#50 Spending a chill day in Fukuoka, Japan

Transcript

Alright, it's about 11.30 at night. I saw a flash at the window and it's like, well, I hope that was lightning outside my house or else I fucking electrical bolt just in the reflection. You know, it looked like an electrical bolt flashed across the fucking kitchen. Yeah, it's outside. So I finally, the rain finally hit. I've been extremely lucky with the rain. Oh man, there's so much lightning. Yeah, I guess we'll see. This episode will be about tomorrow. So we'll see. Surely, I mean, yeah, it's 11.30. Surely, this will be over by tomorrow. But yeah, we'll see, man. Stay tuned.

Alright, it's the next day the rain did not last, though the other day. I almost took my umbrella out of my little day pack because it just, you know, kind of barely squeezes in. It would be nice if, if I had that little bit of extra room. But then I thought like, no, this is the whole point. The whole point of having the umbrella is you never know when it's going to rain. You never know when it's going to go crazy. And last night confirmed, like, yeah, I better, I better keep that thing in my bag because it was nuts yesterday. But you never know when that's going to happen. Today, though, beautiful, bright, clear skies, everything's perfect. I'm at Shiro Zoiki Park, SHI ROU ZU-O-I-K-E Park. Because I basically just wanted to take a bit of an easier time today, where yesterday it was an easy hike. Each individual bit of it was easy. But the, the sheer length of it was fucking wild. I mean, I literally went up over a mountain. And then after I finished recording yesterday, I walked home. I'll talk about that in a bit. And there's like an actual observatory, not just an observation deck, but like, you know, like a dome, a domed building. And I saw some signs saying, like, you know, hey, at night time, you can look at the stars or whatever. I just tried the door to the building just in case. I'm like, I know Japan's pretty public and they are not big on tons of security, but surely it's not just open, right? And yeah, it's not. So I don't know how this works, but that's interesting. Yeah, this place, it's a nice big lake. It's pretty pretty. It's pretty fucking nice looking. So yeah, after the sheer lengths of yesterday, and just in general, this trip, I think maybe because I'm doing the podcast, this isn't totally out of line with how I did stuff when I visited Japan in 2019. But I don't think it was quite this severe. I think I did have a lot more days, right? Just kind of ambled around and didn't do much. Where this time, I mean, it's, it's weird and the level of stuff, the, just the sheer amount of stupid, long, crazy adventures that just literally eat up the whole day. I mean, it just takes all day to do this stuff day after day after day. It's cool, but it's also a little crazy, like just the walk over here. The particular neighborhood I was walking through reminded me of when I went to Spider Mountain in Akigawa, not Akigawa, but across the river from there. Fusa, I think it was called. It reminded me a lot of that neighborhood, and that just made me think of like, oh yeah, remember that day? Spider Mountain. You know, that feels like a lifetime ago. That feels like a whole other trip. How has this all been one Japan adventure? I mean, of course, I got the 90-day visa. That is a long visit. But I still feel like, geez, I'm really packing in some stuff. This is like, kind of a, I'm not going to say kind of much. I'm glad that I'm doing it this way, because it'll be over soon and I'll be out of here and I'll wish I could come back. But it is nice to just take some calmer days. And even this now that I'm here, this lake 5:00 is a pretty big lake. I mean, even on Google Maps, it's very evident. Like, oh yeah, there's fucking water there. And there's like an island in the middle. I'm going to do a little stroll around and see if I can go into the middle part. But yeah, I kind of dicked around in the apartment this morning. It's like 3.30 already. So I'm in the same situation as always, where there's not that much daytime left, but I'm already at the place. And then from here, I'll just walk back. Today's just a real mini adventure. And it kind of feels all right.

It feels good to just take it easy once in a while. And to not travel halfway across whatever fucking region I'm at. Yeah, in this case, I don't really look up reviews on Google Maps too often. But every once in a while, I'll dip my toe in. So like, in this case, I just clicked on it just to see what the top level was. And somebody just said, like, yeah, this place is great. It's my favorite park in this region. So I was like, all right, good enough. You sold me. I just need somewhere relatively close to go.

Somebody's soccer ball went flying. I'm going to throw it back.

But yeah, today, as far as one of these easier days goes, this would definitely be laundry day, if I was using a laundromat, which I'll be back too soon enough. But since I have a washing machine in the apartment, what I figured out with that is that you really can't do laundry in the North American way. If you have the washing machine in no dryer, where in North America, I would just let things build up as much as possible, like in my apartment back home. I was like freaking Chris Kringle with a giant sack over my back of just so many clothes because I just had laundry in the building. And she's like, boom, the giant is bag of all time. And then even traveling, it could never get that big. But I would still basically wait until it's like, well, I got to do laundry because tomorrow there's no more shirt to wear. No more socks left. Always two extra pairs of underwear because I calibrated wrong. See, yeah, this apartment, I like a lot better than the last one. And it has a balcony, a fourth floor balcony, with like this terrible view, where the view is just other buildings. But I think I kind of don't mind that either because it makes me feel like I'm not four floors up because I'm so scared of heights all this time. It doesn't feel high up when I look outside. But that definitely helps for drying clothes. I got the classic hanging up my clothes type of deal. But there's still definitely no guarantee that they'll actually be fully dry the next day. I still had to hang them up inside when the sun went down and they were still a little damp. So I found that the best thing to do is instead of a big whack of laundry and then having to worry about everything not quite being dry is just to do laundry way more often. Just do small little bits of laundry every two or three days and just keep it all moving in a little assembly line. Do a little bit of laundry, hang it up to dry, do a little bit of laundry, move that along. So you got waves of clothes becoming dry. So far this park, it's just, uh, it's not a bad little walk, but it's just like a walk around the outside edge. And the middle island seems to just be a raw island. I don't think I'm getting over there. But I guess we'll see even if that's all this is. Again, just for a little teeny quick day adventure. This is fine. Just an excuse to get outside. Go get the sun while it's here.

I was used to think about because it's like a lot of places kind of like this in my hometown too.

Little islands under bridges and stuff. And then this wouldn't be realistic there because it's too cold. But I used to always think like if I had to be homeless, that it'd be kind of cool to just sneak your way over there and set up a tent. Now I'm taking that again. Like could you do that here? This island doesn't seem very hard to get to. If you went and set up a tent in the middle of it, as long as you were very sneaky when you left in the morning and came back at night, I wonder how long you could live there before someone figured out that you were there.

But yeah, yesterday when I got off the mountain wrapped up my podcast and says like, okay, it was a umi station, I believe it was called. I knew there was that station nearby. But from there, it went further north and looped up around and then back through Hakata station. And I didn't particularly want to do that. Not exactly the easy escape hatch that I would prefer. You know, it's like that to do if it had to. But it was going to be less than smooth to get back home even with the train.

Oh, Kasuga City is where I am, by the way, KSUGA. That was what the person said on the review. My favorite park in Kasuga City. But yeah, through the magic of Google Maps yesterday, I saw that I was only 5.6, I think, kilometers from home even after going across the whole mountain because it was pretty close to my Airbnb to begin with. And, you know, it was not that harsh of a mountain. You know, I walked across the whole thing in and after noon. So yeah, the head back was not that far. And that was where it's kind of cool because my my sense of distance has gotten a lot better on this trip. And I was thinking how that creepy tunnel I went through. That alone, man, that helped a lot. The one in western Tokyo in Itzukishi.

Because it was perfect. It was 1.2 kilometers. And there's a sign here that says, hey, don't hop over the fence. But it's a really short fence. It comes up just above my knee. And there's clear walking paths beyond the fence. But hey, who am I? I'm just some visitor. Don't step over the fence. I can read cartoon. I can't pretend that I didn't know what that cartoon was telling me. No guys can cart there. I couldn't read the stickman. I didn't understand.

But since that tunnel was 1.2 kilometers and it was a fairly gripping thing, quite fucking memorable, I have a very clear sense of how far 1.2 kilometers is. And you know, it was unpleasant being in that tunnel, but it also cool at the same time. Cool and unpleasant. But it wasn't really that long. It didn't take that much to get through it. So it's just easy to think like, oh, it's not even 5 of those. Less than 5 of those tunnels and I'll be back home.

And I still just had like all kinds of podcasts and crap I downloaded before I left the house that I hadn't even listened to yet.

Hmm, looks like this island. It's not even really an island. It's just an outcropping. And there's a fence, but you had to be really easy to hop that fence. I'm actually surprised that there's not even one path going into the center. Oh, and here's the kids playground. Looks kind of like the other one I found. My first night here, it's got like a castle motif.

But yeah, I started walking back. 5.6 K. No biggie. Sun was going down.

But that was kind of pretty too. Just nice to see the twilight.

But it started off real bad. I'm starting to learn too about the thickness of streets on Google Maps because I got to experience the three main thicknesses where at first I was on a very thick route. Big thick line on Google Maps. And that thing was horrible. Like it did go directly back to my neighborhood. But thank God there were other options because it was like big time trucks. None of these little tiny, cute little vehicles that are around Japan sometimes. These are the full-size, gigantic trucks. Carton things around. There was very little space for people to walk at all. Like sometimes there was a walking space on the side of the street. Sometimes there wasn't. I did like hop across this horrible highway of death one time. And then I was like following the other couple idiots that were on that street of like, where did they cross? What did they do? And I was like, this is terrible. This is downright dangerous. Oh yeah, and I saw flowers in a fence at one point, which what that generally means in Canada. And I presume it's the same other places. Is this where somebody died? Somebody died because they got hit by a car or they had an accident. Or they fell off a bridge. You know, something some accident happened here. And it's like a memorial.

There was one right by my house in Toronto, where I saw all of the flowers and I looked it up. And now, man, it was just creepy. It was this lady who was cycling, where yeah, I don't recommend bicycling in Toronto. It is not not a good city for biking. It's very scary and dangerous. But she had a wagon attachment to the back of her bike that I guess made her a little less maneuverable, but like a garbage truck was turning a corner and just like turned too tightly.

I don't know how it didn't see her or it just didn't realize that it was that close. Anyway, just ran her over. It's like, Jesus fucking Christ. I almost got hit by a bus one time. Yeah, not recommended at all. So yeah, seeing the flowers was additionally creepy. 15:00 So I got off that street through the really thin, a really thin street line on Google Maps means it is just a little neighborhood street that's really small and nobody's ever on it. Very quiet. But those are the ones that never go anywhere direct in Japan. They're just a tangle, a spider web of streets. But I went through the spider web for a bit and then got to a mid-size line. So that was still a busy street, but it went straight to my neighborhood and was fine. It had actual sidewalks and proper pedestrian crossing lights and everything. That big one, that was like a rare thing. You don't really find those often in Japan. But I guess it makes sense that they got to have them somewhere. I guess it's because a lot of times, especially in Tokyo, those are the big overhead expressways and stuff. They just kind of get them out of your way. It was like, you drive up there, you pay horrifying tolls. You're in your own world. But I had stumbled into their world and as a pedestrian, it was terrible.

It's funny how the designations are different, where it took me a while to figure out that this stuff was, these things were rivers in Japan, what I would think is too small to be a river, where the opposite is happening with this. I would definitely call this a lake. This thing is pretty big, but I just found a little area map that just calls it a pond, and there's two other ponds in here. Maybe I'll try to get to the other ponds while I'm in the neighborhood. There's also a hard off here, so hey, why not? I'll go in the hard off and see what they've got, see what goods they've got, and I also just stopped in the washroom, and the washroom had like an ancient, it looked kind of Aztec, but obviously it's not, obviously it's, you know, from Japan, but it had a symbol of some ancient artifact by the door, and then above the sink as I was washing my hands, there were three pictures of like an old sword and an old shield and an old tool of some kind, and it's like, man, now that's what I like, because I've talked before about how museums, it's a little heavy for me. I find it kind of stale. I like that one in Chiba, but I don't often go out of my way to go to museums, but hey, if you can combine a taste of the museum with the washroom, I mean, I know I sound absurd saying these things like so low-brow, but it's so perfect. I'm gonna be in the washroom anyway, I'm washing my hands, it's a perfect moment to just be like, oh, look at these things, how interesting, you know, it's just something to think about, something to let your mind consider, it makes you think about the past for a moment, where ironically if I'm in a museum and there's all there is to do, it's like, oh, then I start thinking about leaving, like I want to go, I want to go to the washroom at the park. Anyway, this one's a hard off on the first floor, and hobby off. I've never found a hobby off, that's what the second floor is, but I suspect that I unofficially have found a hobby off, because hard off, and I think the houseware's one was called offhouse, I mean, they just do have a lot of little like figurines and model kits and stuff. I presume that's what hobby off is, just in a more official capacity, but hey, let's see, let's go take a gander.

Oh no, the song is playing, alright, let's turn this recorder off, you don't need to hear this.

Well, that was pretty delightful, I think I have been to a hobby off, just without realizing it, the hard off in Akigawa, or by Akigawa Station. With set up the exact same way, the second floor was very distinctly like a lot of trading cards, which I had a physical paper, magic, the gathering deck, because I could buy Japanese cards for it, it'd be so cool. And yeah, you know, model kits and different toys and stuff on the second floor, the one in Akigawa was set up exactly the same, so maybe they just weren't labeling it as a separate experience as much, or maybe I just didn't notice, but it was definitely the same. But yeah, in that one, I finally found my little holy grail, where I found these Sony Bluetooth headphones that I have a wire connecting them, that I didn't realize was a form factor you could get, because I had wireless Bluetooth headphones before, and it wasn't even that I dropped them, they just like fell out of my ears a couple times, 20:00 and it was a horrible nightmare, trying to find the piece that fell. So for me, especially because I'm constantly like, as we speak, as I record this, one headphone is my wired headphones that I have connected to this audio recorder, but the other one is the Bluetooth headphones, they're just hanging out of my ear, draped around my neck. So the fact that they're connected is perfect for me. I do not want them to be separate, separate is much worse for me. I mean, I did almost lose these, a few episodes back, but it's much, much harder to lose them when they're connected. I love this, and there's like a nice battery pack, sort of in the middle of the wire. So that's awesome too. Anyway, they're Sony, and I love Sony stuff, because I've just been buying Sony stuff for decades, because Sony has a whole array of price options, but what I like about Sony is you can buy the cheapest Sony thing you can find. You can buy their very cheapest thing, and it will still be good enough to do audio editing. You know, there's a certain baseline that just Sony does not drop below. So they're by far my favorite company. I've had such bad experiences with other brands, where even if you buy expensive headphones, they sound like shit. Where with Sony, you can spend fucking $12, and it sounds great, and if you want to spend more, feel free. So yeah, I got these Sony headphones for 20 bucks, and they had another pair in there. Sony wired Bluetooth, in the box and everything. These ones were $33, and I was like, fuck yeah, dog. I mean, if I find any more from here, they don't pop up that often. I've been to a zillion of these stores, but I don't know if I would buy another set. Having one backup is probably enough, you know. At a certain point, it becomes maybe in a pack rat, but it's so nice to know now that when these ones inevitably break, or just the battery just dies and they stop working, I got this other set, and I'm pretty sure they're new. Like Japan's quite famous for all of its used stuff being in very good condition. People really take care of stuff, but this not only had the box and all the documentation. Somebody would have had to like, re-wrap the fucking headphones inside and carefully tape them together, like exactly as they had been when they were new. I'm quite sure they're new, and if they're not brand new, they're fucking close. So yeah, $33, that's a steal for some backup headphones. I feel very, very happy to have these, because it is fun to buy stuff. It's just so hard for me to ever justify buying stuff, because it's just, uh, it's just weight added to my luggage. Like they also had in there tons of old video games. I just love looking at the old video games. I mean, I don't know what I would ever do with them, buy like an old fucking cartridge, just some game I used to have and make it into a necklace. Like, what could I ever do with these things? But they had a bunch of the old Famicoms, which I always think are interesting because our Nintendo Entertainment System looked so different. The Famicom is a way different form factor. They had one that was only $5, because it was old, obviously, but old in the way of being kind of discolored, and probably didn't work, because you know, they had other ones that were more expensive, although apparently there's so many Famicoms kicking around. None of them are that expensive. But even like the, for $5, like if I had an apartment, if I lived here, I would buy the $5 Famicom just to put on the shelf. You know, I don't need to find an old TV that you can actually connect one of these things to and get one up and running and stuff. It's CRTs and everything. It's a huge fucking pain in the ass. If I want to play the old games, I'll just emulate them, you know, fuck it. But just to have one, as a cool little thing in your house for $5, that would be so cool. But I can't justify it. I can't buy that. The fuck am I going to do with it? So these other ponds, Naka Hatterishin pond I met now. These are pretty much fully undeveloped ponds. They're just a, just a weird little pond in the middle of the neighborhood. But I think I discovered tomorrow's adventure. It's like I should do something more proper tomorrow.

So if you go south from here, there's, you know, I saw it in real life first, like, okay, big bunch of woods, big mountain right there. What's all that about? And on Google Maps, there's a labeled hiking path that goes quite a distance, of course, by a golf course at one point. But it's extremely similar to what I did last episode where I was going north. This time it's south, and you hike and hike and hike. Oh, ways, quite a ways. Yeah, that'll be definitely take me the afternoon.

The Kusambuyama Observatory is in there. Ochozu Falls. So there's stuff that I may or may not find, but it's cool that it's there as a possibility. But importantly, the same way as yesterday, once I come out on the other side, not only is there a JR train here, this one literally just takes me right back home. It's the exact line that goes by my Airbnb. And it's like six stops or something. Maybe seven. But yeah, literally I can bail out. If I make it through the adventure, I can just hop on the train and go straight home. That seems like a plan for tomorrow. That seems like something to do. So yeah, even today, this little tiny little mini adventure to the little mini park got me primed, set me up, gave me something bigger to do tomorrow. But yeah, this neighborhood, this particular direction is really working out, but to get back to yesterday. So I got off the nightmare highway, and I was on the normal shitty highway, which is like, you know, where I've learned I cannot do podcasts, you know, where it's just the amount of traffic that's just too loud, not worth fighting through. Some of my older episodes really sound bad. It's like I just need to not do that anymore. It's just too loud. It was that level of street, but it was okay as long as you got headphones in and you just listen into a podcast or whatever. The little ear plug headphones dull the noise and the podcast takes your mind off it. And it's just easier for your mind and real life to ignore noise like that. Once it's all crammed into a podcast, it's much much worse, see me. So it kind of sucked, but it was fine. It was like kind of a nice walk in a weird way, but it was just all like factories, literal factories sometimes. And like edge of town road type stuff, not definitely not pleasant, not like a nice pedestrian experience, certainly a place where you were supposed to have a car. And then like I saw a pachinko place that was fucking enormous. It was like the great big casinos in British Columbia. That's what this reminded me of. I've never seen a pachinko place big like this because I always see them, you know, in Tokyo or whatever, they're just kind of crammed in places. This was its whole own building that was like three stories tall and took up the whole block. It was just like this monolith of fucking pachinko. And a little pass there I found a coin on the ground that I think maybe is from there. Maybe it was one of the pachinko coins. But I don't remember what it said on it because I just, you know, I put it on like a a little elevated part somewhere where somebody walking by if they wanted it, they could see it. I don't know how much it was worth probably not much. It didn't even occur to me to wander into the big pachinko place yesterday, but another thing about it. I mean, I guess it's weird to go in when you're absolutely not going to partake. I did go into some smaller pachinko places in 2019 just to try it, you know, just to see the marvel at the pachinko. And yeah, it is just so crazy loud and absurd and ridiculous. And I played a few rounds, but pachinko, I mean, all gambling is about the same. I don't know the pachinko really deserves additional scorn. It's all just random nonsense, but pachinko is really weird because it really feels random. It's basically like a like pinball with no flippers. Which again, like so what? You're just watching the random balls bounce and hoping it all works out. It's really not different from our slot machines where they don't even spin anymore. It's just digital. You just take the machines word for it that it's all working out. I remember I went to like a big gambling place in Bernabé for my friend's birthday when you're, and I got real lucky that first time in a 180 dollars off like 20 bucks off a bet of like a dollar or something or 50 cents. I don't know. It was really, it was like crazy. So that did make me look into it a little. I was like, what the heck? What's going on here? But that's of course the classic gambling thing. Of course, once in a while you win.

So after that, I started looking into it and like, is there a strategy? Is there anything you can do?

Is this purely just random? And then I went back by myself a couple of times just to try like grinding it out like really small like five cent bets. And if you're really careful, you can kind of build it up until all of a sudden. It goes wrong or you just or in my case, I just got bored and tired of it and just started making bigger bets until all my money's gone. And I'm like, okay, whatever like this. I definitely spent back the 80 bucks that I won. So it all worked out perfectly for them. But they did have free lattes there that were pretty good. But it's like out of the way 30:00 too. It's not necessarily easy to get to the gambler place. Certainly wasn't worth it just to get a fucking free coffee.

That place was creepy, too. If you're from Burnaby, British Columbia, you might know what I'm talking about. Where there's an insane number of crows near that big gambling place. It's like crazy. It's like a Tim Burton movie. Just fucking crows everywhere. And if you try to walk through the area where all the crows nest in the evening or at night, they'll swoop down at your head. It's fucking scary and weird. But that was the vibe, the whole time. It's like a big factories, big pachinko, relatively heavy traffic, all just kind of shitty. The whole walk home.

And then, you know, I eventually got to a little part of my neighborhood that I recognized and I was back. But then it occurred to me like, alright, so that was awful. And that was like five whole kilometers of just shit that I would never want to go back to to get to my neighborhood. And the other time I came to that neighborhood was from the reverse angle where I went by the big self-defense place that's just a big huge barracks look in Metal Gear Solid thing.

And right next to that was the gigantic pornographic movie warehouse. And it's so weird because I love this Airbnb I'm in. It's really good. And I like this neighborhood a lot. But it occurred to me like, I do like this neighborhood but literally this neighborhood because I never go further than either one block away to the JR station or more usually about three blocks away to the other station. And that's it.

It's like fast travel in a video game. I never actually travel anywhere further than that. I literally just stayed in my one little neighborhood and then I get on one of the trains and I get teleported somewhere else. So it was a bit weird to realize as much as I like this area and I like this place. I was like, holy shit, this neighborhood sucks. This is awful. One side is the Pachinko nightmare. The other side is the porn warehouse. This place fucking sucks. It's not good to walk in. It's not a nice place to be. It's awful. It's just my one little part. But that's so neat too. It's like as long as you have a train. And in my case I had two trains. It doesn't matter if everything around you sucks. It's not even relevant because you never walk that way.

You just get on the train and you spend 220 in and you go somewhere else. It's like two bucks to get just to go to a nearby spot to get to the center of Fukuoka or to go fling off to Dizafu or some other cool place. So I thought that was an interesting thing to realize. I do really like this spot. 10 out of 10. I will happily come back here next time I'm in Fukuoka if I can. But yeah, the reality is this neighborhood is not good at all. It's fucking shitty. However, today I'd say this worked out pretty well. This is the one direction that is actually kind of nice. We're walking here today. It really was just that kind of nice feeling of just locals. Just locals doing their thing, driving around, doing whatever they got to do. Some kid tried to talk to me because they're obviously just bored out here. Some kid on a bike. Probably don't see a lot of cocky white people walking around. But I was thinking like I must be reinforcing like the cartoon stereotypes about foreigners. Like any time I was just think a ping pong club ping pong club had a character in it that is just a big dumb foreigner except he had muscles. You know, like when this kid tried to talk to me and all I can say is hello. Nice day, huh? Okay. See you later. It's like, am I even a human being? Am I even a real person? I must feel like a weird robot. Like you just see some fucking tall cocky idiot walking around who just spouts generic stereotypical English phrases at you and that's all he can say. You know? But I mean, that's what I am. That's what I do. But then I came upon a was like half a game center and half a bookstore. So that was kind of cool just to mosey through. Again, it's kind of nice to go a shorter distance and to not have a plan. You know, like if I do this thing tomorrow, that's my plan. That's my full on plan. Get up, get moving. Today, just go into this one park with the one, oh yeah, that reminds me. Did I walk past? Yeah, no, I'm a little out of the way. 35:00 I don't think I'll be seeing like number three, but that's fine. Whatever.

But yeah, not having such a distinct plan. You can just go in the game center slash bookstore. Just me and around. It's like, hey, whatever. It's all I'm doing today.

They had a thing, too, where it seems like they're renting manga, like renting comic books. The hyper media shop seems that way, too, which I found a couple more of those. That's definitely a chain. But I was like, that seems so weird. So it's not a library. It's not used books. Or is it, you know, is like, am I misunderstanding this? Are they really renting manga? Or is it, I tried to do the Google translate and in its awkward way. It seemed like maybe it was trying to sell used comics as opposed to rent them. But then a big bundle of comics was like $7. Where I just can't figure out because like used manga is pretty cheap in Japan, but it's not that cheap. Like a big brick of like eight volumes of something would be more than $7. Unless it's really old and unappealing. But $7 feels like a lot to rent manga. I don't know. I just couldn't really figure out. Is that really what's going on? Maybe.

I mean, I guess $7 actually isn't that bad.

Because to buy each of those things, they're like about five bucks, give or take.

And maybe it's better to rent them. I mean, maybe you read the whole great big crazy 18-volume manga series about, you know, fucking ancient emperors battling in the distant past. Maybe you don't even want to keep it anymore. Like then what? After you read it, well, you got to try to sell it back. Maybe it's better just to rent manga. Fucking read it. And then there you go. Bring it back. Anyway, just another little tiny pointless mystery that I didn't quite was not quite able to solve.

And yeah, then I got down here, found another hard off. Found fucking backup headphones. And found a hiking trail that again is just like man, it's the perfect type of hike. The hike between subway stations. It's way better than just hiking out into the woods and either not knowing where the heck you're going to end up.

Or just having to hike in a deliberate circle. Like when I was out by desifu and there was all those old people hiking. Like I just have no idea where that went on the map. There was just nothing.

I don't know even what to expect with that kind of hike. Does it go somewhere? Does it go nowhere? I don't know. Where these little like kind of intercity hikes are so cool because they're labeled on Google Maps. And if it's anything like the one I did last episode. Because of its proximity to the city and subway stations and stuff, it's probably going to be really well labeled and really well laid out and really easy. It's going to be great. There's even like a family mart right there, like right at the start of it. I'm going to go to that family mart. I'm going to load up. I'm going to hike to the other subway station. Fucking sweet. It's kind of like when I hiked from Shibuya to Itabashi. You know, like the city hike hiking through the city. Except this is a city hike that's a real hike. It is an actual hike over a mountain through the trees and the woods. But still from subway station to subway station. Again, just man, Japan. What a place. What a fucking place. So cool. So neat. Yeah, and pure distance-wise, I mean, I'm just judging by the size of things on Google Maps. Oh no, it's much bigger. Okay, so there's what it did yesterday from Desaifu to Umi. So this would be from Kasuga to Kurume. Yaut. It's way bigger. It's like triple. I might have to think about this. I don't know. That's really long. I mean, I'm sure if I did start early and I just hike straight through and I don't do a bunch of dick and around trying to get to the observatory and the falls, maybe I should do another option would be instead of hiking straight through to that station. I could just take the train to the station on the other end and already be near a chosen falls in the observatory. That sounds like a better idea, actually. I didn't realize how far this was. It's a really long hike. Yeah, that's terrifyingly long.

Yaut. Yeah, okay. I'm starting to get a little better with Google Maps stuff. 40:00 25 kilometers. Yeah, that's too far. That's not happening.

I'm not saying I couldn't do it, but that'd be one of these like fucking wake up at 7am type of shit. And I just don't want to do that. Let's just be honest. If it was summertime and I had more sunlight, but that's still, that's really long. That's twice as long as what I would consider a reasonable day hike.

At my old, broken down knee level of existence. But yeah, still, I still inadvertently discovered some stuff. This idea of taking the train around to the back. I'm just trying to get to a chosen falls. Oh, yeah, that's the one last thing I'll say. Before I sign off, now that I'm kind of back in civilization and we're back to cars and stuff.

I was mentioning last episode with the Ono Castle Ruins. I was like, yeah, you know, I can go on YouTube later and take a look and see if there's anything obvious that I missed. So I didn't look very hard. I basically just searched on YouTube one time, just Ono Castle Ruins, Fukuoka. So there might be maybe that mountain is called something else. Maybe there's a better term. But nothing came up. And I was just like, oh, fuck. I mean, I guess that makes sense. Like, what the hell even is this? I don't know. It just happened to be nearby where I was. But that's interesting. If true, if indeed there's nobody who's done a big Let's Walk through this area. YouTube video yet.

Is that sometimes it feels like every little inch of Japan has been covered. You know, you can find certain neighborhoods even here in Fukuoka. Where just as an experiment, I was like, let's try to find that one family mart where I met up with Brad that one time. Here's somebody walking down from this direction. Here's somebody walking from the other direction. Here's somebody walking at night. You know, like it's just, it seems crazy. You can just pick a neighborhood in Tokyo especially. But in a lot of places of Japan, pick your time a day, pick your preferred weather. Somebody will have a walking video where they're just walking around. But there's still so many places where there's nothing. Nobody has done that yet. I don't think I'm gonna. I'm an audio fucking guy. But that's interesting. Interesting to note.

You know, a lot of the world is charted. Obviously it's all officially charted. But even just in that casual way of just like, oh, just a YouTube video about fucking walking around. It feels like a lot of stuff has been chronicled, but there's a lot of stuff that has not.

So you know, just something to think about. All right, I'm back into proper car fucking civilization now. I'm gonna go walk home and I'm gonna make plans for tomorrow. So join me next episode and see what those plans are if all goes well.

Maybe there will be a waterfall, which I will. Pathetically attempt to describe and probably you'll just hear water sounds.

But that's what we're doing here. That's what we got. If I make it to the waterfall at all, we'll call that a mega success.

Alright, one last thing I want to bring up before I end this episode. It's a bit later now. The sun is down, but I'm almost back home. The ever-present planes are flying overhead. But I thought this was kind of interesting. I guess I wanted to mention first briefly. When I got back home yesterday after my epic hike and I stopped in the Kumbini to grab whatever I was going to eat that night, I did kind of think after that long-ass hike and I was kind of tired because I woke up early. I was like, yeah, fuck it. I should just buy a drink tonight. Why not? What's one drink in a hurry? And I picked up the Strong Zero because Strong Zero is like, it's like the meme for me anyway because there's a wrestling tag team that has a finisher called the Strong Zero because they used to wrestle in Japan. And the first drink I ever tried in Japan near Nakatabashi Station was the Strong Zero from a 7-11 and I couldn't believe how much one drink fucking screwed with my head. So I went so far as to pick up the big tall can of 9% Strong Zero. But then I think that getting sick in Chiba, throwing up in the toilet all night, I think that really stuck with me because I started thinking like, just imagine what's it going to feel like when you get to the end of this can, this 45:00 gigantic 9% can. Like 9%, that's crazy. Canada's pretty known for Strong Alcohol. And it's not fucking 9%. So I was imagining it and I'm like, it's not going to feel good. I'm not going to be happy to be walking around my apartment fucking dizzy from this fucking drink. So I put it back and got a normal sized small can of 5%, some kind of lemon thing.