A short update tonight, but a nice one, I think. After my week in Tokyo, I was ready to come home to the island. I loved every minute of Tokyo, but after a while the heat, living out of a suitcase, not having friends around, and not being able to cook began to wear on me. Gabe and I packed and caught a Shinkansen home. It was a busy week, I worked, Gabe came to school, and we did almost all of the things I love to do on the island. I didn't take many pictures, as I was busier being a guide, but I did take a few.

On Tuesday of that week I took the day off and Mori took us to Aakajima - a tiny little island made of two hunks of rock connected by a little sandy beach. As soon as the water warms up a little, Mori and I are going to go snorkeling for shellfish off this island. The edge of the island is a rock shelf going straight down to about 50 feet of water, full of overhangs and rock ledges. Just today Mori asked me if I could snorkel - I told him of course, but he said this was hard snorkeling. Apparently you have to swim straight down about ten feet, then grab onto a rock ledge to keep the current from washing you away and see if you can find any of these giant snails hanging on to the underside of the rock. If you can, you have to pull yourself under and try to grab them, and then swim to the surface to get some air. I can't wait.


Snorkel site 1.


Intrepid explorers A and B. You can see the rock face under water well here.

The water was pretty icy, but Mori insisted it was fine, and while we continued to refuse, he went swimming.


Looks like something from a tour brochure, doesn't it?

Mori got a nasty jellyfish sting along the whole length of his arm, but to the bitter end, he insisted that the water had been fine. I don't know.


I drove the boat home - I can now check "drive a boat on the inland sea" off my list.

Priority one during Gabe's visit was to share the joys of scootering. We went on more than one nice long scooter ride all around the island, and for those I brought my camera. Like anyone who rides a scooter here and really understands the appeal, Gabe began to wonder what a scooter would cost back home, and whether it was worth getting one. We talked about it a bit, because it's something I have considered, and I raised the point that had convinced me that scooters were better left in Japan: Where in the world could you ever hope to find better roads and conditions for scootering? I really think you would be hard pressed anywhere. The roads here are often too narrow for cars, they are almost always empty of cars, and they are too steep for bicycles. Beyond that, they are beautiful windy roads, often passing though bamboo forests, jungle, coastline, and mountaintops in the course of 15 or 20 minutes. The distances are never so far as to be prohibitive with the 55 km/h cap on the scooters, and this is five minutes away from my house.


That's after we passed a tiny stone bridge over a little waterfall, and then is followed by ten or fifteen more tiny switchbacks.


The tiny waterfall.


Scooters 1 and 2 - literally, those are their license plates. This picture is a small part of why I love scootering so much.


Like I mentioned - from jungle to mountaintop in about 2 minutes.


This area is completely different from where I live, and yet it's a fifteen minute drive if you take your time. It looks like something about third world countries from National Geographic if you ask me.


A little shrine we found in Kinoe.


Inside the shrine.


This picture - I love this picture, and not because it's a particularly wonderful picture. To me this picture is everything I love about riding the scooter. I'm standing in some place I just found on the side of the road, and as I look down and across the inland sea, I get a view that few people who don't live here will ever get to see. A tiny shred of a town is wrapped around this one bend in the road, maybe it was bigger in the past, but now it's just a few houses, a meeting hall, and a shrine. The scooters are parked down there, mine has its seat open because I just pulled out my camera to take some pictures, and the jacket I wear when I ride is draped over the basket. That's all well and good and nicely evocative, but what really gets me is the road. That perfect narrow curve, swinging left around a corner, and then tightening into a right between two ancient houses, and then winding along the coast. I look at that curve, and I feel it in my bones, leaning left, letting off the gas, swinging my weight over and leaning right, checking the mirror to see if anyone is coming, and then putting on the gas as the sound of the little 50cc engine echoes off the old mud and bamboo walls. Sitting at the computer writing this, I can almost hear that sound, I can almost smell the sea, and I can almost feel the wind in my face as I accelerate into the next set of curves. I wouldn't buy a scooter when I went home because nothing in New York could ever come close to the experience of scootering here.

And that was about it. We did more things, had more rides, had dinner at Mori's house, played video games, and before we knew it, the week was over, and it was time to go to Kyoto. We left on Friday and got another train. You'll hear about that action packed day and a on Wednesday, but here are two travel pictures that are not necessarily from leaving the island the last time, but they remind me of heading out to Kyoto.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 10, 2006 at 7:20 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.