I took another trip outside the city to my original destination on my last adventure. Last time I left without a concrete plan and my first idea was to check out the house I’d be interested in buying if bitcoin or hive just happened to 5x this month.
Instead that time I ended up seeking out an eco village on a whim and had a great time meeting a bunch of van lifers and artists. This time, I went to finally find that house just to get a feel for what life out in those parts actually had to offer in terms of “regular” stuff, not artists, not alternative communities, just a regular village without the hippies and weirdos who I feel at home with.
I got to the station which immediately gave me a different vibe. While the station I had gone to last time had a feeling of being a bit hip and modern countryside, focused on arts and artisans, this area felt a bit more run down and missing it’s glory days.
Still a beautiful view of the mountain:
Not the most beautoful view of a lake:
It didnt help that the lake was all muddy and clogged from 3 days of intense rain.
These are all essentially the same area to people with cars but to us who rely on the train, the stations have their own characteristics and there is a lot we don’t have easy access to.
But I’m a wierdo so I took off and walked around the lake towards this house in question. My spirit was far less adventurous than last time. I was tired and had actually thought about not going but I realized it would be my only chance to explore this station this month and I knew I would just end up staying home otherwise which I didn’t want.
While last time I set a destination 2.5 hours away on foot and tried hitchhiking, this time I had no energy to hitchhike or be wild. I just practiced scales on my guitarlele while walking around the lake. My destination was 50 minutes away and I had a cafe set as a break point in the middle. Last time I fucked up my hips walking for so long (they sre tight to begin with) so i wanted to make sure I’d be ok.
Smelly lake. No friendly faces. Lots of annoying motercyclers, not just the occasional one. My feeling was not the same as last time at all but I set my expectations low.
The cafe was half full of people and still turned me away, saying they were closed. I know some foreigners would blame this on them being xenophobic but I know it’s usually not as bad as all that and I noticed another Japanese person turned away. The sign outside said open until 5 PM and it was 3.
I was starting to get annoyed. This area didn’t seem to have the same pleasant surprises for me as the other area. And it was a dirty ass lake with not much life in the town. There were a lot of hikers passing by but unlike locals they didnt nod or smile, they ignored me just as they might in the city.
Just accept it. Just let today be what it wants to be. I quickly got a hold on my spiraling thoughts.
A few minutes later I saw a stand selling corn and sweet potatoes on the side of the road and was met with “Play a song and you get free food!”
Can’t say no to thet, especially when I have a guitar in my hand and I am hungry.
So I played a song rather sloppily, forgetting the words and unable to sing in A rather than E, and the 5 people sitting there, who I mistakenly thought were a family but were actually customers, clapped awkwardly at my poor performance.
I don’t blame myself for a poor performance. I had been walking a while and was workong on cheering myself up so a bit distracted. I wasn’t in the right state of mind.
But he passed me BBQ garlic corn potatoes cake and a bunch of snacks and tea and coffee and we basically just shoot the shit. These are the kind of people I’d want as neighbors but not neccesarily the kind of people I’d find a deep connection with. Not people I’d need to stay in touch with but if I ever find myself back there, I’ll gladly stop by.
After an hour, a few songs and learning a bit about each other, I set off again and walked passed a single restaruant serving ramen.
I finally reached the village and saw the house. It was smaller than I imagined but still a decent house I’d be happy to live in, fields all around, a mainroad 4 minutes away but far enough so that it’s quiet. A beautiful mountain nearby.
The only problem is that, despite having wide open fields on one side, there is another house wedged up against it on the other side. Imagine not getting along with your neighbors when you are the only people in a 1000 meter radius (only 2 other houses in the village, another village five minutes up thr mountain)😆
I’d love to live somewhere like this but I would need a community, people I share some things in common with, mainly creative impulses. It would suck to be out there if the only people I knew spent all their free time gossiping and drinking and killing time. No matter how much time I have I don’t want to kill it.
I don’t think bitcoin or hive will 5x this month and I imagine this house will be off the market by the time I have money but it was fun to see what some of these neighborhoods look like and how much a house would cost there.
It got me thinking about getting a license even though it costs 2000 usd here (crazy right?). I feel the whole country would open itself up to me if I had a car and I would begin to feel differently about how I interact with space and people.
It was only 4 pm so I stopped at that ramen shop, mostly to get a better feel for the locals and see what I’d likely eat 2-3 days a week if I lived here. The owner was 80 and hard of hearing, a bit slow, decent chef, and told me how the area used to be really popular as a tourist destination but has been declining due to other places becoming popular and better transportation to areas closer to Mt. Fuji and more developed tourists resorts.
He said I’m welcome to come live there if I like hanging out with “old geezers” like himself. I do haha and i will be one soon enough but I hope I can find people who experiment and still go on adventures and are curious about the world. I hope I find a way to invite some guests and the neighbors don’t mind.
He told me there is an onsen nearby so i went. “It’s so expensive though, maybe 700 yen”. That didn’t sound expensive to me but it ended up being 2000 ($14 usd).
These kinds of places always attract day trippers, those hiking people who don’t smile at strangers or campers from the city still stuck in city mode. Nobody talked to me or smiled like the locals, but I was naked and I am hairy so I stand out so I’m ok with being ignored in that situation.
Took the bus back at around 6 pm and had dinner at the only place open that late. Last order at 6:30, it was full of very very drunk old men and a few Thai tourists. I didn’t particularly want to talk with any of them because I aready had enough small talk earlier. These old guys were drunk and clearly not the kind of people I mentioned wanting to connect with above, if I did move out there I’d try to get on decent terms.
One restaruant in town. Damn 😆 and yet so close to Tokyo, only 70 minutes by local train.
Not every adventure leads to treasure but its still worth going on these kinds of trips too. If it turns out I found the best there is on my first attempt in that eco village last time, then I’ll focus more on that place and on travelling further from tokyo.
This is all giving me a much better understanding of these areas which will help me when i decide to move out of the city or invest in buying a house.
Love you all. ❤️
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