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Japan is now entering its rainy season, so I thought Id settle down in Tokyo rather than be caught hitchhiking in the pouring rain everyday. Naturally, ever since I made this decision, the weather has been beautiful and sunny. So here I am, in the worlds greatest metropolis, staying with one of my previous host families.

Settling down has allowed me to check the bad habits that grew whilst I travelled. For example, my standards of hygiene have improved greatly since having access to a shower every day, and a reasonable sized towel. When travelling, I only take a Japanese sized towel which is absolutely tiny, and the thought of standing in a shower cubicle padding myself with a damp towel for half an hour is often enough to turn me away from the shower; instead, I would resolve to not stand very close to anyone for the rest of the day.

I have also finally found a way to keep my snacking habits under control. The habit started in Eihei-ji, where the reverence for food and half hour long pre-eating rituals made me lust for certain snack foods, especially anything with the taste of chocolate or sugar, which did not feature very much in the temple food. Upon leaving, I subsequently found myself eating snacks very regularly, wherever I went. My greatest achilles heel was soft serve ice cream - It costs around 300 yen ($3), does nothing at all to fill you up, and tastes absolutely fantastic. In Takayama, they helpfully put out a gigantic plastic replica of soft serve ice cream at every store that sold out - Come on, even smokers dont have to put up with gigantic replica cigarettes when they walk down the street! The Takayama `free samples` didnt do much to help either, and very quickly my snacking habits had a depressing effect on my budget. Now, at my host families house, I have found the perfect solution - free snacks! There are plenty of potato chips, chocolate, ice cream, and also healthy Japanese snacks such as the delicious Inari-Zushi (I might go and eat some now in fact), so I barely spend anything on snacks anymore!

Most importantly though, it is here in Tokyo that I can try to earn some money! Money is a very important nutrient for travellers, and Money Deficiency Syndrome (MDS) can create serious problems. Symptoms include eating the same microwave curry every night for a week, refusing to drink at pubs, standing outside tourist attraction gates looking indecisive, trying to sell off their shoelaces for the best possible price, and general depression.

If there is a job to be found in Japan, Tokyo is the place to find it. And if there is a job to be found in Tokyo, Roppongi Hills is the place to find it. Roppongi Hills is meant to represent Beverly Hills - it is very trendy, very expensive, and crowded with the young, rich and stupid alike.

I do not have any time to waste looking for a job in the traditional way, picking one career path and following it. Rather, I attempt to follow four career paths at once, and see which one ends up working out the best - English teaching, Japanese teaching, Modelling for Fashion/TV, and working in cafes. I wander the trendy streets of Roppongi, spending half my time bowing to restaurant managers, and the other half of my time striking poses for modelling registrations (feeling like a twit, but loving it). I indulge in plentiful snacks on the way in lieu of lunch. The Japanese onomatapoeia for someone eating chips is `Kari Kari`- Yes, they do have a noise for everything!

Settling down also means a chance to enjoy Japanese culture. Tokyo is everything it is cracked up to be - the future here in the present, the quintessence of urbanity, a towering, gleaming megapolis which perfectly defines what life in a city means.

Nobody sleeps; my host mum goes to bed sometime past midnight (I fall asleep around then, I am yet to ever actually see her go to bed!). Everybody works; at one of my modelling interviews, the guy interviewing me is a perfect stereotype for the ridiculously busy Japanese person, and he literally phone hopped from one phone to the other, apologizing to me in between. The climax of this was when the doorbell rang - the next appointment was here, and the interviewer skilfully managed to conduct two interviews at once, at the same time as answering calls on his mobile, landline, and making sure the computer was behaving itself.

Perhaps this sort of lifestyle awaits me in the future; will I end up running down the streets of Tokyo trying to remove my `Outback Cafe`apron so I can be on time for my appointment to smile next to a Coca-Cola bottle? Or (more likely), will I end up sitting around watching Japanese soap-operas on my host families gigantic TV, flipping through classic Manga and haunting the local library? Only time will tell...

In order to leave Takayama, I first have to walk out of town to a good spot for hitchhiking (having blown so much money on sweets and tourist traps in Takayama, I refuse to fork out for the bus), which is a good half an hour away. At first I felt lucky that the weather was so good, but soon the friendly sun becomes a mortal enemy as it rises higher and higher in the sky. It does indeed feel good walking through the countryside though, past thatched roofs and rice paddies...already I am experiencing travelling, and I havent even got my first ride! My first ride coems within about 30 seconds, a young man and woman with a baby, and we drive through the alps to the sound of `Finding Nemo` (the babys favourite movie, without which she becomes very agitated). I get dropped of at Hirayu onsen, near the ropeway, and the scenery is spectacular as I wait with my thumb out on a road where not a single car comes. I wander around town for about 2 hours (in the midday sun with a gigantic pack, not a good idea) looking for a better spot, and naturally I end up going back to exactly the same place in the end. My next lift is a 68 year old removalist coming back from Takayama to his home town of Matsumoto, in Nagano district. At one point I realize that his age means he would have been a child at the conclusion of world war 2, and grew up in the postwar chaos, and I marvel at his kindness in helping out a foreigner in spite of this (many of his age still have a serious grudge against all foreigners). Hitchhiking truly is the greatest form of travel - we soar over turqouise lakes and on the top of giant hydrolectric dams; if only I could have got a photo of the mountain canyons.

When we arrive I am stuck once more, but this time a little closer to my destination. I feel that there is no better way to truly appreciate ones location than by being stuck there, alone and on foot. Here I circumnavigate the city for another half an hour, eating convenience store sushi (one of the best meals I have ever eaten), until I find a perfect place for hitchhiking. A thousand cars a minute going onto a major expressway, I am clearly visible and there are plenty of places to stop - it is the perfect place, except for the fact that not a single car stops. I wait for an hour, with the sun gradually getting lower as I do. I do not think I am asking too much, my sign says `anywhere in the direction of Tokyo`. Eventually a young couple stops, and are going all the way to Tokyo! They are 21 years old (it is the girls 21st birthday, but it is not such a big deal in Japan), and are both studying psychology at university. We talk animatedly for the several hour trip (my duty as a hitchhiker is to keep the driver awake with interesting conversation - after a full day of hitch-hiking it becomes a bit difficult!), and about halfway there Mt.Fuji greets me in the distance. I never, ever get used to the sight of Fuji, sitting so majestically above the cities.

Finally, I arrive at the bustling megapolis that is Shinjuku station. I laugh a very satisfied laugh - I made it!
By the grace of a family, a removalist, and two university students I traversed the mountains and arrived at my destination, and the challenge of getting there has made arriving all the sweeter. I cannot believe just how far I have come in a day:

In the morning I was walking past rice fields in sleepy Takayama.


At noon I was looking over the the Japanese Alps.


In the evening I was standing next to a highway in Nagano district.


As the twilight fades, I am looking over the neon jungle of Shinjuku.

Sigh, well I had hoped that you guys would be able to take your own adventure looking for my photos in this incredibly poorly laid-out site, but here's the link for those who haven't been able to find it:
http://www.travellerspoint.com/photos/gallery/users/NickRennic/

The best way to find it otherwise is to click on the "authors" tab on my page, and my photos will come up. Click "more photos"

Walking along the path at the end of a very long day in Nara, patting the deer as I walk past them. The ancient capital of Japan, it dates back to the 700s, before Kyoto and long before Tokyo. It contains no less than 1,000,000,000 UNESCO World Heritage Sites (I counted), but is far smaller than Kyoto, and easily navigable on foot. It also has deer...lots of deer. These are not your pleasant everyday deer, but super-intelligent deer which know where the food stalls are, and are fully capable of ripping the little biscuits out of whoevers pocket they may be in. I spent the day looking at Buddhas - lots and lots of Buddhas. In the museum they have statues of all different Buddhas (there are many in fact - from the familiar Shakyamuni Tathagata to the 11 headed, 1000 armed Kannon) and from all different places and ages. From 5th century Chinese to 19th century Japanese, its like a Buddha emporium. And when you've had enough of the museums, there are of course the temples - including the one and only "Daibutsuden". The Daibustuden is the world's largest wooden building (its really, really, really big) housing, you guessed it, the worlds largest indoor buddha. It's also really, really big.

However, when I arrive at the daibutsuden it turns out there's only one thing as capable of attracting a crowd as the gargantuan buddha, and that's me. Crowds of schoolchildren flock around the temples, and upon seeing me scurry up in groups with "excuse me could we please ask you a question???". The question would eventually come, and many more after that. I soon got used to the routine (they usually had a set number of questions they had to ask, in a set order), and they always finished by saying together "thank you very much have a nice day goodbye", which I thought was very cute. On top of that, I had the usual foibles of celebrity life, such as the occasional passing "hello!" from someone I had never met, and a few photos with groups of people who didn't even know my name. Why do they want a photo of me?! What are they going to say? "Hey mum, I saw a guy today, here's a photo of us together". What kind of a photo is that?!

Anyway, the point is I was very tired by the end of the day, so I went for a brief walk in the park. I saw a forest path leading upwards, and I thought it looked rather nice, so I followed it. Buddha statues begin to appear once again (some once again with many more arms than the average person), and I begin to think that maybe this path leads to some super special temple in the forest (in Kyoto and Nara, that line of thinking generally works, as there are temples everywhere). Half an hour later I find myself hiking up a massive slope, through thicker and thicker forest, thinking "why exactly did I come here?". But something spurs me on higher and higher, and I eventually come out onto a barren mountaintop, where a spectacular view awaits me (I can even see the point far, far below where I started climbing). I see another point even higher, and something mystical draws me up there, and my mind still clings to the idea that some mysterious temple or otherworldly force awaits me there. By now all remnants of civilization are gone, just me and the deer. Even the sounds of the city have vanished far below, and I am completely, totally alone on what seems to be a rather abandoned mountain track. Finally, I reach the peak of the mountain...

Christoph?!

Yep, thats right, Christoph. Never mind that I left him in a city some 60km north of here. Never mind that I had no idea where he was going, or what he was doing from now on. Here he is, right in front of me. Attempting to contain the "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD", I instead try to smile and look cool, like cosmic coincidences happen to me all the time. Turns out he did a similiar thing to me, just randomly saw the mountain top and decided to climb it. The path isnt as abandoned as I thought however, I just took a rather foresty shortcut - it is a tourist highlight, complete with a 150 yen charge to access the top of the mountain (luckily, its closed by now, so I don't pay). So we stand around on top of the world, looking down on Nara and over the 360 degree panaroma of the mountains that surround us, and talk about this and that. He is such a fun person, so artistic. He likes to take time with everything he does, and is quite happy spending an age standing on the mountain top taking it all in. It proves to be a good opportunity to ask more about his artwork, now that I had seen it, and his music (turns out he was the saxophone player in a punk band...that's right, punk saxophone!). The walk down in the failing light is painful, but much better with company.

And so another day ends....

As a side note, some of you may well have noticed that in writing these blogs I tend to write absolutely every tiny detail. That's because this is actually more of a journal than a blog, its for my own purposes so that I am able to recollect these little details when I am 90. I do not expect you to hang on every word, in fact I would find it rather creepy if you did (Grace and Demi, this means you!). For those of you with jobs (Or homework....Grace and Demi!!!), please feel free to just check my photos instead to get a rough idea of where I've been and what I'm doing. It's all there, just with less words and things.

A polish backpacker gave me this one to solve...
Two men are talking, and one asks how old the other's sons are.
He says "The sum of their ages is the number of windows in this room. Do you know how old my sons are?"
The other man replies "no".
He then says "The eldest one is blonde"
The other man replies "now I know"

How old are his sons?

(I did eventually get this in the end. Don't look for tricks in the words, its quite simple once you've got it)