#37 How an idiot hikes in Japan (part 2)

Transcript

I just met one of my Airbnb neighbors. As I was leaving the Airbnb, he was in the one across from me. And it's funny how much you can clock about a person in like literally a second, you know, just one for one second. Not at all. But this guy was wearing a, was like all black, like a black body suit almost and like a little black cap that it looked like he was from the life aquatic, except this cap wasn't, wasn't red. I don't know if he's French or Belgian or what, but he's not American. I'd buy it a billion dollars. That guy's not from America. He just has that, just his outfit. I don't know. However, I don't, I don't mean to mock or anything. It's just funny to notice these, you know, cultural things that are so distinctive. If anyone's getting mocked, it's me because the fucking second I saw the guy, then I hit my head on the fucking door frame. So he also only saw me for one second. And all he knows about me is that guy must be an idiot. What a moron. Because yeah, since that Airbnb is the 60s and 70s style when I was at the Chiba Museum of the different eras of dwelling, it's definitely the 60s 70s style. And yeah, keep forgetting. So the second time I've hit my head on that door, thing is like fucking five and a half feet tall. It's fucking really small. I feel kind of all right now that I'm out of the house and I'm walking. But man, I've been burned in the candle at both ends. Like I went to bed pretty late. Like probably one in the morning, maybe even one 30. But I didn't wake up till noon. I woke up a bed in the very early morning. But that's plenty of sleep. But I still just feel like a wrecking ball hit me. It's just like fuck. Holy shit. My body's telling me to fucking cut it out. These insanely long days of hiking up a mountain and then hiking clear across Pukewoka. But I'm glad I did it because I got that insanely hot 2022 degree really hot summer weather. And then it started cooling down a lot after the sun went down. And yet today, today feels like fall. I guess we'll see what's in my future. But it's very overcast. Clouds everywhere. Overcast, but like not, I don't think it's gonna rain. Sure, hope not. I didn't bring my umbrella. It doesn't feel like rain. It just seems like clouds. And I think it's supposed to be 14 degrees. But it does not feel it. Holy shit. I'm wearing my little stretchy gloves. And I got two layers on two different, like a hoodie into jacket. So I still want to get out and soak up the sun because I only will have. And by the time I finally got my shit together, it's like one o'clock. So I got like three hours before it gets dark. So I have just no, no major adventures today. The thing I was thinking is I realized yesterday when I was at the seaside park by Fukuoka Tower. I was looking on Google Maps like what are these other islands out in the bay. And you can get to one of them apparently on the normal subway. And I've also realized, I think I realized on the way home last night. I think there are some additional train lines in Fukuoka. I'm not as abandoned as I thought. I don't think. But it's all, it's really weird. Where I know the different train lines are owned by different companies. And that kind of confused me when I first got to Tokyo as well in 2019. I got some kind of a subway app. But the app showed everything except the main JR loop around Tokyo. So it worked. But I had to take these weird, circuitous routes through all these different, different subway lines owned by different people. And it only took me a couple of days. You can't really miss the big JR loop because it goes in a loop all the way around Tokyo. I was like, now what the heck is this? This is a part of the system too, right? And for whatever reason, it just wasn't in my app. So I wonder if this is similar. It's like, in this case, it's the reverse. When you go on the subway in Fukuoka, you'll only see the two main lines. It doesn't show anything else. But there seems to be like a commuter train that has like 90 stops that goes all the way across the region. But just the one stop that's closest does seem to be near me. But then I think there's another train too. I walked underneath it yesterday. And as 5:00 usual, I'm sure this is all really obvious to the locals. But I just don't quite know what's going on. It seems to just be a normal above ground, you know, subway, super way. It seems to connect to Tenjin or Hakata Station or something. But I did a little searching and just if you search the stations or the line, the information is extremely scant. And when you search on Google Maps and tell it, you want to go by subway. It does not send me to any of those stations. It just tells me to walk all the way to Hakata Station first. So that was my potential plan was just to experiment with one of these stations and try to go out to the island in the bay. But just as I got up and started moving around and it's just like, oh man, I feel so shit today. I just can't. And now that I'm up in Atom, I do feel a lot better. But that's a long journey, you know. I'll just get there. It'll immediately become dark. I'll have to come back. Not a good plan for today. What is a good plan for today is Cafe Latte from a vending machine. Here's some vending machine ASMR.

ASMR, yeah. Like a giant clunk is really delightful ASMR. And now that the weather is getting cold, man, these hot drinks from the machine fucking delightful. This one is like a little instead of a can with a pull tab. This one's like a little bottle shaped can. Delightful. Bring me back to life. Okay, too much traffic around here. Let me get the hell out of here.

Here's a sign I've never seen before. It's just one of these nice little children's parks. Got a washroom, importantly, as I'm always interested in. But it's an evacuation area. Specifically, let's see what type of disaster I perhaps might need to evacuate from. Nackajohara Park, temporary evacuation site, and then the ward. So I guess just all purpose, all purpose evacuations. I suppose because this is a seaside city. There must be typhoon type stuff. I was just wondering if it was going to say anything about, I don't know what the volcano status is around here. I know if you go further south from here, there is a city. I don't remember the name of it, but Tokyo Lens did a video about it where there is an active volcano that is just constantly spewing ash. And it is an interesting situation to say the fucking least. The kids going to school have to wear helmets because there could be falling debris, like literal rocks falling from the sky. And all the residents have these special garbage bags. These big yellow bags because they have to sweep up ash and put the ash in the bags and then put the bags on trucks and then get the ash out of there because there's constantly ash raining from the sky. And it's not like a lot of people live there, but more than nobody. It's like holy fuck. That's pretty fucking wild. But I don't know how active the Fukuoka area is in that regard. I was wondering too, I don't know what weather authority I'm actually looking at because usually in Canada I would specifically go to the government weather website because it's really interesting because it gives you the weather forecast. But also it'll tell you this stuff like what was the coldest it has ever been on this day, going back to I think the 60s. And what's the warmest it has ever been on this day? And it's quite disturbing where there were some times when I was stuck back home during COVID where the weather is crazy variable in eastern Canada. But there were some days where it's like, wow, this is actually nearing the coldest it has ever been. Crazy. But yeah, the reason I bring that up is for this, I don't know, I just googled what's the weather in Fukuoka. Don't even click on anything. Just whatever Google says. But that 14 degrees, there's no fucking way. It is, I would characterize today as cold. You know, it's like 10 degrees. I'm wearing little gloves and I ain't taking them off. I've got two hoods. I've got like a fluffy hood on my hoodie and then a proper windbreaker hood on top of that. And every time, you know, because it 10:00 is kind of in the middle, it's like it's cold, but it's not freezing. But if I try to take down one of these fucking hoods, immediately the wind level is like, no, don't do that.

Don't do that. I mean, this is a weird thing too. If you've never tried just podcasting yourself, I was just thinking as I was walking like, man, I do, I just feel like shit today. But not in the way of like, I'm sick or anything. It is just exhaustion. But just that sort of pounding in the head and just like, oh, I'm like, I'm kind of glad it's going to be dark soon. I can just go home, you know. It's good that it's not beautiful summer weather spurring me to stay up and go out and do stuff or venture too far from home, because I'm just fuck today. But once I pull this recorder out and start talking, it's just stupid shit. It's not anything important. It's the fucking weather, you know, the temperature. But it's like it gives me something to focus on. Now I feel fine. While I'm rambling, I feel fine.

Which all right, here's a weird little side thing. I just saw a video about this yesterday, but this has always been on my mind because it's so fascinating. So there's a channel called Go North, Japan, a guy named Quinlan. And he does, he works with people in northern Japan with like tourist agencies and stuff to help promote it and does tours and stuff. And one of the things that they did up there is they had a series of, you know, scenic nature type coastal stuff. And they managed to connect them all. And the whole thing is like a thousand kilometers or something. It would take two months, he said, to do the whole thing. And it gets pretty dicey at parts because there's the pre-existing already developed tourism type spots. But to get between them is not always, you know, it's a lot of stuff that they've kind of established recently. So they're literally might be like weird fucking ladders and stuff. You gotta go up and down. But it looks fucking so cool.

And obviously I could not do a two-month hike. That's where I would need someone else. You know, hike with someone else for two months and do the whole thing. I mean, I would, something about that does that pretty fucking awesome. I'm like, can you imagine? Imagine if you did the whole thing. But he was pitching, you know, trying to get tours to go up north because so few people do. And he's like, you know, you don't have to do the whole thing. You can do like a few days, you can do a week, you can do two days, you can do whatever. And one of the things they set up is you can have there's parts of this trail where you can have your bags sent ahead of you. Like have your heavy bags sent ahead to a hotel that's waiting for you. So you can just have the light day stuff just your nice little day pack with your snacks and your drinks as you go along. And man, that sounds good because that would be by far the worst part for me. I certainly wouldn't mind spending two months in my life hiking along the edge of a coastline. That would be fucking sweet. But even just this little bag, it does make my shoulder that can feel a little pressure on my shoulder because I have a bad shoulder. Like if there was some way I could walk this coastline without the luggage, like I guess I need a pack mule is what I need. That'd be perfect. Hiking with all your heavy stuff, that would be the problem. That's what would make it not feasible really for me.

Or at least when I hike across Tokyo, you know, I can put the bag in wheelie mode and just wheel along the sidewalk, but you obviously can't do that in nature. So this is all stuff well beyond my comfort and experience level. But if anybody wants to get me the ultimate birthday present some year, set up a, find somebody to help me hike for like two weeks along the coastline in northern Japan and set it up so that the bags are being sent ahead and I don't have to carry heavy stuff. Be fucking amazing. That's where being a super millionaire would be handy.

Because I always find it weird like with Everest and Sherpas. It's like it seems so extra unimpressive to go up Everest when you're going up with a Sherpa who does it all the time. Like how come the Sherpas aren't the heralded ones? The Sherpas have got it down Pat. Like who cares what everyone else is doing? You know the Sherpas are so much more impressive. They got that shit on lock. So I want a similar situation though. I want a trail Sherpa to help me 15:00 and it's okay that I'm not impressive. I don't want to be impressive. I want to be the biggest worst in the world. I want all the help I could ever get. But then I still do want to do that. I've wandered back into traffic and just the other way Fukuoka seems to be set up is I don't know with Tokyo it was a little easier to just ramble through neighborhoods. Fukuoka really seems to be set up with very distinct high traffic veins. You know these streets that are the major streets and then within those there are the individual neighborhoods. But you can't really get from one neighborhood to another or you can't really easily cut through. You're just inevitably always end up back on one of these major streets which is good for navigation. It's just bad for podcasting. So let's hold on until I get away from this traffic once again.

There I've gotten to still a little bit of traffic, but this is a lot quieter. I'm just crossing a bridge over a nice little river. Is this a river? Maybe it's a lake. Pretty much at the foot of the mountains. I don't see where it goes to. Maybe it is a lake. But basically I left the house and I thought, yeah, I could go explore Tully's and go sit in a coffee shop. But then I left the house and literally 30 seconds of walking from my Airbnb. There's a break in the buildings and I see the mountains and it's the same kind of feeling as in Vancouver. Just seeing the mountains it just made me feel good every morning. Just like, ah, look at them mountains. That's fucking, that's good shit. Maybe it was 5.30 in the goddamn morning and I had to get up to go work at a fancy award-winning cheesecake coffee shop. But just seeing the dim outline of the mountains and the lights up there as it got lighter just feels good and you wake up later in the day and just there's the full mountains and it also feels good. Similar thing here. I love seeing mountains in the distance. But the differences in Vancouver, the mountains are pretty far away. You've got to take a ferry to North Van and then a bus. We're here. The mountain is like it's fucking right there. It's really close. So I just started walking toward the mountain because I, you know, have all my experiences over by Umabiyashi station where you're ludicrously close to the mountain. But here it's not exactly far. It's like an hour away at most. And it's just neat to see even just from a distance looking at it. It's like, all right, this looks quite a bit like how it is over by Umabiyashi. I assume it's this way all along the foot of the mountain anywhere in the city that's populated.

It's just you can see the neighborhood encroaching on the mountain more and more at different points. Like at some points, the houses don't go that far up. But at others, they go surprisingly high up and it's that same look as over there. I'm talking about these like there's like different places. There are only different places on foot, you know, with a car. It's like a fucking six-minute drive. You know, it's all the same. It's all the same neighborhood essentially. It's only my pedestrian life that causes me to even think of these as different places. But you can just see the buildings flowing up the side, cascading up the side of the mountain. Though here right in front of me, I'm seeing like it's a very distinct break point here where I'm walking up an incline up a relatively quiet street. And then there's a big wall and there is a house up at the top of that wall. And then behind that house is rock. It's like sheer rock. And then on top of that is trees. And then on top of that is the top of the mountain. Like this is obviously not one of the higher points of the mountain. It's like yet there it is. They built right up to the rock, right up till they couldn't build no more.

So that's what I thought I'd do today is just walk toward the mountain because it just feels good. It feels, it drives me. It's there's a big mountain. How do I not walk to the mountain? I'm not going to go walk to a coffee shop. I'm going to walk to the goddamn mountain. It's a fucking mountain.

And then I just, you know, as usual, just want to see what's going to happen. Presumably I'll just kind of get stymied because that's what happened to me at Umami Ashi. 20:00 I had to find the one very distinct entrance point with the semi-hidden steps that went up to a real path because then other entrances they sort of kind of exist but it's like the other episode the other day when I came down the mountain in a random place. And it really didn't count as a path. I did that in 2019 as well. I came off the mountain over near Sawara Ward because I had just lost track of the trail. So it's like, alright, this is a pretty, that in that case it was quite easy. The incline wasn't very steep. And I just walked down until I hit a highway and that was that. So you couldn't really reverse engineer those routes. It's not that hard to get off the mountain but getting on the mountain you need to find the entrance. You got to find the way in. So I presume I'm not going to find a way in today. But that's fine. I only got a couple hours of light anyway. Today is no day to be climbing mountains. I just want to see how the neighborhood works. You know gather a little more info about what living in a foothill neighborhood is like.

Yeah, like I just turned the corner from that house I was describing before. And yeah, whatever little part of the mountain this is, this is not really the mountain proper because now that I've turned the corner I'm still walking uphill. But there's a big expanse now. There's a big opening on one side where there's not really buildings. Well, then kind of in the distance there are. I think that's a baseball field maybe. And then behind that are the real mountains, which are getting a lot further than they seem. Oh, there's the Fukuoka Tower. Nice. That's fucking far away. I will not be walking to you today.

My towery friend. It's not that big of a tower by tower standards. But it's just enough just enough to stick out. But yeah, there's actually other buildings that I can see on the horizon that are almost they look the same height. But I mean, it's all relative.

They're probably a lot closer. But yeah, a nice perfect do nothing day. Just walk around and try to assimilate information in a passive diffused way type of day.

Because that peninsula that island in the bay that you can get to on the subway, deep in my memory banks, I was like, you know, I'm pretty sure I've heard about this somewhere. I was like, I think it's that I've mentioned her once before, but cakes with faces is the YouTube channel. It's a British lady named Amy. And she's just one of my one of my favorite Japan of fucking vloggers. And she just travels around, talks about Japan, she wrote a whole book about visiting Japan. And I remember when Japan first reopened, seeing her initial vlogs going back to Japan. Yeah, it's totally parasocial. But I was like, man, this is fucking sweet. I feel very happy for her because the whole time during COVID, all she could do was, you know, rely on her previous trips to Japan and just talk about, here's the new stuff that's open. Here's the new things that are available. Here's all the new stuff I'm going to do. She's much more a go-do stuff oriented traveler. As I guess, is everyone except me. But yeah, when she finally get to go back, it was fucking exciting.

So yeah, five years ago, she went to that park. But she said almost nothing about it because her and her husband got there kind of later in the day. They didn't have a ton of time. You can rent like bicycles, but they were too late for that. And it was like a lot of, like I've said in the last episode about the botanical gardens. It seems like a lot of that type of stuff. You know, you pay to go to an aquatic show or to go to this park or that park or like, I don't know, pools and slides and stuff. Stuff that would not interest me. But, but then there's another island connected to it. She said it's also a lot bigger than it seems.

Not just something you can easily stroll around in an afternoon.

Yeah, the JR stations, Umino Nakamichi and Saito Azaki.

All right, one side of this island. But if you go all the way to the other and then, yeah, there's a big bridge. Like, I don't know how traversable any of this is on foot. Oh, maybe, because the bridge is referred to as a beach. Maybe you can walk along the side of, of this thing as a beach. But then there's this other island, which would be a lot easier to tell you about if Google Maps was in such an annoying piece of shit.

Shika Shima and over here is like a park.

Parks and shrines, a cafe, a hot dog restaurant, an observatory.

Yeah, I get the feeling Shikano Shima Island is kind of what I'm going to be aiming for, but I'm going to need to get there as early as I can because this is all probably a lot more travel than it appears. So yeah, today a nice, uh, nice, healthy, heaping plate of nothingness, please. I'm going to nowhere for no reason. So yeah, even just here, I'm just kind of at like this railing. All that's here is just like sort of a construction equipment, some ladders that seem like they've been here for a long fucking time. General debris, a little fence, but then out across it is just like a little more city in the mountains. And man, I feel like I can just stare at mountains for a long fucking time. I fucking love mountains. There's power lines heading up over the mountains.

And like one little thing that might be a building, I don't know, I don't know. There must be other observation decks beyond just the Aburiyama Katei one that I went to.

I had an awful look into that mark because yeah, generally I do find researches annoying at best. Stuff like with the subways today. It's like, man, there's just not an easy way to figure out what's going on here with these other subway lines. It's just surprisingly annoying. It's gonna be easier just to walk to one and just see what happens. Just try to get on one and directly experience it. But stuff like observation decks in the mountains, that definitely requires a previous, previous research. I can't just wander through the mountains and expect to find an observation deck because even the Aburiyama Katei one, even though I knew it was there, it took me, man, I don't know, a week and a half or something. I went up that mountain so many times before I actually found the observation deck. But again, I was coming up the back way through the weird obscure entrance. I kind of realized from where I am because there is like a paved path and a road that go up there. Those would actually be a lot easier for me to access from where I am, from where my Airbnb is. And maybe I should, maybe I should just go up the front way and then explore the mountain further from there. Oh man, I just went a little higher up. It makes such a difference. I have a perfect view across the city to the Fukuoka Tower. Cool. But yeah, again, there's the tower on one side and then over to the right, the other end of town. It's just a power, power tower, you know, power line tower, but it's taller. I mean, it's on top of a mountain, but it's like, it looks the same as the Fukuoka Tower. Fukuoka Tower, not that big, not that big.

Yeah, this chilly weather, too. It's kind of nice, you know. Oh, and actually, these guys are clearing up a little. I just realized they're not just slate gray. They're getting to be kind of blue. Nice. But yeah, be nice to have a happy middle, perhaps, and that could still be what happens. But yeah, these like 22 degree days. It was too much, dude. So because I lost my passport in 2019, basically what happened is I always kept my passport in my bag and just left it behind. Suppose that you're supposed to have it on you in case a cop stops you, but I figured, you know, if that did happen, I could just, if the cop really wanted to see my passport bad enough, I could take him to the Airbnb, just show him my passport. I didn't want to have it on me. I figured it was safer just to keep it in my bag. But then by Naka Itabashi, I was staying in a communal place with other people, which was not something I often did then, and still sort of strive not to now.

So I did just leave my bag in the Airbnb generally because it's like, I would ever. What's in there that matters? Who gives a shit? Worst case scenario, someone stole my laptop, I'll just buy another one at that point too. I actually have a good laptop now, which is a little bit of a downside for traveling. It's like, oh no, I have an expensive laptop now. Back then my laptop was shit. So I did not care. But I didn't want to leave the passport because I thought maybe that's the one thing that someone might actually take that actually could be useful and that I would be fucked without.

So I had my passport with me, but it was summer and it was really hot. So I just had it in the inside 30:00 pocket of my hoodie. And it wasn't nowadays all of my, all my layers have pockets with zippers. It's very handy to have the zipper. You can put something in your pocket and it ain't coming out. Even if it's something as little as just a coffee can from a drink machine that you just have to keep on you till you find a garbage, you know. It's just a lot easier with a zipper. But I didn't have a zipper on my hoodie pocket back then.

So I just put it in this interior pocket, but I wasn't wearing the hoodie most of the time because it was too hot out. So I just had it around my waist or over my shoulder or whatever. And at some point the passport just fell out. I don't know when, I don't know where. It was just days later. I was like looking through all my stuff. And it's like there's just, there's just no passport here. It's just gone.

And I am quite sure that I just lost it, like it didn't get stolen. Because the people at the passport office, they were actually quite surprised that it hadn't been returned. Because just again with like the basic sort of honor system of Japan that have already seen evidence of like many times all over the place in Japan from little vegetable stands all the way up to big department stores, the level of security is so much lower than North America. You just trust that you're not going to skirt the system and you're not going to try to fuck with things, you're not going to steal stuff. And Japanese people are pretty famous for like any time a wallet gets returned to a police station that the money is still in it and stuff like that. Where North America, maybe someone will return your wallet, maybe. But the money will certainly be gone.

I actually found an abandoned wallet, like a purse in my hometown. Somebody had just scattered all the shit. But it was like an ID and things that maybe were important. And of course anything valuable, money credit cards, those were gone. But I gathered up all the stuff, put it back in the purse, and I could see the address because it was ID and things, drivers licenses and whatnot. And the house was like a 40 minute walk away. So I just went and put it in their mailbox. I hope it helped. But that's the best you're going to get in Canada, you know. Whereas in Japan, it was pretty much like taken as a given that if someone had found my passport, they would just return it. They would return it to the police station and no one did.

So yeah, I presume it just fell in a gutter or something somewhere. I wanted my many weird walks right in the woods or something. And it was gone. So this time, my mom actually had just very simple little item, but just something I wouldn't have thought of to get for myself. It's just one of these like little, little, like passport pouch, little satchel thing that you just wear under your clothes. So I just got a little, I got my passport and a backup bank card just nicely tucked under my shirt all the time. And this is one thing where it's very nice to have the weather getting colder because today it's fine. It's just normal. I'm generally not an extremely sweaty person. This thing's dry as a bone right now.

But yesterday with that heat, God, when I got home and took that thing off, it was just gross. Like thank God I thought to put, I put the passport in a plastic bag before I put it in this little satchel thing because I was a little concerned about rain, though it hasn't rained at all while I've been here. But it turns out it actually protected the passport from my repulsive sweat. It was just soaked with sweat.

And here's some steps that appear to go up into the woods. See if the sign is translatable.

Request, the southern park asks you to use quietly because their houses closely after 11 o'clock, especially after 10 o'clock, this end of fireworks should not be done. Okay, so it's basically just saying be quiet at night because there's houses around here, but here's another set of semi nightmare steps, but maybe I have found some steps that'll lead me into the woods. Into the mountains, which again, this is not the day for that. But yeah, I had to take my passport out of the little pouch thing, wipe down the plastic bag, it was so gross and just hand wash this thing. I'm not ready to do proper laundry yet. But yeah, it was just soaked. Like summer is just the same way I have the philosophy, the fun is not fun. 35:00 You know, when people do stuff that's supposed to be fun, I just find it a little stressful and I'd prefer just to do nothing. Doing nothing is fun. Fun is not fun. Same thing with summer. Summer's not nice. You know, oh, it's so warm out and it's so sunny. Yeah, that sucks. That sucks fucking shit. It's sweaty. You get sunburned. You're blinded from the sun. It's miserable. I hate the summertime. Summer can fuck right off. So yeah, this is a bit of a transition, bit of a sudden snap to coldness. But it's already better just purely for this alone. I'm not sweating to death and I'm walking uphill. Now, yeah, that view I'm saying, this is even way better. This is awesome now.

All right, here we go. Kashiha Ra Minami Park. K-A-S-H-I-H-A-R-A-M-I-N-A-M-I Park. And yeah, I'm right at the base of those rocks I was describing at the top of this mountain.

Oh, and there's a little playground. Very small little playground up here. And yeah, hell of a view. It's all fenced off though. There's a fence in the way because this is pretty dangerous. Pretty dangerous decline from here. But then also, more houses. I just houses up here. No matter how high up I get, there's more houses. Ooh, that wind. Holy shit. Yeah, I can see all over. All over the region. This is fucking pretty good. Pretty good.

Oh. This looks like a little, I think this park has a little waiting pool that is empty, of course. And that's time of year.

And sometimes there is on Google Maps a little green dots to signify a path into. Oh, and there is one.

Not necessarily close to here, I'd have to go down and around to like the next little block over.

By the Yamabukinamori adult daycare. There's a little walking path line. Very interesting that leads to a golf course, why wouldn't it?

All right, all right. This seems like something very worth exploring in the future. Not today, again, maybe today. But no, I'm too white, too white to be walking through a fucking mountain trail. But also too close to darkness.

But yeah, I think Japan has come through again. Just randomly wander. And you'll find something cool. Cool. So even on today's exhausted low energy trudge.

Got some stuff set up for tomorrow. Oh, wait a minute. Maybe I don't need to circle all the way around to the adult daycare. Because what is this? This looks like a pass. Here's a map. Handwritten. So unfortunately, my translator can do nothing.

Wow, this is pretty nice. I've never seen a map like this, but it's all, it's like the whole thing is hand-painted, not just the lettering. It's a hand-painted map of the area.

There's three routes. One is 300 meters, 400, 600. Not quite sure where they'll go. A, B, and C.

But presumably they'll go somewhere. Oh, yeah, and this is a very well-maintained path. This one is no problem. This is a real path in these woods. It's not a bullshit path from fucking 20 years ago that barely exists anymore. Shit, this is pretty cool. God damn it. What time is it? Yeah, it's only 230. I'm fine. I'm fine. I wish I'd bought a coffee somewhere before I went in here, but path time. Gonna go explore paths, see what happens. Holy shit, this is nice. What are these trees? Right away, this just looks different. I don't even know what types of trees these are. They're very sparse. They only have leaves way up at the top. It's a little bit more Canadian in that sense, but they're definitely not Canadian trees.

And there's just a shit ton of them. Just a whole bunch of really tall trees with bare trunks.

So they're super dense, but only because there's like a crap ton of them. Each individual tree is kind of placed apart from each other.

Jesus, that's one of these cases where when I take a picture, it's like too much. It's visually overwhelming. It's just like a mash of stuff. It's like, what the hell am I looking at? But in person, it looks very good.

And yeah, I mean, what was the longest path that's set on there? 600 meters. I'm using now as a good gauge that crazy mountain tunnel I went through. That was 1200 meters. That was a little over a kilometer. And that wasn't so bad. It was just terrifying because of the noise and the darkness and the enclosure of being in a tunnel with cars going by. It was just rattled your brain, but lengthwise, not a big deal. See, 600 meters, that's fucking nothing. It's an easy walk.

You know, I don't know if anyone is ever going to listen to these podcasts. I mean, worst case scenario, it's just it'll be fun for me to go back through them.

As I put out episodes in a room, like, I'll be like, oh, I remember that day. What a fun day. But maybe, you know, my ultimate fantasy. What if I inspired someone to do this? Not these specific things, just to travel in this style. I was like, don't, don't do stuff. You don't need to do things. You don't need to make plans, you know.

Especially in Japan. Just walk around, dude. Just fucking walk around. And something cool will happen. It happens every time. It's the best.

Oh, I just had a little moment of personal triumph. I thought I was going to come back in on the podcast and say, like, oh, well, not everything was magical today. Because so these these Bluetooth headphones that I got at hard off in Akiruno that I just love because again, it's probably a well-known item that everyone else in the world knows about. But I didn't know you could get Bluetooth headphones that are wired together. But it still feels like magic to me because it's essentially like normal headphones. You know, the wire connecting them, but then there is no third wire. There is no wire that goes to your divisive choice. It's just magic. It's like, fuck, I love it. It's so cool.

But because they're wired together, they have a little battery on the wire that connects them to keep them alive longer. And having them connected makes it easier not to lose them. Theoretically, but I almost lost them just now because I thought I had them nestled around my neck because I got to switch over to normal wired headphones when I use this recorder just to make sure it's recording. Okay, it's cannot Bluetooth. So yeah, just learned a quick lesson. Even though these things have a wire connecting them, don't just put them around your neck. Don't just think they're going to stay nestled behind your neck. Put them in a pocket, the pocket with the aforementioned zipper. Because yeah, I went to go switch over, put it on my little Bluetooth headphones, and they'd fall in somewhere. They just weren't on my person, took off all my layers and padded myself down, checked every pocket just in case. So that I hadn't gone very far on this path yet. So I just went back to the park with a good view. Just a little ways back.

But it definitely engages something very primal in you, just scanning the ground and just like looking, like trying to spot these things. Where could they have fallen? Where did they go?

How far back should I even be searching? And I went back to the nightmare steps and I'm like, well, I'm not going down the steps. Fuck that. But I was kind of preparing for like, you know, oh well, I lost them. I mean, they were only $20. They were great just to learn that this is a thing that exists. They seemed pretty available in Japan. A lot of the used stores have them. But yeah, I went back and then I was circling back toward this way to this path. And I spotted them. I was like, fuck yeah. And it's such a good feeling. I'm like, I'd already basically made my piece with it. But then to find them, it's that little like, yeah, I went in the lottery. I want a tiny lottery, fucking sweet.

Jesus, I wonder if I taxed my brain, especially doing that. Because I'm really feeling the exhaustion again. It's like, God, I do feel like shit today. I wish I had another coffee really bad. So, it's probably a good chance that there is a coffee machine on the other end of this path. They're often in Japan. This is pretty easy, too. This is not a very steep incline. This is not a going up the side of the mountain type of path. 45:00 Just going up a little gradually.

But apparently this stuff, you know, wired into our brains, searching, searching to try to find the thing that you need for survival. I heard that's a big thing that like gets people with gambling. Like the example I heard was the blackjack table that supposedly the black and the red, not blackjack, roulette, the roulette table. I've never been a big gambler. I only vaguely know the rules of the various gambling games. But supposedly the black and the red ties into something deep in our primal brains.

For like trying to remember what kind of berries, for example, are safe. It's like, oh, if I eat these black ones, I get a stomach ache. But if I eat the red ones, it's okay. Or vice versa.

And it's slightly surprising that we're still that easy to manipulate this far into the future.

But I guess it makes sense. I mean, we really haven't changed much. There's all those talks and things about like, you know, if you brought a caveman here, you could probably get him up to speed pretty fast. The caveman's kid would probably be just fine. Okay, so here is again, handwritten signs, A, B and C. A is steeper. But I remember C was the longest one. It was the 600 meter. So that's a bonus. I'll take C. Because I also just don't want to go up the steep part. Fuck that. I'm not in a hurry. And this is party. This is nice.

The incline is getting a lot steeper in front of me. So I'm going to turn this fucking thing off while I go up the hill.