Japan Exodus -Day 33: The Tough Decisions In Life

Good morning! You know, although I keep the same tent routine everyday more or less, my sleep patterns and the way I feel really vary when I wake up in the morning. The weather, noise pollution, temperature, isolation, and early morning town chimes all play a part. For the most part, I feel OK. Sometimes I feel shitty, and other times, like this morning, I feel really good in meeting the morning.

Well, last things first. The spoon wing tips at the top were indeed used for spearing. Not ice cream but the fruit on it! Truth be told, I saw a kid order an ice cream float two tables to my left and I wanted the same thing after dinner. On the dessert menu, there were only four options and though I couldn't really read the entire order, I thought that what I had asked for was going to be the float. When this fruity parfait came done in front of me I was not disappointed, just wondered where I went wrong. The answer came on the back of the menu, where underneath the cafe ole and orange juice read the order for the ice cream float. Why this is not paired under the dessert menu is a question to vex me along for a few days, I am sure.  

Waking up on the late is not like waking up on the beach, but I'll take it! I see more fisher-people when I wake up on lakes and rivers, though this is the first time that I saw this type of long stick technique being applied.  

You can really see here how this pole (it has to be what, almost 8 meters long) is used to pick something up from the bottom of the lake. Whatever this is, its not a fishing pole. I waited around for a while hopping that given enough time they would pick up whatever they were fishing. Whatever it is that they are looking for, it sure did take a long time. 

Who knows, maybe he just got drunk and dropped his keys in the lake and is now trying to fish them back out.  

Somewhere between healthy and satisfying your immediate cravings, thats where the cyclists food range is. Vegetables, fruits, yogurt, lean meat are all taken in for the energy. I don't think that we would be very good at cycling all day if we only satisfied the cravings for cake and ice cream and sweet bread and cheeseburgers. At the same time, a little tempura doesn't hurt the normal body, even when its eaten for breakfast. For me, vegetable tempura is a great way to take in some much needed greens, purples, and whites of the vegetable kingdom and also satisfy that greasy, fried whatever crazing that comes and overrides almost every other thought. 

Can you guess what day it is? Laundry day! I tell ya, my laundry bag is ripe with stink and ready for a good reset. I try to get a good few days use out of each of my sets of clothes so I don't have to do laundry too often because I hate waiting. Today's wait was a little less tiresome because I completed a puzzle I started last week. In America we cal this "Sudoku" but in Japan the name is simply "Number's Game." 

Because cycling takes so much out of my body, it actually felt really good to switch things up and use the other parts of my brain for a bit and do some hard core logic deduction. 

If you read my earlier post on how script in Japan can be read from different directions or heard me say it in person, you know that when people say Japanese is difficult, I feel that they are referring to reading versus speaking. Speaking is easy. Almost all the verbs are conjugated the same and there is only two tenses. Japanese writing is set apart.

This is a rode sign so there is a fairly good chance that we will read from left to right. And when we look at the first symbol we see that its fairly easy, its the sing for "big." 大 is a symbol that is supposed to represent a person with the arms stretched out, as to imply that there is indeed something big being communicated. This is one of the first and also fairly frequent kanji used. You even see it on menus to indicated a larger size portion. Then, 山 or which means mountain. Again, a very common symbol pronounced "yama."

And if you asked a well versed Japanese citizen what 大 and山 read as, they would likely say "o" and "yama." But, Japanese symbols have at least two pronunciations. And while pairing 大 and山 could be read as "Oyama," it is not - in this situation. At that is really the key to reading Japanese. Things could be read one way, or another way, you really just have to have enough experience to know how to read the symbols the way they are meant to be read. This is certainly one of those "you just have to memorize it" situations that just happens to be spread across every one of the 10,000+ characters. So, get studying. 

For the curious, you can read the appropriate translation of this mountain as Dai (大) and zen (大) in the Roman alphabet underneath the Japanese. Mt. Daizen is very popular with the ski and snowboarding crowds during winter time. 

What awaits for people at the top of one of Daizen's sibling mountain ridges? A stand alone ramen shop to keep you warm. I was not hungry (for once) enough to stop although the shop was open. Quick tip: if you see the banners hanging from in front of the shop, the place is open! When closing time comes, the banners are removed and tucked inside. 

And hey! I met another cyclist along the way today! Fun cat, I was happy to see him going the same way as me =) Too bad that he will be continuing along the northern ridge, a shame really because that is where I had been cycling too. However, I'll be heading south in the next day or two, so I told him that maybe we would meet up along the way if we could. We exchanged photos and contact info and did cycle while talking for a good forty minutes before we had to split up. He was off to an onsen, and I a little further more.

At this point, I have my sights on the legendary Tottori sand dunes. California has beaches, but giant sand mountains it does not. There are some in Colorado I think where my sister lives, we visited them years ago when we took a trip around the South-West states; that was a lot of fun. 

While I had my sights on the sand dunes, I unexpectedly came across a lake and town named Hawai. I mean, how cool is that! I really want to camp here tonight and make up the extra 20 km tomorrow just to say that I got to sleep in Hawai and maybe trick some people. 

Really, camping here would be an additional cool experience because this little niche along the side of the road turns out to be the inverse of the Hawai'i State back in the Pacific. Those are a string of islands surrounded by thousands of kilometers of ocean water. This little place where I am contemplating staying is a lots of land surrounding a little lake.  

So, the time has come yet again to make a decision in life. I could stay here along another river and revel in the idea of Hawai in Japan, or continue on an extra 20 kilometers (of which I feel fit enough to ride out) into the dunes of Tottori. 

Personal note: The temptation to brag is strong at the moment. When my options in life lay in a choice between Hawai or the Tottori sand dunes - that is, between cool or cooler - I have to be doing something right. Find out where next time ;)

Much love,

-A