Up to something

March 26th, 2009

A few years ago I was in a very depressed state. Not leaving the house, playing video games 12-18 hours a day and drinking myself to sleep. During this time I had a conversation with my brother about a seemingly unrelated topic, why I find some people hard to talk to. I was struggling to figure out what it was that made conversations flow with some people and not others. I could not understand why I often had nothing to say to people I shared a lot of views with. On the other hand some people I had absolutely nothing in common with I could talk for hours and stay engaged. If it’s not common ground that makes someone interesting to me, what is it? Why do I find that many people are hard to talk to.

My brother just looked at me and said “It’s because they are not up to something”. When he said that something clicked and the concept of being up to something has dominated my life since. If you are not doing anything interesting, you have nothing interesting to talk about.

Now the concept of “up to something” is intuitive to me but a bit hard to explain. If I were to put it into one sentence, being up to something is actively doing something extraordinary in your life you are passionate about. One caveat is the “something” can’t just be interacting with a vanilla form of entertainment like movies or in my case video games, that’s not extraordinary. Creating video games or movies can certainly be something, just not playing or watching them.

Given my introduction about depression, you might be wondering how being up to something relates. During that conversation I also realized there is an inverse relation between people who tell me they are depressed and people who are up to something. Simply put, people who are depressed are not up to something. As XKCD awesomely pointed out recently there is a difference between correlation and causation (read the moue over text).  I am pointing out a correlation I have noticed in my life. All I can give you on this is the empirical evidence of what has and has not worked for me.

Some examples from my own life; I don’t think I told him at the time but out of this talk I had with my brother I decided I was going to be up to something with my life. The first thing I did is look at my life and what was the most upsetting to me and decided I was going to be up to fixing them. They were relationship and college degree. Relationship is such a difficult subject so I am going to shelf it for a future post.

At the time this conversation took place I was living in Tucson. My brother offered to let me live with him so I could afford to work half time and go back to college. So I moved up to Phoenix and went back to college to get my degree. About three weeks into summer school I was as depressed as ever and even more upset because my theory about being up to something to make me happy had failed.

The truth is that the theory had not failed me, I had failed to be up to something. It turns out I hate college. I love learning, I just hate all the hoops you have to jump through like tests. I eventually came to realize that while finishing my degree is a good idea, it’s not something I am passionate about, thus is not being up to something.

I then thought back to one of the happiest times in my adult life. I started a weekly internet radio show out of my house with live DJs called AZSessions that turned into a DJ crew down in Tucson. So I then rallied some of my excellent friends to start a DJ crew and get a weekly gig here in Phoenix. I had something to look forward to and instead of focusing on what I was not happy about, I had something fun to focus my energy on. Just going out to look for the venue, talking to people and practicing DJing lit me up. It was the first time I had been really happy for any length of time in years. We of course eventually found a place to have a weekly and had an awesome run there. During this I also noticed I was having exciting and interesting conversation with people. People starting being excited to see me to hear about my last DJ gig and started to share what their passions are. I was lying in bed at 3am after we had our opening night unable to sleep totaly lit up. The thought came to me, I had done it! I was up to something and more then that, I was happy.

Unfortunately after a while the weekly was no longer extraordinary. It was really a lot of work and eventually turned into a kind of super low paying job. While I was passionate about DJing still, the weekly gig did not light me up anymore. It was time to find something new to be up to, I needed a bigger game. So I thought to myself, I have always wanted to travel the world.

I don’t think I need to paint the picture of how going on a world trip is being up to something. What I do want to say is the being up to the trip started nine months before I hopped on the first plane, the moment I decided to go. As soon as I decided to go and started talking to be about it I was back fully engaged in life and happy as a pickle. That something kept me happy and doing interesting things for eighteen months.

Now I am back and have a few new interesting things in the works. I will save the details for a future post. The point I want people to take away from this post is that when you are feeling down for an extended period of time you might want to ask your self, am I up to something?

Bunches of photos uploaded

March 16th, 2009

The last 5 albums on my parties page are my last 5 weekends. Check them out at http://ellermann.net/gallery2/v/trevors-photos/Parties/

I have a petty big blog post I have been working on that should be done in the enxt few days as well.

More photos from the trip

March 3rd, 2009

Vanya just sent me links to his photos from AU and NZ and some of them are awesome. Check them out at.

http://www.vjc.com/vanya/photos/

Some crazy stuff going on in my life, a better update coming in the next few days.

The return

February 17th, 2009

It’s been a month since I came home now and this month has been the most intense, difficult and in many ways wonderful time of the entire trip.

The first thing I did when I stepped off the plane from Japan was turn on my phone to contact my ride from the airport. It immediately informs me I have a voice mail so after contacting my ride I check it. I have exactly one message. It’s a doctors office informing me I have been sent to collections over a bill my insurance company neglected to pay from last June. That was a large and rather abrupt dose of reality for me. It turns out that they call their billing department “collections” to scare people into paying, not cool. I didn’t find that out for about five days though.

I spent the next couple days hanging out in LA with my brother and sister in law. It was awesome to spend time with them but it was a challenge to leave the house. I have heard of reverse culture shock but was not prepared for how hard it would hit me.

I felt myself fall almost immediately back into old routines of ways to escape from the world from when I was severely depressed a few years ago. All I wanted to do was sit and watch TV with my sister in law and play games with my brother. I was struggling to do anything that involved being engaged in life like check and respond to emails or phone calls. When you leave the country for the majority of a year there is a ton to deal with when you get back, and I could not even get started.

My good friend Curtis is the original reason I went on this trip. He suggested it but ended up making the right choice to finish his degree instead. He has was struggling with some stuff in life, part of some I think was regretting not going with me. After a few days with my brother and sister in law I went to visit him in Oregon and hang out. I started to make some of the necessary calls, about one a day but still playing games and watching movies was about all I could handle. I even declined a party invite with a bunch of attractive drama girls to stay home and watch a movie.

It’s good I had this transition time where I will still kind of traveling but staying with family and in the US. I flew out of Oregon and got back to Phoenix on a Sunday night. Monday morning my father drove up, picked me and most of my storage unit up and moved me down to Tucson, that afternoon I went to work. On Sunday I was a nomad traveling around the world with no real obligations. On Monday I moved in with my parents and borrowed their car to go back to my full time job. The only way I can think to describe the shock of this is the emotional equivalent of jumping into a frozen over lake and trying to tread water. It was a little intense.

The following week I ended up taking Friday off from work and going to a conference in California called Bil. (http://bilconference.com) As soon as I was in the car leaving Tucson a wave of relief washed over me. I was traveling again, even if it was just a road trip for the weekend. The conference it’s self was awesome and I met a ton of awesome people. They are all up to interesting things and I look forward to playing with them in the future. There are some smart cookies out there in the world. I spent most of the conference volunteering and helping out which was a blast.

A week later I started my “new 20s”. My birthday came on a very auspicious day. Not only was in Friday the 13th, it was 1234567890 in Unix time on my birthday. I am taking this as a good sign for the next thirty years to come. It’s pretty much coming true. The weekend was great. I had several DJ gigs, met more awesome people at my favorite house party of the year I DJ at and started training in cryonics.

Oh yeah, I am going to be on a remote cryonics team as a side job. No really, I am going to fly around the country and possibly the world starting the process of freezing people to preserve them to be brought back to life in the future. I got invited to start doing cryonics jobs for Alcor (http://www.alcor.org/). I am super psyched for this adventure, I can’t wait for my first case.

So it’s a month later and I’m living in Tucson and working at the U of A full time again. I’m starting to feel better about settling back into the potentially mundane life of a salary worker. I have reconnected with most my friends and family. I really missed my people and it’s wonderful to see them again. Also, I figgure spending my free time flying around the world and putting people on ice should keep life interesting and full of adventure. I am moving back into my own house in a week or so with my old college roommate which should be fun. Everything is slowly working out Life’s getting back on track.

I have decided to keep this blog going. I have been chewing on blog post after blog post since I got back. I don’t know why I felt constrained to keep it to the trip but I am over that. It may not be as frequent as while I was traveling. So to all of you people who have been keeping up with my trip, it’s good to be back among you, I missed you. To all of you folks I have met on my journey, now I miss you a ton instead!

Japan photos finally uploaded, including the magical forest of Yakushima!

January 20th, 2009

I finally uploaded my last batch of 300+ photos from Japan.

http://ellermann.net/gallery2/v/trevors-photos/WorldTrip/Japan4/

The photos from the forest of Yakushima I talked about start on page 3

I am convinced that the Japanese are Elves

January 20th, 2009

Ok, not literally but I think they are what elves were modeled after. My theory is that a long time ago a westerner went to Japan, spent a substantial amount of time engaged with the Japanese then went home and wrote a fiction novel with an “Elf” character or race modeled after them.

I came up this theory while reading the latest Eragon novel (don’t bother) in Japan. The Eragon series lacks originality and uses every cliché about fantasy creatures there is, especially elves. So it’s aggregation of legends about elves make it the perfect thing to compare the Japanese against.

I was on a subway reading and I looked up and this beautiful girl with ears sticking out and kind of pointy was standing in front of me. The thought just kind of hit me “Holy crap it’s an elf!” I did not know this until I spent some time there but one of the fairly common physical attributes is ears that stick out. Add that to the Asian eyes, small mouth, small nose and skinny body Japanese youth have and you have the physical description of an elf. Many of them are stunningly beautiful and it’s hard to look away from them, much like elves are described as well.

Now think about the description of the Elven language and listen to someone speaking Japanese. It’s one of the strangest and hard to understand and learn languages there is. Not to mention the writing is totally unintelligible to westerners and I can see how it might look like runes.

Then I started thinking about the legends of elves. Much like the Japanese they have strange customs and traditions, many of which make no sense to us westerners. The Japanese are suspicious of strangers but always very ready to welcome and like them. When is the last time you read about an elf that did not involve bowing? The elves take being polite and formal to an extreme just like the Japanese. The elves always love to sing, Karaoke anyone?

About the elves relationship with nature; the Japanese are at the forefront of conservation and clean living. It is illegal not to recycle plastic, glass and paper in Japan. The water that refills toilets in Japan come out of a little faucet on top o f the toilet so you can wash your hands with it to conserve water. There is no litter in Japan. The Japanese put up shrines to old trees and other parts of nature and worship them. I have never encountered a culture more in love with nature then the Japanese. The landscape that the Japanese live in is outstanding. Just read my post about Yakushima if you want to imagine where the elves might live.

Diet is always mentioned with the elves too. Elves are usually portrayed as vegetarian or possible they eat fish. Until the recent invasion of western culture in Japan this describes the Japanese diet exactly. And elves live longer then humans much like the Japanese as compared to westerners.

The elves are such perfectionists that the products elves make are always talked about how long they last. The sword that never needs sharpening, the cloak that does not snag, the food that keeps fresh for months, etc. That conjure images of the automobile industry of the 70s for anyone? Japanese cars that were much higher quality and lasted longer then western cars. When the Japanese decide to make something they come out with a superior product ever time. There are thousands of examples of this all over Japan.

And last but not least are the skills of elves. The elves walk quietly, appear out of nowhere, can drop from heights, are master swordsmen and have incredible grace and dexterity. All I have to say to that is Ninja.

There are two things I can’t account for. One is Santa’s elves but Christianity is based on stealing ideas and perverting them so that’s not surprising. The other is that elves are always portrayed as tall and I think this is just authors taking a liberty for the sake of story telling, or maybe they were just very short.

For me describing Japan as the land of the elves is surprisingly accurate. I am always enthralled by descriptions of elves and Japan, and Japan lived up to it. The people are magical and overwhelmingly happy when you are interacting with them. I love Japan, especially for it’s people. But I always felt weird and out of place, like an outsider. They are adorable and fun and cute and happy and firendly, but I don’t think I could ever live among them for an extended period of time. A year maybe, but I doubt I could make a life there. I would always feel like an outsider, never quite accepted into their culture. None the less I feel drawn to go back.

Yakushima: Isle of view

January 12th, 2009

As one travels they meet a ton of people, mostly fellow travelers. When you are hanging out with another traveler the topic invariable turns to where you have been, favorite places, etc. When people would ask me where the most beautiful nature I had seen was, I would say the south island of New Zealand. As anyone who has seen lord of the rings knows, NZ is gorgeous. I have now revised the most beautiful place I have been to Yakushima. This island knocked my socks off.

Yakushima is an island just south of Kyushu (The South Western of the two islands that make up the main body of Japan). It takes two hours by ferry to get there. The island gets more rain then any other place in Japan. The island has some of the oldest trees in the world including huge ceder and oak trees that are thousands of years old. Much of the island is covered in this green moss that in some places is two inches thick. The water is pure and it’s safe to drink strait out of any of the streams. There are onsen (hot springs) all over the island that the locals bathe in. I sat in one for maybe three minutes before I nearly passed out from the heat, it was awesome. There is of course an amazing waterfall as well. In short, Yakushima is amazing but the best part is at the top.

I had originally only planned to stay two nights but as soon as I got to the hostel I extended that a night, which was the longest amount of time I could and still use my rail pass to get back to Tokyo. On my first day there I rode the bus around the perimeter checking out the Onsen and Waterfall. The sun was shining and it was an incredibly relaxing day full of serene beauty.

Day two I set off to see a forest I have loved for over ten years but did not know really existed until a few weeks ago (Thanks Tarro). It had started raining that night but I was not about to let that stop me from seeing Mononoke forst so I hopped on the 10am bus up the mountain. By the time you get to where the trail starts for the forest you are deep inside the clouds and it’s totally misty and hard to see, which adds an awesome effect to this magical forest.

Thanks to the rain, after leaving the trail head I did not see any other people for the first hour of my hike. After an hour I came across this public cabin type place and decided to stop for a snack and get our of the sprinkling rain for a bit. There were a few people there when I got there and shortly after I got there I was handed a much appreciated cup of hot coco. I chat with the Japanese a little until they took off. While finishing my coco an antelope came up to check me out. We sat there checking each other out for probably ten minutes before another pair of Japanese showed up. They were a girl from Tokyo on holiday and her guide. I ended up chatting with them for almost an hour over coffee while taking in the scenery. The guide gave me directions to the look out rock in the forest so I took off in search of it.

After the road house I entered the area that is the actual “Mononoke forest”. I wish I knew how to put to words how amazing this place is. It was deep in fog and still breathtakingly beautiful. In this forest I came across antelope every ten minutes or so. To get up to the look out rock you have to hop on stones in a river and climb up this crazy slope with barely a trail. Getting there was an adventure in it’s self. When I finally got past the tree obstructing the rock, and stepped out on the ledge I was so stunned I let out a loud “Whoa!” Unless you walked to the edge of the rock to look down all you could see was a wall of thick white fog. It reminded me of one of those fantasy movies where someone walks up a mountain to talk to or maybe do battle with a god. The sound of the wind whipping across the forest was intense. It was eerie and awesome.

I hung out on this rock for maybe a half our just in awe when over about a minutes time the fog left. A clearing just swept across the valley and I could see everything below. Standing on that rock alone, I started laughing and cheering and even a little jumping up and down. I blame it on the wind but I had to clear the water from my eyes more then once. I have never felt so moved by beauty as in this moment. I love it when nature puts on a show for me.

Humans have made some amazing and beautiful things but mother nature wins, hands down. If you have seen Mononoke, this rock is where the mother wolf hang out overlooking the forest. Many call this forest Miazaki’s muse, I now know why. This was one of the most spiritual experiences of my life.

I could have hung out and explored this forest for much longer but it was getting cold and I was starting to be at risk of missing the last bus off the mountain. So I left the look out rock. I’m not sure my feet touched the ground on the way down. I was so high from the experience I think I just floated down the mountain.

As I got to the bottom of the trail head I ran back into the pair that gave me the coffee. They offered me a ride down the mountain so I did not have to deal with the bus, which was very kind. When I got to the hostel I just laid in my bed listening to music with my eyes closed dreaming about this forest. I am in love with Yakushima.

I only left here a few days ago but I am drawn to go back. I will return to this island when it warm and backpack and camp in the forest.

And seriously, how nice are the Japanese. I got not one but two cups of warm beverage an hours hike up a mountain in the winter rain. Then they give me a ride going about twenty minutes out of their way to drop me off at my hostel.

Since it was totally foggy my photos don’t do the place justice. I also can’t uploaded them right now, hopefully tomorrow. Fortunately Google image search has tons of great shots. Below is the link. I just want to say that these are not altered photos, the place really looks like this.

http://images.google.com/images?q=yakushima

I am now back in Tokyo for the rest of my time in Japan. I head back to LA on the 16th and PHX on the 25th.

Note: Read the title of this post out loud.

Catching up AKA The longest blog post ever!

January 5th, 2009

Wow has it really been since X-Mas since I wrote last? I guess that means I am having fun. Last time I wrote I was of two minds about how I felt about Japan. I think I just had to get over the culture shock and re normalize my economic sense. Since then I have come to like the country much better. It seems to be feeling the same way about me. For example I just had the girls soccer team of a local high school escort me everywhere in Kagoshima but te hostel I was trying to go to. But I get ahead of myself.

Nara is a cool town with tons of character, amazing temples and most important of all, awesome couch surfers. I went there and stayed at a hostel the first night. Same deal with curfew and all of that. But they did have free WiFi, which I used to check out the area for CS. I happened to notice that a local CSer named Mayumi owns a cafe and is hosting a NYE party. So I decided to stop in to say hi and she ended up inviting me to stay for dinner.

Needless to say dinner was awesome and I met a ton of other cool Nara locals there. I stayed with her another night before I hopped down to meet a CSers in Kyoto for dinner, Jun. She showed me around that night but sadly I had to get back to my hotel for curfew. We ate sushi which was awesome but unfortunatly it seems to have made her sick, not awesome. The next day I met up with another CSer in Kyoto, Jerry. He helped me make good use of my JR pass that day and showed me all the major temples and shrines. I even got to see my first Zen rock garden. I crashed at his place, it was an excellent day.

The next day was even more excellent. It was NYE day and Jerry was going to take me to a place that served Whale for lunch. Unfortunately it was closed for the holiday so we went a sushi place instead. This was the most adventursome meal I have had in Japan. Not only did I defy death and eat the potentially deadly Fugu, I tried raw horse stomach smoked horse bacon and raw horse back fat too. It was quite yummy, with the exception of the back fat. They told me to keep chewing it until it was sweet. They sounded quite sincere but now I wonder if they just wanted to see a Gaijin make funny faces while chewing horse back fat.

That night we went back to Nara for NYE with Mayumi and friends. For dinner we had the traditional Japanese NYE dinner of tacos with guacamole. Ok so it’s not tradition but it was quite good, just like home cookin! After dinner we all went to a famous shrine for the “countdown” which was just hanging out in a line with hundreds of people until they start playing drums at midnight. It’s a big holiday for the Japanese and they all go to the shrine to make their first wish of the new year. Then we hopped over to the temple to make the first prayer to Buddha for the new year. I stopped to get my fortune, here is a summary of what it said. (There is a photo in the gallery if you would like to see it.)

No Luck:
Someone will betray you. Beware of fire and theft. You will become sick. I will lose a legal case. It is a bad time to make a trade. It is not a good time for me to travel. A person I have been waiting for will not come. I will not find a thing I lost. I will lose a competition.

Great.. Fortunately the Japanese believe that if you do not want the fortune you can tie it to this special rack and leave it behind so it will not affect you. Needless to say, I did so.

There were tons of other great CSers there. One cool cat in particular I met this night is Rushyan. I will let her blog speak for her at http://www.pathsofmoltenwax.blogspot.com/

The next day I took my hangover and left, Nara that is. I headed down to Hiroshima. This city is intense. I visited the peace park, A-Bomb dome, Nuclear museum and memorial. There is some amazing and hear wrenching stuff there. I did the museum last and by the end of it I had watery eyes. Nuclear weapons are seriously bad news. 340,000 people died in Hiroshima from the bomb that year, and they estimate that many more died from cancers and other effects of radiation in the following years. The largest hydrogen bomb ever tested was over 3,000 times as strong as the one dropped in Hiroshima. There are over 30,000 nuclar weapons in the world today, all ready to be used. What could the USA possible need 10,000 nuclear weapons for? (Russia has 15,000)

I highly recommend Hiroshima to everyone. The museum and memorial are not happy places but very powerful and worth the trip. The rest of the city on the other hand is a very happy. First off it’s amazing how this city has recovered from being totally destroyed sixty years ago. If not for the memorial I would not have any idea it had happened by looking at the city. The people are very nice and apparently hold no ill will towards Americans. They were in fact significantly nicer then in Tokyo. I really like Hiroshima and if I was not in a hurry to get maximum use out of my rail pass, I would spend a lot more time here.

I met a cool guy named Tarro in Hiroshima. He taught me a great new Japanese word, hitogomi. In Japanese hito means people and gomi means trash. They use this word to describe crowded places. The museum was hard to read the exhibits and I can see over everyone, every wall was three people deep. Hitogomi-people trash what a great description. That’s what I get for going on a big holiday.

After that cheery experience I headed down to Fukuoka. Unfortunatly every hotel in Fukuoka was full. No problem, internet cafes right? My friend Mark lived here for several years and he hooked me up with a friend of his who owned a bar. I hung out there until 3 dancing and having a grand old time. After I left it took two hour of walking around to five different cafes until I found one with one cubicle with an upright chair open. As far as I could tell this was the only place in all of Fukuoka I could sleep at, I took it. Earlier that night I went to a famous Yakatori place and ate all kinds of weird food. The weirdest one that I knew what it was is pig foot. It was not horrible but I can’t say I recommend it. The rest of the food was quite good, the first time.

Sitting in an internet cafe, totally exhausted, tasting my dinner again as I deposit it into the trash I think will be the low point of my Japan trip. I did manage to curl up on the floor and get a few hours of sleep. There were no hotels again the next night so I just left.

Nagasaki was my next stop and by the time I got there my stomach was back in shape. Not only did they have a room, they had a single room with a bathroom for amazingly cheap. Nagasaki and the people in it are also amazingly friendly. The museum and memorial were way less crowded, though not as powerful either.

Today I hopped from Nagasaki to Kagoshima. Along the way I had four people offer their help. The thing is for the first three I knew exactly where I was going. I was just walking along and people wanted to make sure the orange hair Gaijin was happy and I was.

The last time I was offered help I did have my map out. It was a girl in a soccer uniform that came up to me to ask if I needed help. I said I did and handed her the flier to the hostel I was looking for. She took it over to the rest of the team, they passed it around, giggled, made lots of high pitched noises I can only assume were some form of communication. eventually one looked at me and yelled “Lets go!” and lead the team out of the train station. As you can imagine, I was greatly amused. Giggling girls in Japan crack me up. They really make the funniest noises and they vocalize more then anyone on the planet that I am aware of.

The leader of the moment only lead us out the door before it was time for a team conference on where the place was. After about a minute a different girl would look at me and yell “Lets go!” and take off in a direction. This would happen at every intersection. There would be chatter for about a minute until a different one would look at me with the inevitable “Lets go!”.

Along the way one of the girls gave me this strange up full of snack sticks. I don’t know how to describe them but I ate one, looked at her and said very loudly “Very good!” and gave her a thumbs up. All the girls laughed and suddenly it became to be the thing to feed the Gaijin strange snacks. I tried to refuse but they would look at me and pout for about five seconds before I would give in. They even stopped at one point at a Lawsons to buy strange things to see if the Gaijin would eat them. Of course I did and gave them their “Very good!”.

I should note that there was maybe ten English words they understood between them and very, good, lets and go were four of them. Fortunately I have learned to count in Japanese so I could answer the rest of the standard one word questions like “Tall?” “Heavy?” and “Age?”. Apparently height and weight and age are public record here and are almost always asked right after “Where?” which is often the first word spoken to me. They did however know where on a map Arizona is. Some how all Japanese know exactly where Arizona is, it amazes me. The other question that is standard in all of Asia is “Wife?” or “Married?” and Japan is no exception.

I have not bothered to learn how to say no in Japanese yet because I love their hand expression for it. To indicate no in Japan without speaking you don’t shake your head, you hold up your arms or hands in an X. I don’t know why it amuses me so much but every chance I get I do the X. Just like I say “Hai” every change I get, which means yes or I understand.

Four different times one of the girls asked me if I had a wife. I would give them the X, they would giggle and run back to the middle of the group. The last time one asked she finally pointed at me and said “You wife” and then pointing at the ground saying “Kagoshoma” as if to indicate I should find a wife there. I just looked at her and said sarcastically “You are a bit young to be asking to marry me”. (I had previously determined they were all 16) Her eyes just got big and she just stood there stunned staring at me. Apparently she understood me. Then we all broke out laughing. Much to my relief, that was the end of the talking about wives.

It was clear to me the girls had no idea where to go in the first 5 minutes but we did this for nearly an hour before I was more annoyed by the heavy backpack then amused by the girls. I finally talked one of them into using her phone to call the hostel, several times. They guy from the hostel finally just gave up on giving them directions and told us to say put, walked ten minutes to us and guided me to the hostel. I said “Sayanora and Arigato Goziamas” to the girls got a rather boisterous “Sayanora!” in response. The hostel was a two minute walk from the train station that the girls offered to help me at.

This is so different from my initial impression of Japan. In Tokyo people would run away rather then be asked a question. Here people will skip a tram stop to make sure you get off at the right one then walk ten minutes to show you to a museum, all without you asking. That happened in Hiroshima. I don’t know if it’s the difference between big cities and small, or north/east vs. south/west japan or just people responding to my state of mind but Japan is really warming up to me, as I am to it.

Tomorrow I catch the ferry south to the magical Yakushima Island. This is supposed to be the most beautiful forest in Japan. The forest in Princess Mononoke was inspired by and modeled after this island. If you don’t know my love for that movie, my DJ name is Kodama which is stolen from it. I am more excited to be heading there then anywhere I have been in Japan yet.

More photos from Japan

January 1st, 2009

http://ellermann.net/gallery2/v/trevors-photos/WorldTrip/Japan3

Just arrived in Hiroshima. Lots of stories to tell, in the near future.

More photos uploaded

December 26th, 2008

http://ellermann.net/gallery2/v/trevors-photos/WorldTrip/Japan2

Chilling in Nara. And by chilling I mean it’s damn cold!