#49 Exploring Ono Castle Ruins, Fukuoka, Japan

Transcript

Alright, previously on the Roaming Holiday Podcast, I'm in Fukuoka, Japan, and I'm in the Desaifu neighborhood, so I went to the remains of Desaifu government office, which, as with most remains, sort of not a lot, necessarily there. So it's just, you know, it's a park kind of just a big, big flat open park, and then behind it is the Desaifu Citizen's Forest, which is an okay little extra park to the park, you know, you kind of walk through the park, it's not bad, but the main event is, as you head north, there's a path up to the Awaya Castle Ruins, IWA YA Castle Ruins. And it's also just kind of a flat area with nothing really remaining, except an insane view of the whole area, just one of the craziest views ever, and very accessible, very easy to get to, and you can just see, like, there you go, there's most of Fukuoka, so get in. But I didn't actually know that was there, I was just exploring at random, and it was a happy thing to find, and it was really late in the day. By the time I got up there, it was like 4.30, it was gonna be dark soon, because as I record this, it's December, so it was pretty sweet on its own, but I couldn't help noticing that there is a mountain road that keeps going through the mountain, to something, probably just more castle ruins, but it seems to have a parking spot and stuff, so maybe it's more significant, I mean, I think the view, you can't top the view, nothing's gonna top the view, but I just wanted to keep exploring for the sake of exploring. It looks like Ohno Castle, Ohno Castle, is deeper into the mountain, and then I noticed that if you just keep going, you eventually come down the other side of the mountain into more, just properly fully developed Fukuoka, there's a Umi station in the neighborhood of Umi, not surprisingly, on the JR line, so worst case scenario, if I can get all the way across the mountain, I mean, it still doesn't seem like I'm super far away, if I did just want to walk back, but I'm not sure what the mountain situation is, I'm not sure if I can circle around the mountain, or if I'd have to climb another mountain, so worst case scenario, I got Umi station as an escape plan, and it's much earlier in the day this time. Unfortunately, I didn't really go to bed earlier, that would be optimal, and that's really hard for me to do.

But it's only about 10.30 now, and I'm entering the park, although I just hit a dead end, I already went the wrong way once, but yeah, yesterday I did a lot of meandering around, because I didn't really know where I was trying to get to, or what the highlights of this area were.

So today I'm in a head straight up, straight up the mountain, so yeah, the basics are, it's the Nishi Tetsu Line, I finally figured out the name of the train, and it originates in tension, so it's really easy to get to, and you go to Tofuro Mai station, T-O-F-U-R-O-M-A-E station, and across from the remains of the government office's park, this may seem like a silly thing to bring up, but there's this convenience store, called Best Convenience System, that I don't know if it's a chain, if it is a chain, it's really small. It's got its own logo and stuff, I think it aspires to be a chain, but the only one I've seen is across from the Desaifu government office's remains park, whatever the heck it's called, and I spent even more money there this time, because it's so great, like they have their own, own a giri, like they do the old school style own a giri that's kind of folded over, like a little pocket, and they have a bunch of homemade bakery stuff, there was somebody, you know, since I was there earlier today, there was someone actively bringing out bakery stuff, instead of just yesterday I had the, it was still delicious, but I had the, you know, has been there for the early afternoon bakery, now it's like the super new bakery stuff, just great, and I don't know, this may be my last exploration in this neighborhood for this trip, so I might not be back, so yesterday I spent $12, today I spent $13, I get tons of stuff, that I'm just going to eat as I go, because I just want to really make sure I got enough time for this adventure, it seems like I've got plenty, it should be all good, but I mean hey, why, why risk it, let's go, let's go, go, go, so yeah, see last episode for additional details, but I'm going to cram 5:00 some of this delicious food in my face, oh yeah, and I got one more kind of the, I don't remember the name of this, but I read somewhere that this is how they used to make Onigiri in the 70s, that it's more like a pocket folded over, I got another mystery one that does not have an English label, so let me, let me report on that, let's see what this is, well that's weird too, on the back it says 130 yen, but this was marked down to 80, and they did have only a few left, maybe this is because there's a new fresh batch coming in or something, 80 yen, what the heck, crazy cheap, be it's interesting just because best convenience system is a new chain I've never heard of before, or indeed maybe a mom and pop one off, I don't know, but yeah that it has its own bakery stuff and its own handmade, whatever's, I would pay extra, I feel like that's kind of the North American philosophy, but in Japan it's the opposite, it's like we're trying to bring you back to the olden days, we give you a nice cheap prices, gotta fight against those big chains, whatever the reason, it's fucking pretty cool, man I can feel my lack of sleep a little, it's really tough to get this package open, and I can feel that little twinge of annoyance is hitting me so much faster than it would if I slept in a little more, but it's worth it, once I get hiking up the mountain and stuff it'll be fine, it's that sort of the dual thing of like waking up a little early is like oh that's a little rough, but it also kind of feels good, and I mean quote unquote early, you know, 1030's not exactly early, but it was the best I could do dammit, and yeah it's kind of a good feeling to just get up because you have a mission, you have a plan, you got something you want to do before the sun goes down, but not too early because I've done the rush hour trains in Japan, only once or twice, I had to go to the passport office in 2019 because I lost my passport, so I had no choice but to ride the crazy crowded trains through Shibuya, I think the Canadian passport office embassy I think is in a Sakusa, anyway that fucking was insane dude, that was fucking nuts, in fact I can tell you that story, but let me just fucking get this thing open, oh this one's salmon, oh that's so good, if it is a bit older I certainly can't tell, but after assuming that's what was going on, they must have a new batch of these about to come out, they're definitely handmade in the store, it must be like maybe after they finish the bakery, then they move on to the Onigiri, but yeah fucking 80 yen, are you kidding? God that's delicious, but yeah with the passport office, I don't remember what time they closed, but it was weirdly early, and everything always takes way more time than you expect, so I just wanted to make sure I got to the office as early as possible, there was a lot of hoops, a lot of bureaucracy with getting a replacement passport, try not to lose your passport, that was fucking, it was a not entirely pleasant adventure, so I left from Nakaitabashi station, which was the first neighborhood I ever stayed in in Japan, so it's my precious little home station, and it's always so dead there, you know, it's just a weird little station for five stops, or Mickey Bukuro, not exactly popular, so for the first time ever, that station was just packed full of people, and it's like oh geez, so this is what it's like, you know in manga and stuff, or in Japanese movies about the the rush hour trains and everything packed in, I hadn't actually experienced that to that degree yet, where it literally is like you're just packed in like sardines, and it's kind of amazing how packed in you can get, you know, you can just be squeezed in, where like if you lifted your legs, you might not fall down, that's one of those cases too, when being taller is kind of good, it was nice to at least have my head above the sea of people, you know, if you're short, that must be a weird experience, to just be packed in like that, and that was only not to eat tabashi, so yeah, it only got worse and worse, and as I got to Shibuya, it was so fucking busy that the lineup to get into the train went down the hallway around the corner and through the turn style, like there were people lined up in the turn style, like just stuck in it, I'd never seen anything like that, it was fucking crazy, so what I did at Shibuya, that's where it's like okay, this is like I'm basically there, I'm close enough, now I can chill out a little and just let this, let this craziness pass a bit, so I walked along a hallway of whatever, I guess I was just in the station, but I was on the second floor, that whole place is very confusing, should be a station, it's pretty crazy, 10:00 and I could look down out the window and see that famous Shibuya crossing and see all the people, and it's like whoa, so basically what I did is I went to the washroom, and it was a washroom with a bunch of stalls, like three or four stalls, and they weren't even being used, nobody had time to go to the washroom, you know, they were all lined up to get on the train to get to work, but I felt better that there were that many stalls so that I wasn't getting in anyone's way, because I didn't know where else to go, there was nowhere to sit, there was nowhere to wait, everything was just crazy everywhere, so I went to the farthest stall at the very end, and I just went in and sat on it, like it was a chair, you know, I just put down the toilet lid and sat on it, and I just read some comics on my phone for a while, like I was in there for probably like 20 minutes, and I would never do that if the toilet was busy, you know, that would be such awful, inconsiderate behavior, but yeah, I hardly heard anyone else come in, there were other stalls, I wasn't really getting in anyone's way, it was just so I could get away from stuff, and yeah, I was in there like 20 minutes, and then by the time I came back out, ventured out to a look around, it was still busy, but it wasn't like that, it wasn't people past the turn styles, fucking crazy, and then I went to a sac as I, and dealt with the passport office, I might tell the passport story at some point, but I don't know that there's really much to tell, it's just, it was just kind of boring paperwork and a pain in the butt, so yeah, again, I don't know, my big advice there is don't lose your passport, although I've got like, I've got this little sling, like, you know, one of those, like a little fanny pack thing that you just put under your shirt, but I'm wearing it like a quiver, like around my shoulder, and it's got my passport and a spare bank card in it, and you know, I got a routine just because I will forget, I'll forget to put it on, so every night, I take off my t-shirt, take this thing off, and put it in the pocket of my jeans, so then the next day, when I go to put on my jeans, I realize there's this passport in my pocket, and I sling, sling it back around my shoulder, and I really do need to set up that routine for myself, it has to be in front of me every day, or I will forget, because anytime I don't do that, I put on a t-shirt, I put on my pants, then I see the passport thing laying on the kitchen table or whatever, and I got to take my t-shirt off and put the thing back on, so again, if it hadn't been somewhere where I would see it, I would have walked right out the door without it, and just that's how you lose your passport, you know, anytime that your passport isn't exactly where you know it's supposed to be, is bad, bad times. See, it's good to have a little routine, but I was thinking if, just since it's under my shirt, if the elastic on it that is sling around my shoulder ever did break, I bet this thing would just kind of slip off and fall out of my shirt, probably fall on the ground somewhere, and I wouldn't realize, but I just got to assume that's not going to happen, I mean, I don't know how else I can make my passport more secure than this, it's just, it's the physical world, man, you just, you just never know what's going to happen, something can always go wrong, but this is a lot better than my old plan, which was just to, you know, have my passport around, oh it's either in this pocket or it's in this pouch of this, this bag or it's in my inner fucking pocket of my hoodie or whatever, and I think that's actually how I lost it, I think it was in the inner pocket of a hoodie that I just had slung over my shoulder and it fell out. No more of that, because yeah, you can't even, I thought at least I could just escape Japan maybe, just go back to Canada and sort things out from there, but even getting like out of a country, even if you're going back to your birth country, it's like, still you need a passport, you just need a passport, pain in the butt, okay, but again, this is what I did yesterday, I just started meandering and wasted the whole day doing nothing, this was an okay meander, this is fine because I gotta, I gotta cram some of this food in my face, but gotta get to that mountain, gotta get going.

Cuz yeah, those first castle ruins, they're really not far, it's really not far from here, if I get fucking huffin, I'll be there in like half an hour, I just gotta go, just gotta get going, so all right, let's tune in again from where yesterday's episode ended, that's where we'll start, that's where the next step of the journey will be, and I did find a steeper path down the mountain yesterday that had ropes and stuff set up, and I think I'm gonna do it, I think I'm gonna take that steeper route, but there's steps, nice easy steps to take you up, there's no need for these shenanigans, I'm just gonna do them to try something different today, all right, I'm off!

Alright, I'm up at the plateau of Iwaya Castle Ruins. So I think this spot I met definitely is the castle ruins as it's marked on Google Maps. So the thing slightly down the hill from here 15:00 that does look like an actual remains of something. I don't know, maybe this was the space where the castle was. I guess that would make sense because the view is insane from up here. It's still not a ton of room and there's no visible remains of anything. So maybe what was down there was like a defensive, you know, I don't know, castle terms, the keep or something, the Antichamber. I guess people came up the mountain. That was like the guard post, perhaps. But that should make it easier to find. Also, if you're trying to find this place, it's really interesting because as you hike from the ground, you know, again, it's not that hard of a hike. So it was like 10.30 when I was eating my, my own a giri. And it's a little afternoon now. So it actually does take a little longer than I thought it did to get up here. But that's certainly not bad. And that was from basically the entrance of the citizens forest park or whatever. So 90 minutes to get up here, not bad. But then as I got to the top to the remains of the keep or whatever, that it's just a lady walking her dog. She clearly came down from the road because there is a mountain road that goes right up past here. So she's just like, you know, hello. Good morning. Good afternoon, whatever. So casual, just casual walking a tiny dog. Say, this thing's interesting because it feels like a pretty cool hike from the ground. But yeah, with the road access, like from the road, this spot I met is, you know, it's like, it's less than one minute. It's like a 45 second walk. So it's simultaneously like kind of a cool, far hike from the subway station. And at the same time, if you have access through the road, it's, it's a piece of piss. It's so easy to get up here. And I thought like, all right, here we go. Beautiful sunny day. This is going to be the shit. But the view is actually better last night at twilight. Not only did the twilight coming across the mountains look awesome. It was actually easier to see the city. Today, it's very sunny and kind of hazy. And I don't think this is necessarily normal for Fukuoka. I feel like the other days that I've seen big crazy views weren't hazy like this. So I mean, the weather was bad this morning. It was actually really cold. And now it's all hot again. The weirdness of Fukuoka in December. So yeah, I don't think this is a common weather pattern, but it does just look like I went into Photoshop and just messed with the contrast and just made everything washed out. It's not as good. Not as good of a view. Still a fucking good view though. But yeah, it turns out I thought yesterday it was maybe a mistake to get here just as the sun was going down, but actually maybe that was maybe that was the shit. Maybe that's what you want to do. Get up here around four o'clock in the winter, you know. And now we're in a half before sundown. Soak that in. And then it certainly didn't take 90 minutes to get down. That's a half hour at most. So 40 minutes, whatever. Or the road. The road's right here. So yeah, an easy place to escape from even if you come here in the Eve. But yeah, on the way up, I took this steeper path that I found on the way down. It's actually even a little hard to describe. I don't know that I would recommend it for the first time you're here because the main way up is so easy to find. It's marked on all the park maps in the park. There's walking sticks at the bottom. It's just nice stairs all the way up. It's so easy and so well marked and easy to find. Where even knowing where this other path was, it was a little tough to find. So I feel like it's kind of a second time here, type of deal. But it was actually really kind of neat and fun. So if you did want to try to find it, as you get to the desifu citizen's forest park, it's got like a loop. You can go to the right or to the left. So I went to the right around the right loop. And then there's washrooms and just beyond the washrooms on the right is just a teeny little white bridge across a teeny little creek. But from there, yeah, like if you didn't know that that's where you're supposed to go, it just looks like there's nothing. It just looks like there's forest. And if you appear through the trees, then you can see the start of the rope. There's like a rope guideline that goes pretty much the whole way up. Or at least at all the steep parts. So yeah, even knowing it was there at first, I was like like, this is definitely it. I just came here yesterday. I know this is it, but I couldn't find it for a second. It's a little tricky. But then going up, it was actually kind of fun, because it's so different from just trudging upstairs. If you do take this route, bring gloves, no matter what the time of year, because you're going to need them because 20:00 the first half is a pretty normal path. And then it gets super steep, but there's ropes the whole way tied to trees or tied to metal poles. Like it's all very secure. But it's one of these things where as you go up, you got to have a hand on the rope at all times, because there's some parts that didn't seem as bad when I was coming down yesterday. But going up and looking back behind me, it's like, geez, if I were to fall right here, it is just tumbling down a hill, unless you're really unlucky and break your neck, you're not going to die, but you're definitely going to break something. You're not going to come out of that without a broken wrist or something. So yeah, not that, not hard, but not easy. But kind of a neat kind of neat, kind of fun. And as I went up, I found the little shrine that yesterday I was saying how I, they have these little plastic containers that have all the candles and incense for for these shrines. And one of them got knocked over up that route. So I kind of cleaned it up and put the stuff back in and put a big rock on top that I'd seen someone else do it a different one to keep it closed. So someone else had fixed it up even more today. And it's kind of neat where you're just like learning from others. Where would this guy did? I never would have thought to do this. It sort of seems counterintuitive to me a bit, but it actually does make sense. Is there's like a little stone circle, like a tiny little fire pit that has incense powder and it incense dust, which even that stuff's weird because it's essentially just soot, but it smells good. Got some of my fingers yesterday and it's like, boo, gotta wash my hands. But smells kind of good. Frigrant ashes. So what the guy did is he took the container and he put it inside the little circle pit and then the rock on top. So the reason I wouldn't have thought to do that is because you're putting the container in the dust in the ashes. But once it's in there, it's really secure. It's surrounded by rocks now. And so what if you get dust? You know, so what if you get burned up incense on the plastic container? The plastic container doesn't care. But that would have been my thought is like, oh, you don't want to get the plastic container dirty. But why the fuck not? Who cares? So it's like, oh, cool. Okay. I learned an additional technique from whoever else was there since I passed. Hand in hand together. We're putting right what once went wrong. And another thing that was kind of interesting is on the way up the really steep route, there was a side path that I didn't see on the way down that had a big white sign with the arrow pointing. Hey, you could go this way and had its own ropes. But it wasn't going up. It was clearly the wrong way. But I'm like, well, what the heck is this? It's got a dang arrow pointing. It's got to be something. And it was an especially dicey little maneuver to go around a very steep part of the side of the mountain. Not for very far, maybe 20 meters or something, 15.

But I didn't like it. It was a little frightening. And then when I got to the end, there didn't seem to be anything there. There was a, it kind of looked like an empty birdhouse sort of thing. Or kind of like a lending library in North America where you just leave books for your neighborhood, leave a book, take a book, like a small little thing like that, but nothing was in it. And I was like, hmm, what is this? Like a little shrine that's not maintained? Like there's nothing in it. And it made me wish that I had something to leave there. It would be such a good place to make a geocache. Fucking perfect, the perfect geocache location. But I was looking through all my stuff and it's like, oh man, like I wish I had my little niddish go from Eurocaptoy or something because I would just hang it in there, just so there'd be something to find, you know, when you came over there, it would be neat. But I just, I'm too utilitarian. I didn't have anything unnecessary. The closest I could think of is I've got spare band-aids in my wallet. And I was like, hey, what if somebody has a blister? I could leave band-aids in there. Maybe they'll be like, cool. I needed band-aids. Perfect timing. But if I put band-aids in there, before anyone else ever finds them, there's just going to be a, there's just going to be a windy day and they'll get blown away and become garbage. You know, there's just nothing. There's nothing I could do with it. But a geocache would be, would be so good. But then I did notice, there is something actually there. There's kind of they look like castles, but they look sort of like sand castles. And there was three of them, hune into the rock. They're pretty large too. But I just didn't notice them at first. And I don't know what they are. I don't know what the significance is. But I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. So there is something here. There's like a 25:00 cool like rock sculpture, like a rock painting here. What a weird discovery. Just hanging out in Japan and just going places. It feels like in the old uncharted games where, you know, it's just ramble about video games for a moment. I always kind of liked in uncharted the collectibles are just random bits of treasure, you know, because he's a treasure hunter. He's Indiana Jones. He's Laura Croft. Nathan Drake. He's just the new, the new guy in the lineage of swash buckling archaeologists. So if you're going to have collectibles in a game, it made sense that they're little actual ancient artifacts. And that's what this felt like. This felt exactly like I found an uncharted collectible like, wow, cool, you know. And again, who cares about getting the collectibles? But they're their own reward just to go, you know, to go off the path a little and find a weird thing. And it's like, cool, I got that. Whereas in the last of us, they did this similar thing, but it was like firefly dog tags. I wrote a whole book about the last of us and I didn't even bother getting all the firefly dog tags because who the fuck cares? That's very much apropos of nothing. But I do have one little quick thing. I'm in a orang about briefly because it is appropriate to a person walking around a lot or hiking. Ankle socks, dude. What the fuck is with ankle socks? Why do these things exist? You know, I do not understand what they're for. They're for someone who has a lifestyle that is not like mine. That's for sure, because I don't understand why you would ever want to wear socks that don't cover up your ankle. Go higher up your leg. I was thinking maybe if you live in an extremely hot environment, maybe if you live in Florida or something, so you just need some socks so you don't get blisters from your shoes, but you just want as little skin covered as possible. Maybe that. That's all I can come up with because I fucking hate these things and I got these by accident because I bought a pair of socks from Family Mart that were like stranger things branded unexpectedly. I didn't even realize that from the packaging, but they're really high quality socks. I mean, they weren't cheap. Buying socks from the convenience stores, not the best plan. It was like four dollars or something for one pair of socks. It was a bad deal, but they're very good socks. So that's good. But then in my laundry routine, I needed one more pair of socks and there's like a little a little diagram on the socks to tell you what kind of socks they are. And I don't know how I fucked up because I could have swore I was checking to make sure I didn't buy the cursed ankle socks, but somehow I accidentally did. I think it's just like when you do a little sleight of hand on yourself, like if you're ever at the grocery store and there's like a half price sandwich, but you grab the one next to it that wasn't half price and you don't realize till you pay full price for a sandwich and you're like, oops, how did I do that? I somehow picked up the wrong pair of socks. And as soon as I opened the package and saw that they were these dumbass little fucking teeny annoying socks, I audibly groaned. I was like, because I have so few things. You know, I've only got what fits in the book bag. I was trying to hit my perfect sock balance of like I was just slightly too low. I kept running out of socks just before laundry time. With these two pairs of socks, equilibrium has been hit. Everything's been fine since then. But as soon as I opened these socks, I was just thinking like I should just go through these away. I should put these right in the trash. They're just wasting my sock space. I can't believe I bought these dumb socks. What am I supposed to do with these? So what I did do with them is I've just been wearing them kind of around the apartment. If I just need some socks for the Airbnb I'm in, okay, I'll put these socks on. But today, I don't know, I happen to have them on and I'm like, all right, let's just try and let's try these dumb socks. And I'm immediately reminded of like tennis socks. Like if you've seen those socks, tennis players wear, which again, I assume they want them to be low because they are sweating so they don't want to cover up more skin and sweat more. But they have these little pom-poms at the back to keep the socks up because otherwise the socks fall down. And these fucking socks need some pom-poms. Because only on one foot for whatever reason, just the way my cadence of walking is on my right foot, this sock just keeps sliding down and keeps sliding down. And like sliding down past my heel till it's like half off. It's like having to yank it up. So God, you're so fucking annoying. I hate these fucking socks so much so that if I pass a convenience store later, I mean, I guess by the time I get down the mountain, it won't matter. But if there's somehow a convenience store on this mountain, I'm buying a new pair of socks immediately. They just suck. So don't, if you're hiking around mountains and shit, don't bring fucking ankle socks. Don't buy them by accident. I know again, this is advice nobody needs. But 30:00 somebody must like these socks. There must be a reason why they're available worldwide. And I do not get it. I fucking hate these goddamn ankle socks. They are shit. They're the shit of socks.

Okay, anyway, that's enough. I don't need to come playing while I'm up here at this beautiful view. Turns out, actually, this sign, the sign that shows the entire panorama, just shows what you're looking at. You know, it's peering at it in the dimness yesterday and trying to translate stuff with my phone. I didn't realize there is actually English, some English way at the bottom. So, we got Mount Holman long ago. Mount Holman was worshipped as a sacred peak. Sure, why not? Desaifu Tenmangu Shrine. Tenmangu Shrine is the site at which the scholar Michizane Sugawara, also known as the God of Learning, is deified. All right? Kenzionji Temple was built in memory of the late Empress Samae by Emperor Tenji. It was completed in 746 AD. A site of Dazafu Government Office, that's where I came from. On this site, lay the great public office from which what is now Kyushu was administered in ancient times. Oh, yeah, I did read that somewhere that Desaifu was kind of the original capital of the island of Kyushu. Ruins of Chikusen Kokobunji Temple. These are the ruins of a temple built in the 8th century.

Ruins of Mizuki. Mizuki was built in 664 AD to defend Desaifu against a possible invasion from Tang China and or the Korean Kingdom of Silla. Is that the one I went to yesterday? If it is, yeah, this picture of a field is appropriate because that is all is there. Site of Uaya Fortress. A fortress that once stood on this site was the scene of a great battle in 1586 in which more than 700 warriors led by Shon Takahashi perished at the hands of an army sent by the Shimuzuklan of Tsumakagoshima prefecture. And yeah, roughly speaking, you can see everything from here. It's funny that I never made it to the Kyushu Regional Museum, the big one, but I can see it from here. Even from here, yeah, it's fucking gigantic. What the shit? There's all these like normal size buildings and just this one that boom, like it looks normal sized and then the other buildings look like tiny miniatures. So the fact that it looks like a normal size building from here means it must be goddamn big.

Man, yeah, the haze is so odd. It really just looks like, I guess the same way yesterday I was saying how the mountains in the evening, like they look like they're painted backdrops from a school play or something. They just have an unreality to them. Sort of similar, just the way this haze has settled over everything. Again, with my shallow cultural connections that I make in my brain, but yeah, it just looks like a Photoshop filter. It looks like you need to do auto contrast and it'll all bing, zip into clarity. It's like someone didn't set the white balance on their old school camera. Help some people. Some people actually showed up. Anyway, it's a good reason for me to stop Yemmerin. I'm going to move on from here.

Well, this is a pretty easy area, extremely non-rugged, which is not a bad thing because yeah, I'm having definitely having a little bit of a time shaken my tiredness, unfortunately. There's only so much you can do to push past fatigue. So it's nice that this is very easy.

So yeah, as I continued on from the castle ruins, the path led up to the road, which I was calling a highway, but I don't really know what the designations of streets are. I'm not a driver, so because I assume highway, I don't know if it's a highway or not. Highways are probably busy, right? Like probably have traffic. I guess this is just more of a mountain road because there's very little traffic. I only really saw one or two cars the whole time. And it's not. Not wide. Just two two little lanes. Ah, here's a little shrine. No particular offerings, just the little the little sake glasses, which may have sake in them, could just be water, but that nice austere offering, which I do kind of like just the nice little cups with liquid in them.

And this is too, I'm in this like really old style little neighborhood in the woods. But the old and the new, this shrine has a QR code, which I can't scan because I don't have a data plan. I actually don't even know. I don't really know how QR codes work. I've never really done much with them. But I can translate the sign, 33 stone buttas of Shioji Temple.

Shioji Prefectural Forest Council. And Google Maps is saying there's something deeper into the woods here, but I don't see the path. So I think I'll just go back, continue on to Ono Castle.

But as I continued on the path and it got to the mountain road, but then you just had to cross over the road and keep going up the path. And it kind of did that. Like as the road snake disway across the mountain, you didn't really need to walk on the road. You could just quickly cross the road to more path. And I met like a little family that were walking and then I met a lady and then I met a guy. And there was all kinds of paths all over the place. And I just kind of randomly following them. And then I got to a big park, a big children's park. And it had just like old people hanging out. And I didn't see the parking lot, but the parking lot on Google Maps is near there. So clearly that's it. You know that the parking lot is by their accessible by the road. Basically this whole mountain is just kind of like a big park, you know. Very cash. There were all kinds of different signs for places to see different types of flowers at different times of year. So yeah, for an easy day, I certainly recommend this.

Nice and simple. And then this was bound to happen eventually, but especially today, because I ate even more food than I ate yesterday. I've just been gorging myself on best convenience system food. So they had a washroom, but it had a squat toilet. So it's like, finally my fate has come. I finally have to use a squat toilet again. And really again, yes, just no big deal. It's like like anything vaguely uncomfortable in life, like a long flight or getting your teeth cleaned at the dentist or something. It's probably not as bad as the worry makes it seem, you know, as you worry about it, like, oh, I don't want to do that. And then it's just not that bad. But I've only had to use squat toilets a handful of times in my life. It's fine as long as it's fine, you know. I got to imagine if you're a lifelong user of squat toilets, like if you have diarrhea or if you're constipated, I mean, you must have some some war tails about squat toilets. But yeah, as long as you don't have to do the squatting part of the squat toilet for too long, not so bad. Although I say that, my bad knee, I do feel it. Shake it off, man, shake it off. Freaking squat toilets.

And then for this second half, I'm sure there's a bunch of different paths and stuff that I could have taken that I didn't take. There's certainly probably better ways to get where I'm going. This is definitely the kind of place you could explore for a while if you lived nearby.

Various little green spots on Google Maps with names I can't read. But I am just walking down the road now for this second bit on to Ono Castle. There's probably paths, but I don't know where they are. So just walking down the mountain road, but again, real slow, real no problem. Nobody around this little town I'm just passing, which I just noticed from now that I'm passing and looking back. There's one really new house. The rest are all really old. That's weird. And it's like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, like 11 houses. So that's like a little strange. It's like, I wonder what the local community politics are of this one person who apparently has got some money to throw into making a cool-ass house and everyone else just has the old house. There must be some neighborhood gossip around those parts. But they also had a little thing, it was weird from a distance. It's like a ladder set up by a power line, like a power pole with four little scarecrow mannequins on it. You know, just like as though they're climbing up the ladder to do repairs. So from a distance, it's like, what is that? Those are far too small to be people and they're not moving. Okay, they're not real. Just kind of neat, kind of a weird little neat thing. And I also saw at, there's like a very steep curve beyond this town, curving around the mountain.

And the line in the middle of the street, I didn't notice this at first because there was fallen autumn leaves covering up some of these. But the biggest bumps I've ever seen on a road, like in North America, they oftentimes put ridges on the edges of the highway. So if you drift off of the main lane, your car will start going, so you just can't miss that you're going off the road. You know, it's like, wake up buddy, wake up, something's going wrong. You've drifted off the road, are you falling asleep? What the fuck's happening? Wake up. But those are just like little ripples in the road and they really make your car shake. These things were in the middle in the center line and they're like two inches high. They had like a sloped front. They weren't just square. But man, it seems like they'd make your fucking car flip over if you were going fast. Like they're so huge. I mean, I guess maybe it's the same kind of height as a speed bump, but instead of a you know, a gradual lump like a speed bump is, these are just sudden two-inch protrubances spaced out around the whole turn. And I guess it is just like, hey, fucking stay in your lane. You're on a sharp hairpin turn in the mountains. Don't fuck around. Don't go into different lanes. Stay where you are. Do this. Do this just right. Do this just exactly properly. Or else, boom, you're going to fucking notice. And I wonder, I don't know that mountain racing, Allah initial D is even really a thing. I don't know how much that truly exists in real life, but this would be the perfect place. Almost no traffic. Tons of curves. Mountain road. And yeah, those mega speed bumps, man, they would fuck your day up. They would make drifting around that corner impossible. I don't think even the initial D fucking guy himself could figure out how to maneuver through that shit, although I'm a non driver. So what do I know? But they seemed very severe. I was like, holy crap, look at that. And yeah, now as I walk down this road, there are some little off roads and there was some steps going up into the woods. There's definitely other places to go. And actually, now that I look at it, this Ohno Castle, the little dot for it is just kind of in the middle of nowhere on Google Maps. It's not really by the road at all. And there's no sign that the road connects off to it at all either. So I have no idea. I have no idea if this is going to take me anywhere. But worst case scenario, I'll just keep walking down this road till I get to Umi and Umi station on the other end. I guess we'll see. And if I do miss Ohno Castle, I'll look it up when I get home and see what that's all about. And there's another little roadside washroom here that has three different doors for stalls and has like, oh wait, maybe four.