Friday came and it was time to leave early. I would be meeting with penpal east of Tokyo and while trains don't take THAT long there there's long gaps between trains. And I wanted some spare time in case I fail train transfer(of which there would be 4 in the way...). So I had to wake up and leave early to make sure I'm on time. Like hell I will be late when meeting with somebody, especially for the first time.
Quiet place I had got. Though population is still good 5 times of my home town! Felt quite nice place actually. Lack of frequent trains could be bit of an issue but other than that I don't think living here would be all that bad. Tokyo is still decent distance away for some weekend fun and it's not mega crowded which suits me more than Shinjuku rush hour.
I had some time to kill so spotting this Torii gate off I was to search for the shrine.
As usual that shrine was under some serious climbing effort.
All in all quite small town-shrine. Don't think they give seals so my growing collection remained as it was
After this I met with the person I was to meet and off we went. First port of business was basically car park from which was nice view to river.
After that we headed for Katori shrine.
That's me standing. Bit far but important thing is that the torii shows. I know what I look like :)
It was hot day so tree covered pathway was great.
For a while I thought this must be fake tortoise. Didn't move a millimeter for a long long time. Then head moved a bit.
I don't think I have seen that sort of colourful pattern before so despite being such a small area I still saw something new. Nice.
With this next port of call was museum of Ino Tadataka. Not that well known by foreigners(never heard of him either!) but he's famous in Japan for being first one to make accurate maps of Japan. By walking it all over...
We then walked around the village itself. Quite a traditional looking place. Canal inside reminded me bit of Warp Station Edo that I visited 2 years ago. We found on way little used book store so I went in and asked out of moments inspiration from the lady running the shop if they had any books regarding the Shikoku pilgrimate that I'm planning to take. Sure enough she found quickly three and not sure which might be best I took them all. Only about 3-4e per book anyway.
Wonder if I was her first foreign customer? This place doesn't look like one that attracts foreign tourist all that much! And all foreigners don't read Japanese.
That's the Semi(ciceda) I have been hearing all this time. Saw these before but didn't realize what they were
Warp station Edo deja-vu!
First town was explored through so we then headed to Narita to see the Narita-san. Sounds more like mountain(san) but was actually a temple. Then I remembered all temples have two names, one ending with kanji for temple(in these cases pronounced ji) and one that ends with mountain(san).
All in all it was quite a pleasant day with a good company. He also was generous enough to drive me to my friends place with his car. Train would have been bit inconvenient as both places aren't exactly train hubs so I would need to be going far back toward Tokyo before looping back to almost same direction.
Thank you very much!
However things got turn into bit scary when we separated our ways. He left in his car and then I started to wonder where's my phone? Phone? Hello! Where are you! It was not with me! I panicked that it must have been left to the car! Now what? I couldn't contact him easily, I had meeting with friend real soon and if I couldn't somehow remember and find meeting place I would have no real way to contact them! Our plans for tonight and tomorrow were in jeopardy! I have never been quite in this level of panic before. Only good thing was I wasn't COMPLETELY screwed as I COULD still get back to hotel and contact people from laptop but that would put serious spanner to plans with friends.
I was so shaken up that moving around in confusion at one point I was walking backward, turned to look where I was going and then ran into smallish piece of asphalt they have on parking pieces. Resulted in fall to ground and I'm softer than asphalt so resulted with right knee having blood-bleeding scratches and smaller ones on right hand.
This is why you look forward when you move!
However happy end to the story as as it turns out I DID have phone with me. I just had somehow stuffed it into backbag rather than where it usually was...PHEW! Oh and met with friend before finding that out. I also learned out there would have been easy way to get phone back(before we found out I still HAD phone with me). Express delivery which is delivered even on weekends delivered so that the receiver pays it. Good to know in future. Never heard postal service being open in weekends but Japan is bit more advanced than Finland in this regard.
Rest of the night was spent happily eating, drinking and talking about this and that about anything that came to mind. My Fuji mountain climb featured heavily as did Awaodori. I was also shown old tv program featuring that festival. Was quite interesting. Especially when they showed one of the most legendary currently performing female dance dancer demonstrating the dance in slow motion.
Hard to see at first view but it's amazing how well controlled hand and leg movements are. And head doesn't waver at all. It stands straight.
This continued past midnight until when we retired to bed. Wake up would be around 5am.
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