Ako Heights
Yo. So I think it's been about 3 months since I put anything here, which is probably a relief for those of you who felt some deranged duty to read the page, and a disappointment to those who had taken my absence to indicate my death. No dice.
So I'm gonna clean out my photo vault first of all, in roughly chronological order. For those of you who haven't been to Ako, here are some shots from the mountain behind my house. On the one of me hiking up, you can see some ultra-sicko cherry blossoms on the right. Most things that are all hyped up as being representative of a country and beautiful, like English customer service or Russian hospitality, end up being duds. But cherry blossoms (
sakura) are the shit. They're really pretty, especially when they start to fall off the trees after only a week or so. It's like pink snow. Then they're gone for another year. Which is why they are such a symbol of transience to the Japanese and fit in the whole Buddhist outlook. Omm.
The other shot is out east, over the Chikusa river and towards the Seto Inland Sea, which you can see in the background, and is full of tasty fish.