macroblog

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)

2025

2024

2023

2022

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

πŸšƒπŸšžπŸšŒπŸšŽπŸš πŸšžπŸšŽπŸšŒπŸšƒ

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 ε€§εΉ³ε’Œη₯ˆεΏ΅ε‘”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...

9.12

how to beat the crowds at the world's busiest mountain

while doing some japan mountain research recently, i stumbled upon this interesting fact: mt. takao west of tokyo is the world's most popular mountain, with over 2.5 million annual climbers. i suppose that should come as no surprise considering it's one of the closest hiking spots to the world's most populous metropolis, but it was a little surprising to me because it didn't track at all with my own experience. when i went there the other day with my friends on a whim, it was almost abandoned...

9.3

so, i went drinking in Akihabara with a guy from neocities and somehow ended up the next morning at Comiket

just prior to my japan trip, i exchanged a couple emails with this guy shibs, who runs a site hosted on neocities called uchuudenpa. i originally reached out because he had a post on his site about travelling in japan that resonated with me, i was trying to approach my upcoming trip with a similar attitude. once i actually arrived in the country, the possibility of a meetup naturally arose in our email chain...

8.28

gooning in Japan Airlines Business Class

despite being a loyal alaska airlines flyer for over five years, i've actually never been in any of alaska's airport lounges, the free entry requirements are quite stringent because they really want people to pony up for a day pass or lounge membership. i did try to get in once after getting upgraded to first class...

8.10

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