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Disclaimer: this travel story was written seven years after
the fact and may include poetically licensed content. e.g. I may not have walked in the rain in Hachinohe, but I
certainly have fond memories of doing so.
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The Japanese bathroom presents the gaijin with some interesting
equipment. You get a little wooden pail, a long-handled scrubbing brush and a stool. The idea is to wash yourself before getting
into the 38C hot tub, nude of course. And a couple of Japanese boys in the wash area were more than a little curious about
the size of my travel package.
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The Peach Farm
At night Yukiko's dad and I used to laze around on the tatami
floor mats watching the baseball on TV, eating pickles and burping loudly while the women prepared food and brought cold beers.
And it was all quite culturally acceptable. I remember looking dreamily out the window at the alpine sunset and wondering
how long the citizenship application would take. 'Yeah', I thought, 'I could grow peaches.'
Rugby in the Japanese Alps
We stopped at a ski village called Sugadaira. In winter I expect
it looks like the gingerbread village that it is. In summer though the ski lodges accommodate Japan's schoolboy Rugby players
on their summer Rugby camps. Carved into the mountainsides are dirt rugby fields (presumably carparks in winter). And the
schoolboys in their white football socks ruck and maul in the dust.
Fuji-san
Most mountains in Japan get the suffix yama, meaning mountain.
Japan's highest peak gets treated like people. Fuji-san is ideally suited to be Japan's highest peak because of its
height, but also its perfection. And in Japan, perfection sells. Fuji is actually a volcano and stands 3,776 meters high.
There's an old saying in Japan that if you see Fuji-san then you will return to Japan one day. There are also some
geologists who have an old saying that volcanoes erupt from time to time.
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