#36 Walking across Fukuoka to visit Ohori Park

Transcript

Magical Locks. Magical New Day Locks. Another beautiful day in the womb. Me and my three other Airbnb rooms. And there's an upstairs too. At least one of those doors is an Airbnb.

So according to the weather report, today is the last super summer day where it's going to be above 20 degrees and then it's supposed to drop, although later in the week it gets back up to 18. So I think it's going to be just fine here in Fukuoka, but I thought with this weather, why not try to get down to the beach? I'm not sure how much beach there is, but I know over by Fukuoka Tower, there's definitely some beach. And it's only like a two hour walk.

Beautiful blue skies. The only problem is if yesterday's any indication, it was very windy. So down by the water is going to be even more windy. And I just don't have any light jackets with hoods. I need a hood to survive. Oh, there's the mountains. Goddamn it, some fucking beautiful.

I need a hood to survive the wind. But I only had one light jacket with a hood and I left it in Montreal because I upgraded it to a heavier rain repellent jacket. And I just didn't think it was going to be so fucking warm in Japan. So I got a hoodie that's a little too heavy, but what can you do? Alright, here we're family marked to drop off yesterday's garbage. They do have like garbage sorting stuff in the Airbnb, but it's really complicated in Japan. There's like four different garbage cans. I mean, it's not so crazy. It's just bottles and burnables. They call them. But I try, I mean, it's not like I make a lot of garbage anyway. I'm not like buying ingredients to cook meals. So I just try to get rid of my stuff as I go. And my last Airbnb are not in our eco, but the one before that. They left one of the notes was like, man, places like almost cleaner than it was when the dude came in. Didn't have to worry about garbage, yet, I had to. So it's like, yeah, I'm going to keep doing that. That's what I did last time. Just get rid of my garbage as I go. So I got just a bottle and I've just got all my stuff in a, in a noodle cup. All my other garbage crammed in the cup. So it doesn't look so terrible. It's just a bottle and a cup. Dump these off. And what I'm on the search for today, I don't remember, I don't remember if I saw it at this family marked by my Airbnb or if it was somewhere else. There's these sandwiches that are like dessert sandwiches. Back in 2019, there were strawberry and blueberry with whipped cream on white bread with the crust cut off. And then this time in Tokyo, I saw it was with oranges and it was delicious. But when I first got to Fukuoka, I saw one that was like walnut, which I've never seen before. So I don't know if they got that here, but I'm going to see.

Man, what a fat piggy pig I am. Not only did I find the whipped cream almond and chocolate one, but I also found one that's tangerine pineapple, kiwi yellow peach. So I had to get them both. I mean, I haven't eaten anything today. So this is my breakfast, but what the fuck? I was thinking, should I eat one now, save one till later? I guess technically the chocolate and almond one is more of a dessert, right? And obviously both desserts. But it's just easier if I eat them both now, get rid of the garbage. I don't want to carry it around. Fuck it. But yeah, let's do the almond one first, because that was the plan in the first place. It is interesting, though, that they're just suddenly completely different sandwiches in Fukuoka. I guess maybe these are more regional of like what's more available or something? Because I mean, in North America, I feel like nothing is regional, nothing is seasonal. We just get whatever we want all the time. But maybe around here, it really is a little more. Like, what can we easily get to make these? Of course, spoiler alert before I try any of these. They're going to be goddamn delicious. They're fucking whipped cream sandwiches, you know? You can't go wrong. You can make this at a fucking dirt, and it would be all right. Pretty fucking good. Although this one with the almond and the chocolate is much more, 5:00 much more candy, at least the other one has like fruit in it. How much even was this? I think I spent like six dollars here just on bullshit sandwiches. Yeah, the Tangerine pineapple kiwi yellow peach one, which is so weird. All the other ones are like one ingredient, one or two. This is everything. And yeah, this is the premium one. 368 yen. Man, another one of those little tiny details that you just never hear about. I guess you just wouldn't know unless you're from the place. But it seems the Japanese people don't so much say yen. They say, end. My friend Brad mentioned that to me back in 2019 when he was taken Japanese courses. He was looking for a cheap umbrella. He's like, I wonder if they have one of those 200 end ones. And I thought it was like the Nimbus 2000. Like what's a 200 end? Special Super Embrella. But then when I was at the Izakaya the other day, I heard one of the people I was there with also said end. I was like, oh yeah, refresh that little memory. Like apparently that is a thing with my two whole examples. But I just never heard that ever. And it seems, I don't know, a little important that they pronounce the name of the money completely differently. Oh yeah, it's like every bite is going to be different. I got Tangerine bite, a pineapple bite, a kiwi bite. Man, this is so fucking grub.

Kiwi bite even more delicious. Pineapple bite delicious. If I could get one that was all kiwi, that'd be great. What's this last thing? Yellow pear. Oh man, delicious. Genius. These sandwiches are already delicious. But yeah, this one literally, it's four things and there's one of each.

Every bite is a new adventure. I'm fucking so good. Okay, I'm gonna eat the rest of this shit. We can stop listening to me chew now. Sorry about that.

Oh, I happened to be walking past a book off. For anyone who hasn't been following this series, I learned that the off chain and there's hard off and off house, they play this really cloying jingle that's like less than a minute long on a continuous loop all day. And it just, it blows my mind that poor, even just that customers need to listen to that, but that the poor workers have to listen to that. And I was wondering if a book off does the same thing. It's the used, you know, manga and book branch of the chain. But the one time I went in, it was almost closing time, so they were just playing an old laying side, which is the perfect, you know, it's time to close the store song. Today, though, 10.30 in the morning, let's head in. Let's see what kind of music is playing at book off. It seems like just generic pop music. What a, what a relief. How nice.

Why the other off stores aren't like this? I don't know.

And man, they've got like a bunch of video game systems here. Super Famicom, PlayStation 1, N64s. Oh man, this is the best. This is the best.

You know, walking through that book off that had, you know, actual normal music playing, just a weird little thing I realized. I'm a really big fan of this band called Bring Me the Horizon, that they started off as like a weird scream-o band and they just keep evolving and becoming more and more sort of varied. But I realized listening to that music that modern day Bring Me the Horizon is 10:00 very similar to J-pop, you know, if you get some J-pop with a little bit of edge to it, that's very much what Bring Me the Horizon sounds like now.

Man, one thing in there too, this is just, I don't know, I guess it's a weird topic, but I kind of knew I would bring it up eventually. Is that the book off stores always have like a little porn corner? Although the big one in Ikebukuro, it's much smaller than it used to be, and this one it was literally just a corner. But you go in there and it's packed full of porn comics and live action porn DVDs and stuff. So I just passed through quickly, you just be like, yep, there's the porn corner. And I could be like, oh, I'm a, I'm a grown, self-actualized man. I have no interest in such things, the pure interest of the teenage boy or whatever, but it's not true at all. The truth is, I feel like I've had some, well it's weird, it's like I've had, I've had shackles removed and added because of the internet, where once the internet hit and suddenly there was just porn on tap and you could just get it whenever you wanted, it really did lead suddenly to a world of pathetically enslaved men. Maybe not the world, but I don't know half of the world, a third of the world at least. Anyway, I'm definitely one. I'm just like, oh jeez, internet porn. Am I addicted to this now? Great. Oh great, just what I needed. Or it's one of those things you're like, oh it's probably not, I'm not addicted to it. And then you try to stop and it's like, oh, darn. But that's a different topic. That's a different spiritual struggle. That I mean, you know, it's like the obesity epidemic, you know, it's just we're wired to desire certain relatively rare things and then suddenly you can just get sandwiches made out of fucking whipped cream. It's similar to that. You're not supposed to have boobies on tap, but now we do and now we got a deal with that. But the upside to the internet having boobs on it is that it makes anywhere else where they're trying to sell you boobs. Not seem like that big of a deal because I remember way back in the day, like must have been the first time I went to Montreal, so like 2003, the first time I went by myself as an adult. The internet was around back then, but it was, you know, pathetically slow back then. So I remember I was at the Eaton Center in Montreal and they had just like whatever like Hentai DVDs, which I was like, oh, this would be so cool. I want to see a Hentai DVD. What's it like? It was like Love Blue Girl. It was like the one at the time it was pretty famous, but I think I bought like two of them and they were like $40 each. And they even weren't, I don't know, at least back then the early porn cartoons, they were kind of legit. They were still at least normal like real cartoons, but I just, you know, it'll always kind of stick in my mind because I spent so much money and then after I, me and my friends all watched them and we're like, ah, yeah, cool. Now I kind of wish I had that $80 back though. But then New York, when I was visiting New York, that must have been 2007. Just the same exact thing. I was leaving the country as about to hop on a bus and get the fuck out of there. And I had American money, which it's not like I needed to get rid of it. People in Canada are more than happy to take American money. American money is good anywhere. But that was my justification for the exact same thing. I think it was similar. I spent about 80 bucks buying two stupid DVDs. And these ones were like awful. Like at this point, like the Hentai industry had already become just like really cheap. Like let's just, as little animation as possible, please.

And once again, I was just like, ah man, what the fuck? Why am I waiting like so much money? Haha. But those little examples came to mind for me when I visited Japan in 2019. And they're just gotta come back to me just now. That I could easily foresee that pattern continuing.

Because even just there, just walking through the little porn section, it's just such an overwhelming stimulus blast. It's like, holy lord, boom! Look at all that porn. I don't even know if porn stores still exist in North America. Maybe they do, I don't know. But it really is beyond sense. It's like a weird addiction thing. It reminds me of like in old cartoons, you know, when like, there'll be a pie on the windowsill.

But you realize the delicious, wafting pie smell, and it's like, don't steal that pie. But the literal scent coming from the pie turns into a finger that is like beckoning, beckoning the character. Like, come on. You know how much you want to steal this pie.

That's what it felt like. I mean, I was literally in there for, I don't know, fucking 20 seconds. I just walked through. Through the little curtain. Oh yeah, porn section. Through the other little curtain. Okay, out of the porn section. But then I have to like, shake it off for the next minute. I'm just like, the monkey part of my brain, the little lizard brain is like, you go back in there. That was a wall full of naked women. Go look at that. And once it like wears off, it's like, alright, hold on, wait, just pay attention to the gacha machines over here. Look what's in them. Okay, okay. Now you're alright. But it really is just like, oh man, what a weird uncomfortable feeling. The addiction feeling. And it's so easy to imagine of like, yeah, I don't have any room in my book bag. But do I really need this many t-shirts? What if I'm just gross? What if I only change my clothes every second day? Then I could squeeze in some porn DVDs, you know?

The embarrassment of going across the border. And it's like, oh, what are these in your bag? I don't think anybody ever checked my bag specifically. It's like, finding my porn. But it's certainly not a comfortable feeling.

Anyway, it's just nice to not have to worry about that. Because all of those porn DVDs and more are just on the internet. You know? It's so many and they're so accessible that it almost becomes like just a wall of like, it's just generic porn. And it's like, okay, well, whatever. Capital P porn is out there.

It's always available. There is no need to shame yourself overspending on some weird random DVDs or blue rays.

So yeah, I don't know. I just thought I should bring that up at least once of like, it's nice that the internet, it has solved the problem of spending money on random porn. But it has caused the new problem of constant access to endless porn. I have no solution for that. I don't know. I don't know.

Anyway, so walking in the general direction of the beach. I noticed when you cut straight across Pukewoka, when I was trying to just get to Umamiashi station, there's really only two major streets in the southern part of Pukewoka that cut all the way across. That you can pretty much just make it across without getting lost in the twisty turnies. Going diagonally north west, there's really kind of only one that I could just follow the street and it would take me all the way to a Hori park in that area.

But instead, I'm just going to kind of wander, just kind of amble my way through because I don't really want to walk on the busy street the whole time. And I'm not in any kind of hurry and it's a beautiful day. Little too beautiful. I'm getting a little sweaty out here unless that was just the porn section. It did seem like it got a lot warmer after I got out of that book off, but I think legitimately the day's just getting hotter. I'm not that much of a fucking weird addict. So anyway, walking randomly, this is a good opportunity to see some stuff I never saw before. I just happened to be passing near Hirau Cemetery, H-I-R-A-O Cemetery, which I believe.

Yeah, I thought I was moving in that direction, but there's just a gate at the top of these stairs, so this ain't it.

But anyway, there's something near here called the Konosuyama Observation Deck.

So let's try to go there, shall we? It's near the Fukuoka Police Academy. I didn't hear anybody laughing.

But I've never been to an observation deck. I didn't like all the fun of a tower or a tall building without the fear of heights terror.

So I'm going to try to figure out how to get there. But as is often the case in Japan, just because you see something that is like a big green park on the map, that doesn't mean it's easy to get into.

You got to approach these things. At exactly the right point, a lot of these areas are not just like an open park that you can just come into at any point.

There's an entrance.

Oh, wait a second. How far away am I?

I had one of the coffees from 7-Eleven that's like in the cup with the little Pokestrah, and I just didn't want to take it inside the book off. So I just put it on top of the drink machine that was outside and I was just going to go grab it again.

I'm not that far away, right? Should I walk back and get my coffee?

Not only to drink it, but I mean functionally that would just be littering if I just left it there. But here's steps that these have to be leading to the observation deck.

Obviously I'm not going back to leave it. Leave your dumb coffee.

All right, here's a new set of nightmare stairs next to an idling car.

And a second set of steps that are less nightmare-ish.

Which one? Which one do I want?

I am here on the little map, but that just doesn't help me navigate at all. Okay, well I'm going to take these smaller stairs because these other ones are some big fucking stairs.

Hmm.

The Google Translate has translated this arrow to sacrifice. Up these stairs to the sacrifice, that sounds inviting.

Surely that means this is the cemetery. Although that's a bit of a leap still.

All right, sacrifice was indeed the cemetery. And I found a little sign that says 500 meters to the observation deck. I'm on my way, but there's some benches here. And this is one thing I really got to add to my itinerary is a...

And this is a guy walking by who's going in the direction of the observation deck also staring at his phone. Is it possible that Japanese people get lost like I do?

Can't you, can't you get lost like I do?

He probably wasn't looking at a map, but maybe, I don't know. Anyway, I decided I got to start. I actually thought like my writing would pick up while I was traveling because I'll just be walking around all day. So if I just stop periodically and do some writing, you know. But I've got to kind of work that into the routine because I have not been doing that. Yesterday I didn't do shit, but it'll be not only more productive, but better on my poor body. Like again, things have been holding up pretty well, but like after hiking up the mountain yesterday, definite knee pains and stuff and it's just like, I'm lucky enough that I'm still at that nice middle age where I wake up the next day and my pains are gone. But obviously that's going to be the next thing to go. So if I just stop once in a while, it won't kill me and I want to anyway, I want to do some writing. I'm stuck on this part, it's hard. But anyway, while I was sitting here, an older Japanese guy is doing the loop up here, a cemetery loop. He also had headphones on, listening to whatever he's doing, doing his late morning calisthenics.

But he very much smiled and said hello to me. And I know it's a weird to bring up these little things, but it's just so deeply strange feeling when people don't acknowledge you, when they just act like you're invisible. Which even that doesn't happen too often because whether it's happening or not in the city, you just don't notice. It's only when you're up in these places where there's nobody else, then it suddenly becomes really apparent who is pretending you're not there and who isn't. And again, like I said before, I don't think it's a rudeness thing. I think it is just a don't engage. I can't speak English, I don't want to speak English, don't engage with this white person. Which again, they're not wrong to do because even just last night at the family mart, even though I kind of learned my lesson about strangers trying to talk to you, they probably just wanted to take you to their Buddhist cult. 25:00 But last night as a family mart, and I was just paying for something and the guy waiting to go after me said like, oh hello, and I was like, hey, what's going on? But it seemed clear he, I don't know, maybe because again, I'm in a obscure part of Fukuoka. It's not at all weird to see a white guy in Tokyo. Maybe it is a little weirder to see somebody at a random family mart off the beaten path near no transit in Fukuoka. But the guy really was pretty immediately clear he couldn't really speak English, so he probably assumed as anyone would that I wouldn't be here if I couldn't speak Japanese.

But as like, sorry, I only speak English and I was as far as it went. But I guess that's a good example. That guy, he shot a shot. He's like, hey, maybe I can talk to this person and he couldn't. I let him down.

Anyway, get a fucking, see it's the thing, my writing philosophy, not to dig too deep into that. It doesn't really matter if you get a lot done each day, it's just if you consistently move, you know, move the, keep the ball in the air, move the fucking baton further, whatever. Just make some progress, so if I can just untangle the knot of this one scene that I met, I don't really even need to sit here right right now, I just need to...

That claw just gave me the feeling of like a macaque, you know, like a toucan. I don't know, I can't see any birds, I can only hear them.

If I can just figure out what the next step is, I don't have to do the literal writing right now. Now I'm going to leave that in, that little part right there where I just said a little... Because that'll happen sometimes where I just start fucking mumbling and I just got to do a retake, but then I just snip him out of the podcast, so I sound like I have good diction. But that's a little slightly interesting thing, is when I was hanging out with the Japanese people at the Izakaya and also the two guys from the Buddhism sect, I will say. I still feel weird calling them a cult, even if that's what it is. They both mentioned that I have like that I'm relatively easy to understand, you know, which I mean I guess makes sense if... I mean I definitely trained myself a little through podcasts to enunciate better. If I listen back to the very first podcasts I ever made in like 2006, I have a very distinct East Coast Canadian accent, but it's like I hate listening to it, I'm like, glh, I used to sound like that. I sound like all those idiots for my neck of the woods.

I still have a Canadian accent, I can't shake it house out about, it's very hard not to say those that way, but I definitely like hearing yourself back, it does help your diction. But also those Japanese people said all of the standard stuff that stereotypically every Japanese person says to every white person of like, oh you're so good with chopsticks, you know, just stuff like that. Or it's like yeah, you know, I've been warned ahead of time, you're gonna empty compliments are on the way.

But then Anna from Columbia, well talk about later this episode, Anna's from Columbia and she spent the last I think year and a half or so she said, living in Australia, partially to try to learn English and her English was pretty good. But she was with her brother and he was super uncertain, his hard to tell how good his English was because he very much didn't want to talk in English, you know.

But they were visiting Japan and her brother was going back to Australia with her to try to practice English. And I just brought up at one point, apologies Australians for making fun of you, but I was like, hey be careful by the way, say into the brother, you know when you learn in English, keep in mind that the Australians add additional Rs to things for no reason. And they laughed about the Australian accent, but yeah then Anna said like that she hates trying to, again not to sell you out Australia, but she hates trying to comprehend Australian, she's from Perth, the Perth accent. And just, you know, it's just much more of a model and it's just harder, much harder to understand. And then she said, you know, you're quite easy to understand, you're a lot easier than the average person to understand. And even her brother, which again this is where I took this one to be real, is I don't know that Colombians are like known for their empty compliments. I don't think, I don't know that they'll go out of their way to make a fake assessment, which again I don't know if the Japanese people were either, they might have legitimately thought I was easier to understand than most people, but it's like I don't know. 30:00 I just took it as an empty compliment, but then I was like, oh maybe it isn't, because the folk from Colombia said the same thing. And even her brother, who again he was mostly just trying to stay out of the conversation, you know, he just doesn't want to be exposed for not knowing English, you know, he's just sort of embarrassed by it. But that was one of his few direct eye contacts. He's like, yes, that is true. I was like, holy shit, nice. Maybe I am easy to understand. That's nice. That makes me feel better about just again stumbling around in a place I'm not supposed to be. At least I can be an ambassador of, of comprehendable English. See, I always thought there was like, probably a benefit though, right? Like, it seems like it's better, if you're a Japanese person, it seems like it's better to learn English from, from either a posh Australian or a posh British person. I guess you don't want bogans and you don't want chaps, you know, you don't want it to just be a big, oh, hey, that bruv, big mess of shit. But I always assumed that the fancier British and Australian accents, the Heath Ledger accent, if you will, would be easier because they dropped the ERs on stuff, you know?

It seems like it fits better with the syllables in Japanese. But who knows, I don't know, that's just wild speculation. Maybe just clear annunciation is what's important no matter what the accent.

But I want to bring up real quick the Australian thing, nor. It just, it reminded me so much of Canadian. When you have Canadians say, like, I don't get it. I don't get the oat in a boat. I don't hear it. Do we really say that? But yeah, we do. Of course we fucking do. And then you get those sad, sad Canadians that are like, I don't think I do. I don't think my accent's that bad. And it's like, yes, it fucking is. You can't. Yes, it fucking is. I mean, it just because your accent's not tragic. Just because it's not 9 out of 10 strong, you definitely got it. And I just thought it was funny because that exact phenomenon happened. I was watching a YouTube video where a linguist was talking about, about, so I just did it right there. But about why Australians have that weird, like, they just open their mouth way too much and their tongue makes a whole fucking revolution within the cavity of their fucking open mouth just to say a simple word. No. But it's funny because they did the exact same thing in the comments. They're like, yeah, people were always making fun of this. Like, I think of the Australian know as N-O-R-U, but I guess people say N-O-A-R. No-R? Yeah, see, that's not quite right. But anyway, they were saying, like, I didn't hear it. This phantom R, we supposedly had, like, I didn't hear it. But now, if I try, I can sort of, I can hear it now a bit. But then double-set. And again, I get it because Canadians do the same thing is these people in these comments that are like, ah, whenever people make fun of Australian accents, they're just referring to the X accent or the Y accent. Oh, they just mean the Melbourne accent or they just mean the whatever. No, we fucking don't, bitch. I know you got different accents in your country, but you all sound fucking Australian. Don't fucking act like you don't. Like, you don't say N-O-R-U, because you fucking do. You might say it a little less fucking intense than that, but get out of here. If everyone's telling you you have an accent, just fucking accept it. Don't pretend you don't. It's just sad. It's just sad.

Anyway, I'm not actually doing what I was supposed to do here. I was supposed to be writing, so let me turn off this recorder and do a little more writing. And then go to the observation deck.

All right, still on the route to the observation deck. And man, I'm just always so surprised how the terrain, it's just wild in Japan. I got to a little fork and you can go up or down. And I was just thinking, this has never served me well, trying to think of things in a direct way. Never works. I wonder if this is, I'm going to, this is some wild speculation, but you know, there's like the thing where in Japanese culture they don't necessarily want to be super direct. Like the example I've heard is, like if you're at a travel agent and you're like, I want to get from here to here. And maybe there's not a direct flight from the two places, but instead of just saying you can't do that, they might suggest something else. Like what about this? And it can be weird to the North American mindset because you're like, yeah, no, how about not that? That's not 35:00 what I wanted. I want to do this other thing. But what they're trying to tacitly imply is you can't do that. That doesn't exist, but they're not often as direct as we are. And I mean, it's probably unrelated, but I was thinking like, I wonder if that has anything to do with the terrain? You know, what if you just grow up in a place? What if your people are just from a place where nothing is direct? There's no direct route to anything. Everything is twisty and complicated, because it's not just the way the cities are laid out, even in this little park that's not that big. You know, I was like, okay, I'm going to an observation deck. I'm at the fork in the road, go to the up fork. Of course. Why would I go down? I'm trying to go up. So I went up and then I saw there's a building here and it's like, dude, that's a pretty primo fucking apartment building. It is pretty much on top of this mountain. That would be a cool view from the other side, from this side. I can only see an apartment building. But I walked along the path next to the apartment and I was like, yeah, this is probably the wrong way. This just leads to the apartment. But I figured out maybe it'll connect back up. But within like, I don't know, I was like 30 meters that I walked, 20 maybe? Not only can I not get back to this other path because it's immediately become this treacherous, horrible slope you'd have to go down, but you kind of can't anyway. It's like, impassable. Again, with the video game analogies, but there are times in a video game where you're in a jungle type setting and the trees basically act as a wall. You know, you just can't get through. And I always thought of that as a video game conceit because it's like, what do you mean you can't get through? Just go through. But that's how it is here. It's like you cannot realistically go any further because everything is so dense. It would be very hard to get through there. That's functionally a wall. And it happens so quickly. So I had to come back to the fork and now I'm going down and this is clearly the real path. This is a real path and it's got the pink ribbons on the trees to confirm. I'm glad that they do that so often too because it's handy just to confirm. Yes, in fact, this is the way you're going the right way. And it's stupid, beautiful. Of course, it's so, so beautiful. It's so nice. I'm just going down through this little valley now. It's really steep up to where the apartments are and then it just tumbles down into nothingness. Although that's a weird thing is I kind of know what that experience is like now. This is medium steep. You'd never, ever want to go down it, but that's essentially what I did yesterday on Mount Apariyama. It wasn't great, but I made it. But I think that's also because the part I was at was at one point, a path of some kind. I think you would definitely not want to go down just at a random point because with the variableness of the terrain, it could fall off into a legit cliff at any moment. But yeah, there we go. We went down. Now we're heading back up. But yeah, it's one of these things that I just don't think will ever. Maybe if I legit lived here for like 20 years, it's just one of these lessons that I keep learning over and over, but I just don't think I'm ever going to realistically internalize the idea that you don't take the direct route. You don't go the quote unquote logical way. It's not going to work. You got to go the way someone else has determined. Okay, man, this Google translate nice. I've had another fork.

250 meters of this way to the deck. But yeah, as opposed to where I'm from in Canada, obviously if you live by the Rocky Mountains or something, you can't just, you know, there are impassable things, but there's still a lot less subtle than here. It's still like, bam, mountain range. Where I'm from in New Brunswick, you can just set a course, you know. There's a lot of nature, but it's a lot more sparse and everything is relatively flat. So, you know, you might have a bad time. There might be mosquitoes eating you to death or blackflies or bears trying to kill you.

And terrain-wise, you know, you might hit like a marsh. There's a lot of marsh land around there. So you can't for sure just pick a direction and walk, but basically you can. All the stuff that I keep trying to do here and constantly fail. Again, it's just because that's where I grew up, you can do that. You can be like, yeah, I don't want to take that route. Instead, why don't I just directly go from here to there? And it's going to be fine. Here in Japan, it's never fine. It never works. 40:00 And now I'm down in another valley. And this must be the final ascent. Another set of stairs going back up. I mean, I've gone up and down and up and down. So many times, it's like California Games, the BMX fucking track. This is again not a big park. You know, it was only 500 meters across to get to the other thing. So half a kilometer, I wasn't at the very edge, but this thing is less than a kilometer wide. And the amount of variation in the terrain is just out of control. It's fucking wild. It's so cool. It's so awesome. Lots of Joro spiders here. It's really big webs.

I feel much better about them when they're just a little bit off to the side.

It's hard to coexist when they're blocking the path. But as long as they're just off to the side, these gigantic terrifying spiders are actually very beautiful, very pretty.

Like, are you like fucking with me at this point? I met another fork, one that goes down and one that goes up. And the one that goes up goes directly to a fence once again. Yeah, I think I got to go down again, a hundred meters to go, and I got to go down one more time. It's so fucking weird.

Yeah, I guess it's of one of these things too. You would just internalize the terrain. If you grew up somewhere, this mountainous, you would just be used to this. You would expect it. Even if it was somewhere you'd never been before, you would presume that there's going to be a lot of ups and downs coming your way. Where I guess my version of that thing would be the marshlands and the swampy terrain. If you were just visiting New Brunswick, you might not expect that to happen. Where once I start feeling the bogginess underfoot, it's like, oh, I know what's happening. I know I can't keep going this way. It's not going to work. But yeah, I feel like I'm stepping on a rake constantly here. I just never, I keep trying to apply the terrain of my homeland to this terrain and it's just so incredibly different. This may be a little anticlimactic. I think I'm at the end. It's just like a big structure here. This must be the observation deck. It's an actual deck that you climb up. But there's fences all around it and a cartoon man with the Mega Man helmet and the translation is not working very well. But I can tell that it's apologetic. That's okay though. This is actually kind of weird. This is not what I expected. I thought it would be a natural hug. Yeah, there's all kinds of signs. Tons of cartoon, hard, hell-mitted people saying, do not say it would be easy enough to jump this fence and go up in this thing. But it's, you wouldn't be able to see any way. I would not enjoy this. I expected a natural look out. But instead, it's yeah, this whole structure you got to go up to get above the tree line and it's probably a nice view. But this is what counts as a building to me. The gentle slope of nature does not scare me. Straight up, this scares me. How tall is this? Like, probably three floors to get above the trees. Yeah, I bet it's a nice view, but that's fine. That's fine, dog. So the journey, not the destination. I don't need to see the fucking view. I've seen a million views in Fuquaoka. The Aburayama observation deck. I've been to many times.

So technically, that didn't quite work out, but it's spitting me out on the side of the park. That is a little closer. Yeah, if I just go, I'm really not that far from Ohori Park. It's a bit famous in Fuquaoka. It's like a public park with a big lake in it. People jog there. So I'm going to start moving in that direction. There's also a zoo and botanical garden in between, but I checked earlier. It's like 600 yen to go in, which is fine, but I just don't even care. I don't, I don't want to care that much about that. But yeah, Kenosu Yamma observation deck. K-O-N-O-S-U-Y-A-M-A. So check before you come, because this thing might be open again. But 45:00 if you happen to just be walking by, maybe you're at the local bookoff. It's a very nice park anyway. With or without the observation deck.

Ooh, yeah, now that I'm going down the slope, I'm looking up. Maybe it's higher than three floors. Yeah, I just, I wouldn't like it up there. That would make me feel uncomfortable.

It does seem like that observation deck would be a little interesting because the, like, the Aburiyama observation deck that I've been to a bunch of times, it's from the mountain looking out at Fukuoka. Where this would be the reverse angle, I'm still just seeing, you know, a version of the view between the buildings and stuff as I walk down the hill. So that would be kind of cool. And the, the bathroom at the bottom. It's weird because it was really beautiful. It was much nicer than your average park bathroom. It's like a big wooden chalet looking deal. But there was no toilet paper. Oh, that's the other thing. I was like, you know, like yesterday I ran into several squat toilets and every time I was just like, you know, that's fine. You know, like that shrine I went to even at the end of the night. I was like, you know, I just, I think I'll be okay. And I just walked the two hours home instead. It's like, I'm just not in the mood for squat toileting today. If it's a serious emergency, absolutely. But if I don't have to do it, maybe I am losing my, I never had a luster for squat toilets. They fucking suck. But there are definitely more squat toilets in Fukuoka, for sure. Now that I think about it, the one on the way up to the aburiyama observation deck is also a squat toilet. But today I was like, yeah, I'm going to treat myself today. No matter what this washroom is, I'm going to use it, even if it is a squat toilet. But it wasn't.

It was a beautiful Western toilet. But there was no toilet paper. And in fact, no placed even put toilet paper. So that's unusual. I have never seen that before where it does feel more like at a campground or something. But luckily, I have not needed my fabled technique that I had to use in Montreal, where when traveling socks equal toilet paper, I haven't had to repeat that yet.

A lot of times at 7-Eleven, depending on what you buy or convenience stores in general, they'll give you just little single use, little finger towel things. So I just kind of tuck those away. But I also have, I have some wet wipes that I brought with me like one of those little 15 packs that I brought from Canada. So it's actually getting a little bit dried out because I just haven't needed it. And I bought a backup pack from Family Mart that I haven't opened yet. So I've got my unopened emergency wet wipe pack. The cotton L one from Canada is just like slowly, slowly drying out. So I just left it there to try to be a good neighbor. Whoever the next person is who wanders in there, if they're like, geez, what's going on? No toilet paper. Ah, but some nice random stranger left me three quarters of a pack of wet wipes that are still mostly wet. Seems like the neighborly thing to do. Oh yeah, and just also just to just tie up the loose end. The little knot of a thing that no one cares about. But last episode I went in two way, thrift store. And I was looking at my new favorite thing, these Bluetooth headphones that are not wireless. Like they're wired to each other. But then the entire thing is a Bluetooth. I like them fantastically more than the two individual earbuds. I mean right now at this very moment, I got one of my headphones is for this recorder. The other one is my little Bluetooth thingy. Just dangling from my ear because they're both connected. It's fucking genius. It's wonderful. I'm not quite sure why this isn't the more popular form function for these things. But generally these things are somewhat expensive. Certainly not three dollars. I found some at a thrift store for three dollars. So just as an experiment. I was like, I guess what I was thinking is, you know, when you go to like the dollar store and you can get headphones for a dollar and they're fucking shit. They're terrible. But technically they work. You know, if you really just needed some headphones, the little headphones that cost a dollar are usable. So I was like, I wonder, is there a dollar store version of Bluetooth headphones? It seems unlikely, but we're in the magical land of Japan. So who knows. I'm just walking by a fancy boutique machine. Cheelab. 50:00 The cheese short for cheese because it's camembert and others came on bears. The only one in English. Anyway, fancy cheeses. Looks like the most expensive one is eight dollars. No cheese for me though, thank you. But yeah, it's just so curious. There's no way these three dollar fucking headphones work, right? And they don't. It turns out they're just too old. There's some random, you know, Chinese brand of no particular affiliation and the batteries dead. When you plug them into the computer, they light up, like they're charging, but they just don't charge. But that's okay. It was worth it just for the experiment. Because I was also thinking, you know, Japan's very famous for its used items being in perfect condition. If you go by old used video games and stuff, they're gonna work. It's like no one ever owned them in the first place. And this technically also looked like no one had ever used it. It's just, it was just too old. It's the kind of thing I feel like hard off probably just wouldn't sell that item. But since this was just some random other secondhand shop, it's anyway. As usual with my experiments, in hindsight, the true answer is extremely evident and obvious. Of course, the three dollar headphones are just, you know, for parts or whatever. They really don't work. But it was worth three dollars just to experiment.