suboptimalism

there are many different blogging styles, personally i prefer to sporadically write long grandiose semi-autobiographical posts, integrating tangential rambles as i see fit. overall i hope to keep things interesting both for me and for you, since boring writing is written bored, i won't waste time with any quotidian diary posts like "i went to the store and bought a thing", every post here will try to be at least as interesting as "i accidentally discovered a new species of crustacean" or "i went to an odd restaurant" or "i got marooned on the moon" or "dang the united inflight magazine is kinda wacky", the kind of stuff i might still be recounting/ranting about to people at a bar in ten years. everything is guaranteed to be at least 90% true, certain details have been changed to protect individuals involved and to make me appear cooler (and my enemies less so).

archive (chrono)

2026

2025

2024

2023

2022

2025 japan trip wrap-up

days: 57 (8/6-10/1)
posts: 17
word count: 70,219
money spent: i will not be adding this up...

2.27

lost in transition

somewhere up in tohoku, i breached the "danger zone" of my remaining line of credit, in fact one evening i even had to perform an emergency capital infusion lest my card get declined trying to book accomodations for the night resigned, in my safely-secured business hotel room that night, i finally sealed my fate and booked my flight out of japan...

2.19

Extreme Cave Raiders: Quest for the Pumpkin Stone

passing through koriyama station during one of the many transfers required on my tohoku main line local train odyssey from ueno to sendai, my eye was caught by a sun-stained advertisement for a regional attraction, abukuma cave. if it isn't yet abundantly clear, i'm something of a stimulation-seeker when it comes to my nature excursions...

1.29

legend of the sendai scooter maniac

everyone has their japan travel fantasies; mine was to ride one of those little scooters through the bucolic japanese countryside, preferably on a narrow road flanked by bright green rice paddies. though i am in no way trained, qualified, or endorsed to ride any variety of motorized two-wheeled vehicle...

1.24

my honorary completion of the amagami stamp rally

i hadn't been making my way back to tokyo along the tokaido for no reason, what had kicked off that trip was something that had happened the same day of my too-long inuyama castle visit and my too-brief meiji mura tour: i had accepted an invite from shibs to accompany him and an old school friend on a little trip to choshi the next weekend...

1.22

INTERMISSION: lord forgive me but its time to go back to tha old me

kyou was another sugoi day in nippon. first, i went to book-off to browse used manga as usual...

11.28

mainlining tokaido

following the near-disaster on the nakasendo, it was clear that in order to keep up this trip i'd have to make a pit stop in tokyo sooner rather than later in order to shed the additional pack weight i'd picked up along my journey. though i could always get to tokyo by going back down the nakasendo in the opposite direction, i was now within close proximity of another historic road leading back to tokyo: the tokaido...

11.18

hiking the historic nakasendo with my new gf

upon escaping matsumoto, i headed down towards the only thing in the area i had left on my to-do list: back to the nakasendo. i was eager for a chance at redemption after having completely failed to hike it over usui pass into karuizawa, where instead we'd ended up on a combination of the old usui pass rail line through the tunnels and the curvy historic route 18 road. but usui pass was not the only segment of the nakasendo i had on my list...

11.10

confessions of the matsumoto bridge troll

for my friend's last night in japan, we splurged a little and stayed at a spa resort, by which i mean "shinshu health land", an aging bathhouse-centered hotel a few stops south of matsumoto. it's possibly the least-fashionable hotel in the entire matsumoto basin, the interior was a flawless time capsule of the nineties...

10.30

🚃🚞🚌🚎🚠🚞🚎🚌🚃

10.23

maybe this was "noto" such a good idea

after kanazawa oktoberfest, we went back to the station, retrieved our bags, and caught the local train for toyama, where we were going to stay the night. the next day was going to be climactic, the plan was that i was finally going to do something big that i had been putting off for a long time: i was going to drive in japan for the first time ever...

10.21

crashing an "authentic" japanese matsuri

you might think that after our grueling hike up usui pass to karuizawa, we'd stay the night there. unfortunately, karuizawa is a hot resort destination for japanese tourists and staying there is pretty expensive, plus we had places to be, so we ended up staying the night at a different ka-zawa, kanazawa. "but wait, that is almost 300km away on the other side of two mountain ranges!"...

10.15

the 183 curves of usui pass

it felt like i'd barely done anything in japan before i suddenly found myself rushing back to tokyo to find somewhere else to store my suitcase, i could no longer keep it at my friends' airbnb because they were leaving, which meant that i was officially one month into the trip. i had known since the start that i was going to be playing the long game so i hadn't really been in a hurry to get moving, i didn't really care that i had basically squandered my first twenty days in japan just farting around in tokyo...

10.12

pilgrimage to the holy tower

if i had to nominate a "final boss" of japanese towers (if it is not yet clear, i am something of an authority on them), it would be the 大平和祈念塔だいへいわきねんとう (lit. "Great Peace Prayer Tower"), or as i have sometimes seen it called for short, the "PL Tower". for one, it's obscure, it never shows up in sightseeing guides and the local tourism promotion office won't even mention it...

9.26

AROUND THE KYUSHU

going back to japan from korea, i did not book my return flight to tokyo like everyone else. instead, i took advantage of the opportunity to conveniently (and cheaply) reposition myself to miyazaki prefecture in kyushu, the southern reaches of japan. there aren’t really any big attractions to entice the run-of-the-mill tourist in far-flung miyazaki, one of japan’s poorest and most remote prefectures, but it did have something i’ve wanted to visit ever since i heard of it...

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