look up Japan before you look up shellmounds. It might not be there. You might not be able to find any information. Now, it's just like, God, geez, I gotta wait until later today when I have Wi-Fi. Mercy. Feel so bereft of knowledge. I'll sort it out. I'll find out. Speaking of, I found some YouTube videos about the difference between chinto and Buddhism. And apparently it is judging by these titles and these videos. It is a bit of a difficult to untangle history between the two. But I've converted them to MP3. I do this a lot with YouTube videos that you don't specifically need to watch. I'll just convert them to MP3 and put them on my phone and listen to them as I walk around. So I haven't yet. So I don't know yet. But I wasn't the only one, apparently, who was really not familiar with the difference. Which is always good. It's nice to be together with someone else in your ignorance, to not be alone in your ignorance. All right, well, I think I'm heading to Ward just circling around this site, sort of heading back to the museum. I'm gonna drink this coffee because they're supposed to be a washroom facility in the museum. So let me take a little break and then I'll tell you what else I learned about the Kassori Shell Mounds, K-A-S-O-R-I Shell Mounds.

Hmm, so I think maybe I wasn't thinking literally enough with these Shell Mounds. So in this little teeny tiny thin building, let me look at it again from the outside. It seems like I guess I'm in one of the Shell Mounds. Yeah, so there's like a little hill that's, I mean, it's only about my height. It's like six, six and a half feet tall, a little taller than me. So this building is kind of cut through the center of the mound. Okay, no, there's the top of it. It's taller. It's like nine feet tall.

And then you go into this building and you're in a cross section of the earth, like this must be where they excavated down into this mound. So you can see the layers and in the layers are literal shells, tons of shells. But in layers, like you can see, like the geological time frame of like, again, I have no fucking idea what's going on here, but it's like right here a whole bunch of clams and stuff fucking died here, apparently. And then there's a layer of dirt and then more. Yeah, there's a whole bunch. It's actually a little eerie. It feels like I've been like a Japanese horror comic a little bit. And then there's a sign here of what the different specific shells are.

But it's like, you know, snail shell, clam shells. It's all your standard shells, but it is a bunch of different types of shells. So I guess in some way, the relevance of the shell mound, it is just that for whatever reason, this this hill, this mound of dirt, is filled with shells. What the fuck is going on? What is this shit? This is so weird. What is this? I don't know, just looking at them, there's so many, just like thousands piled up. What happened? Why did everyone come here to die? What geological, like did this used to be water? But it's just dirt. It's a mountain, like outside is flatter. Somehow there's just a big mountain. It's like an elephant graveyard or something. It's like somehow, this is where it feels like a Junji Ito comic, like all of the, somehow all of the areas, crustacean shell life was somehow drawn here. And they all just came here and piled up to die. Like it's somehow unnerving. It's weird. It's just weird feeling to see so many. And I just have no idea what the hell's going on. But that's the shell mound, all right? If that's not what they mean, and I'm a, and I don't know what's going on. Yeah, it's a mound of shells, this literally what it is. Yeah, I definitely need some larger context, independent research from need to be done by which I mean a quick glance at a Wikipedia page, because I don't understand at all what I'm looking at or how this, this came to be. Formation of Minamazuka shellfish, Minamazuka from 4,000 to 3,000 years ago, I'm now on Jomaan period. In the late period, it was formed, followed by the North Kazuka. A small shellfish layer is piled up, and it's guess that it's become a circular big shell moving in place. Yeah, again, like the translation is not helping, unfortunately. I mean, this is definitely interesting, although I found the old style house a lot more pleasant, because this is, there is just something quite unnerving about this. I don't, I don't like it. Like, what is this? What is with all of these, these fucking clam corpses?

Why are they all here piled up like this? Don't understand. Was there some kind of clam tornado that picked everyone up and dropped them here? Southern Kitsuka Shell Layer Cross-section Facility.

Here is a cut part of Southern Kuka to the North and South to observe the cross-section through this facility. The shellfish layers that are exhibited are 30 meters. The thickness is more than one meter. It's the largest cross-section in Japan. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm overthinking it with why this is here. I mean, maybe it is just about flooding and water receiving.

It's a little weird to see the largest of a thing, but to not at all know what the heck it is.

I have never heard of it before, just to be wandering around. I mean, there's a no-effectsong about how clams don't have central nervous systems. I'm not really looking at a pile of corpses. It's a different sort of, it's a different experience, but I still just, there's just so many of them that it is unnerving. It's a weird feeling. I don't like to think of my own mortality through the medium of fucking clamshells. That's just weird. It just feels weird. Here's another sign. The shellfish layers include many animal bones, pottery, stone vessels, etc. characterized by many traces of life such as people and dog burials and firewood ruins. The inside of the shell is used as a place of life and the formation of small shellfish layers continued to the late Jomean period.

So I guess that suggests that these are interesting sites because there's a lot of other stuff here as well. Amongst the shells, if you can find a shell mound inside, you're going to find pottery 25:00 and animal bones and people bones and different historical things. It's a signifier that you've found an untouched area from the deep, deep past, I guess. Still I'm left with several questions.

So there was like a central visitor site, central office or whatever at the shell mounds, but I really know English to speak of there, so I still do not have my information. Well, I'll get to it later, but I thought maybe this could be a good opportunity. Why don't I listen to these little MP3s I've got about shintoism versus Buddhism? Maybe I can learn something, but yeah, this is absolutely not the right podcast to learn anything besides anecdotal observations of a guy stumbling around modern day Japan. Because for stuff like this, I mean, I don't know. Man, I don't know. I guess shinto. So shinto are the shrines with the Tory gates, the red. You know, it's like two pillars and a curved top that you see all over the place. That's shinto. And shinto, I guess kind of boils down to everything has its own soul, which now that I think of it. So Toro the other day said that to me. He's like, yeah, you know, they think everything as a soul. This table has a soul. Your sake has a soul, which I mean, it kind of falls in line with what I like about what I've seen of religion in Japan is that it is just sort of so diffused that it's sort of means nothing. It's like a neat thing. And so Toro's girlfriend said that too. She's like, yeah, you know, people aren't really religious here. You know, like people, they do stuff, they do the motions, but no one's like really into it, which is what I kind of saw too. So it's nice to sort of have it, have it confirmed. And then Buddhism is Buddhism. I don't know. I don't know about that either, but ever the fucking Buddha. I don't know. I'm also, what time is it anyway? I haven't actually eaten today. I was like, I'll wait till I get to the other end and I'll find a convenient, you know, grab something to eat. It's like 3.30 and all I've had is a, a little maple syrup waffle that I got out of a vending machine while I was waiting for the monorail. It was all right. Although the Netherlands are kings of the waffle. Or maybe Belgium is, I don't know, I've never been. But yeah, maybe I'm a little cranky because I'm hungry. But yeah, I mean, I kind of think religion is interesting to observe from a far far far distance. But if I ever try to dig into it or really try to untangle religion, I'm just always like reminded how much I'm not a religion guy. But anyway, none of that really seems to have anything to do with Japanese shintoism or Buddhism because nobody really treats it like that. One guy too, he was a Japanese guy trying to describe the delineation between the two. He even brought up that it was the shinto side of things that viewed the emperor as a god in World War 2. But he said, he literally said the words don't worry. He said, don't worry, that was like a temporary thing. That's not always how it was and that's certainly not how it is now. That was just a temporary odd thing that is not the case anymore. Now, you know, the emperor, he is the the figurehead of the nation, but nobody thinks he's a god anymore. That was just a weird thing. And even that, just to say that, can you imagine a Catholic person or a Christian person saying something that self-effacing? I can't even imagine it. They get so serious about their stupid made-up shit.

This is a beautiful walk by the way. Let me try to shake this off, but the fucking weather is cleared up. The sky is blue. It was kind of an overcast earlier. So I'm just walking down this nice path next to a... This is like a legitimate, like, ravine or stream or something. It's not one of the ones like in Central Tokyo where it's, you know, like, concrete riverbed. This is just an actual little mini-stream river thing, whatever. Flowing along, and I'm just walking next to it. According to the little green dots on the map, this won't last forever, but I'm just going to walk till it stops and then see where I am. See where I am at. But anyway, that was my attempt to learn something. It didn't work. I don't know. I don't know what the difference is. I don't care. This is not relevant in my brain. So I guess if you want to learn about Shinto versus Buddha, 30:00 I'm not the one. But that did remind me of when we were talking about that at the Izakaya. I mentioned that it is a little weird. These offerings people leave. Because at what point does the offering become leaving your garbage? You know, because they just leave stuff. They just leave like a coffee or they leave a candy or they leave some fruit to mold. And there was one. It was this like really, really obscure shrine that I found. The one when I was walking north from Akigawa and I saw the signs about watch out for wild boars and we're actively trying to capture the wild boars in the area. So I turned around. There was a little shrine there and it had little candies on it. I was like, you know what? I'm going to do this, but I'm not going to bring it up on the podcast. So I'm not going to mention that I did this because I don't know how offensive this is. But these candies are just sitting there at this crazy obscure shrine. And there was one I'd never tried before. And I was like, I'm just going to eat this thing. It's just candy that's left here. So I tried it and it was really good. It was like bonkers candy. If you remember that from the 80s, it was like a smaller bonkers. It was purple and it was longer, but it was like purple on the outside. It was a lighter purple on the inside. It was a little little taffy type thing. It was very delicious. I don't know what it was. But yeah, I just ate the thing left as a shrine. And why I bring that up is the tour was told me a joker is like this joke about a guy who is meant to tend to all the sites of worship. He's never quite clear exactly what what is done with these offerings. You know, the offerings are cleared out once in a while, but no one exactly knew what he did with them. And then mysteriously he developed diabetes because obviously he's just eating all the candy. He's just doing what I did just eating the stuff people left. And that was one of those times when the other two who were fully Japanese people, they were like, hey, wait, what is it? Why are you guys laughing so hard? What's the joke?

So yeah, I don't know that thing that I noticed it's everyone notices it. It is just how it is. And it's all very fuzzy. It's just a strange thing. There are these shrines. There are these temples. There are these Buddhist statues. There are all these things and people make observances around them, but it's unclear quite what it means to them or how serious it is. And yeah, just stuff like that. You know, there is the different rituals that a person is supposed to enact. You know, you're supposed to say these words and do these movements and get the ladle and you pour the water. And you do the different stuff. But one of them is you leave offerings. But the reality is, I mean, maybe you felt in the 1500s that you were truly leaving and offering to a spirit for good luck or to not be cursed or whatever. But nowadays everyone knows that that's not the case. They still do these things. But now it is just like, all right, well, you just left a can of coffee. What's going to happen with this can of coffee? Something's got to happen or these things will build up. Do you throw it away? Do you just drink it? What do you do? And it's just kind of unspoken. No one really talks about it, but somebody does something with them. Maybe everyone's just eating this stuff. I don't know. Either that or I'll be cursed. I'll be cursed forever.

Man, this wind is really not dying down. This is one thing that's a little different is where I'm from Atlantic Canada. It does have extremely crazy weather. It's definitely my favorite thing about New Brunswick is just that the weather is fucking nuts. It is one of the most high variance weather systems in the world. We have like the biggest tides in the world at the Bay of Fundy. So wind like this isn't so unusual, but it always signals a temperature change back home. It's like, all right, it's going to be crazy windy. And that's how you know the next day, if it was cold, then it's going to be warm. Or if it was warm, it's going to be cold, you know. The wind means a new weather system is coming in. Oh, man, this one I finally found. It's been a while since I haven't seen any convenience stores, of course, because I just been walking along this this really undeveloped river.

But I'm starting to see machines. This one has the hot corn soup. It's 150 yen. That's pretty expensive for the soup. 35:00 But I really am seems like starving now. No wonder I was so grumpy talking about religion. I'm really pretty dang hungry. I'm going to hold off. I'm going to wait until I get to a convenience store and go fucking bananas hog wild. But yeah, where the little green markings ended on Google Maps? The path kept going. That was a major street. I could have turned on to that street and eventually walked back to my Airbnb, although I got a long walk ahead of me. I'm quite far away. But that's fine. This was my only plan today. Go explore around. But I wanted to keep going. See where this path went. So I kept walking and I kept walking. And this river got really kind of overgrown and big trees hanging over top. It felt like suddenly I'm in like Tom Sawyer or something. It's just like a gravel path. But the sun was getting lower and lower. It's still up. Although I can see the moon. There's the moon. It's like quarter to five. It's going to be pitch black soon. And I was getting a little concerned because there's a pretty long walk. And there's no lights at all. I'll hunt this path along this river. And I could just pull out the light on my phone. And I mean, it is just a path. The path itself, you know, it's like a gravel path. But it was quite well. It was well delineated. It wouldn't have been a problem to walk it in the dark. It just would have been scary. It would have been shitting me kex. But then I got to another little road. And the path legitimately ended. There was no more path along the river. I was just like following the river on Google Maps. I'm like, okay, I'm still walking along the river. But I was forced away just in time. So I'm still on a really obscure back road. And I just came out in a cemetery. Apparently something called Omiyacho Park is near here. O-M-I-Y-A-C-H-O. But I don't know quite what that entails or how to get there. I guess I'm in a kind of walk past now as I go. But yeah, now I'm on like a very narrow country road where again, I'm probably not really supposed to be walking. There's not really room for pedestrians, but it seems like my way out of here.

And I'm going to be going past the Suca Wami-Zuno Sato Park. TSU-K-A-W-A-M-I-Z-U-N-O-S-A-T-O Park. And then this should eventually connect me to, yeah, a bigger street. And then back, this kind of sucks. This is not a place for walking. It is quite a bit of traffic and there's just not room for person on foot, but I don't have any choice. I don't know how else to get out of here. And actually, I kind of presumed there'd be lights because this is a major enough street, but they should probably be on by now. It's getting real dark. I don't know if there's actually street lights or not. I might not be out of the woods yet. Dang, it's keysts. What have you done? What have you done? Yet another of your half-cocked, cock-a-maybe adventures.

Anyway, the little path by the Shell Mount is really cool. Should you ever be here? I'd say, yeah, give it a shot. It's neat.

But then where the little green markings end on Google, you know, it appears that they end for good reason. It's another one of these cases where technically, technically things keep going.

But it's kind of like in Camine Park. It's like, we're telling you not to go here because you're not going to get anywhere. There's nothing on the other side that you want to get to.

But the only trouble is just that there's a lack of a place for a pedestrian and that no street lights have come on yet. As far as just like a walk, this is exactly what I like. I didn't expect to find anything like this in Chiba because it just seemed like endless city. But this kind of countryside thing is exactly what I was hoping I would find if I went to the end of the line.

And by stopping just short of the end of the line, I got here.

I love these parts where it just feels like I'm walking through the countryside. It's so nice.

Man, though, that clear sky from earlier has kind of gone away. These clouds are coming back. Hopefully, I noticed this a lot in like Toronto. It would get really windy as the sun was going down. And then after the sun went down, things would chill out.

Here's hoping that happens, although if last night was any indicator, it will not.

Oh, yeah, that's what I was going to say earlier. I don't know that I finished that thought. Is in Atlanta, Canada, the wind would signify a change in the weather. So it doesn't last, you know, by the next day it's gone. But that it was crazy windy yesterday. And it's crazy windy today. Maybe it's going to be crazy windy tomorrow. 40:00 Like it just, this is definitely different. Just wind, wind, wind, wind, wind. Without a particular temperature change, it's still pretty warm out. It's just windy as fuck.

Alright, I should probably focus on walking since I'm very much in everyone's fucking way.

Alright, that wasn't too bad. That wasn't too bad of a walk. And now I'm at a real sidewalk, an actual sidewalk. And in the distance, I see a stoplight, actual traffic lights. Back to a major street. All is good. And yeah, I just got the, can't see the sun anymore. I can just see the beautiful orange glow. Although that orange glow goes a long fucking way because I can still see everything. It's not nighttime. It really is like a light switch turning off once it becomes night.

It's so dark here at night this time of year in November. It's like conceptual. It's like a play. It makes the world feel like I'm in a stage show. And it's just like a black curtain. Just a black painted backdrop or something. But this actually reminds me of a ruralish Fukuoka near Umabayashi station when I was trying to figure out how to get on to the Aperiyama mountain. And it was very tough to find the path to get up there. Walking around that neighborhood felt the same of like, sorry, sorry everyone. I don't mean to be here. I know I'm not supposed to be here. I know I'm crammed onto the road with you. And there's these mirrors. Orange round mirrors at all the turns. So you can see what's coming up around the corner. It's like I hope that they noticed me in these mirrors because I'm sorry I'm, it's like dangerous. They should not be walking on these like really rural roads. But it's just an accident. I will not do it again on purpose. Although by accident I would probably will do it again.

But alright, back to civilization as well as traffic noise. Maybe I'll jump in with some information about shellmounds, but if not tune in next episode. Maybe I'll just do it next episode. But yeah, that'll be, that'll be my plan then for next episode. Shellmound time. Look forward to it.

Alright, it's a little bit later in the evening. I'm on the major street walking back toward Chiba Station. I'm just going to kind of reiterate what I just said, but just now that I'm here for real. So I was walking along, I saw a 7-Eleven, and it gave me flashbacks to Fukuoka, where I got kind of lost in the mountains once, and then I came out on a bit of a busy highway type of street. And as I was walking down that street, there was a 7-Eleven, and I had neat and all day, and it was like the greatest thing. So this felt that same way, and I'm like, cool, I'm going to kind of recreate that little experience in a weird way. I'm going to try to actually recreate it when I get to Fukuoka. Now with the magic of GPS. But I went into the 7-Eleven, and this is quite rare, but there was a sign. They even translated it into English to make sure that I knew that it said, please ask the staff before you use the washroom. And as, you know, I hope to one day be one of the internet's pre-eminent bathroom crusaders, bathroom advocates. I was mildly shocked and offended.

It was like, I'll just go to the next convenience store. Ask the staff, get out of here. What is this? Amsterdam? So I went further down the street to a family mart, and the family mart sign said, please use the washroom. Feel free to use the washroom. And I was like, there you go. There you go. So I spent all my money at the family mart instead, because I want to support P. It's very important to me.

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about peeing. I'm here to talk about darkness. I got a little macky roll. I got an Onigiri. I got some kind of weird cream puff, like caramel cream puff thing. I'd never tried before, but it was just kind of like caramel pudding in it. It's a little weird, not bad, but oh, and I tried a different coffee, even though family mart has a dark coffee that's pretty good, but I just wanted a little less liquid because it's also very large. 45:00 So as to stave off the aforementioned peeing for the rest of this walk. So instead, I got the Ethiopian mocha, and it is pretty dang tasty. The worry with a mocha drink is that it'll just be again too sweet, too chocolatey, but this wasn't. It was like very nice. Very nice indeed. But anyway, then I came outside, and yeah, I feel like I'm in a different world now. It does seem like the wind has calmed down a bit. But I can't say for sure if it's because the sun's down, it could just be because there's a lot more buildings now blocking the wind.

But it is just just black. It's just black in the sky. If you look real close, like if I look way in the distance.

If you look really close, like if I look way in the distance, I can see like the silhouette of larger buildings way down the street. And behind those, I guess I can see some gradation in the sky, where it goes from fully dark to only to one degree less than that. You can kind of see a little bit. But generally, it's such a weird feeling because at the same time, it feels infinite, and it feels close. It feels like I could just reach up and touch the sky. I guess it's because of no stars. I haven't really thought about it too hard so far. But I guess because in the fall, there's a lot of clouds, so then when it gets, but that's weird, too, because sometimes when it's cloudy, that makes it seem not as dark. Lights from the city will bounce back off of the clouds. So maybe this is just light pollution. Maybe that's what I'm seeing. Is that possible? That just in Canada? I mean, it still gets like this in Canada, because I remember there's a park in Toronto near Old Mill Station across the street from Old Mill Station. You can go into this park at night, and it's one of the few unlit parks I could find in Toronto. It might even be lit now, but it wasn't when I lived out near there. And it was neat because you could go out and stare up at the sky and see all the stars. So I guess I had that problem in Toronto, too. But it definitely feels different here. It's just so much more total. It is just total black color in the sky. It's freaking cool, but eerie, you know? It's definitely different. Having a hard time putting my finger on all the little things, but it just feels different. Like back home in Eastern Canada. Still gets dark at 5 p.m., but it would never be even remotely warm. It's always like a total below freezing, horrible nightmare, where here is well, well above freezing. I brought some little gloves, and I'm not even wearing them. I've only had to wear them like once. But you can also see the stars.