previous: My Golden Week Holiday! prt.1 | next: My Golden Week Holiday! prt.3

My Golden Week Holiday! prt.2

2nd of May, 2002ce* in: diary

I found myself in a strange town called Matsuida.
We ate breakfast with the family we were staying with (the Koitabashi Family) and then headed out for the mountains. We arrived at a mountain called Miyogisan, the air was fresh, the view spectacular and the scenery dramatic. A few footsteps from the carpark and I was in yet another persons house drinking tea. It seems that the family I came out here with grew-up in this area, in so being, they knew every fucker and their dog out here!

We proceeded to walk an ancient route up the mountain side, a route which can only be described as a death trap. At the top I was amazed to find old ladies and old men walking about on this peak like it was a walk down to the shops… when I had to use the best of my spider skills to even traverse half of what they had done.
At the top were some chains and ropes etc, something to hold on to if a gale force 4 wind swept the place clean. Then before I knew it, we were on our way down again. There were several temples in this area, one called ‘Naka No Take Jinja’ was the place we had lunch next to.

Then we drove down the mountain, rather fast, to get back out on the open road. I think it was now the intention to find a pottery place. One has to remember, everyone here is speaking Japanese, the route and schedule are unknown to me, no-one speaks a word of English, this is deep countryside. I just had to go with the flow, which, I did.
We eventually found the pottery place (called Myugitobo) after much fart arsing about. Was interesting for about 5 minutes, but it seemed like we were going to be there for a few hours again, so I went to smoke with Gen while taking pictures of his car.

The evening drew in, we were onsen bound. Onsens are a funny thing, for us daft foreigners. Take all your kit off and sit in a hot outdoors bath with about 20 other large sweaty (same sex) bodies, not as bad as one might think, if your only purpose is to get clean. These places practically cover the Japanese countryside, and were mixed baths before the Christians came here with their segregation policies and ideals of covering up boobs & bollocks some 200/300 years back.

Went back to the house to eat a hearty meal and got paralytic.