Start o'm' Joban Line adventure with Chiharu up to Fukuroda Falls.
Here are some things at a train station.
Here's the place you smoke in. I'm not sure if the white line is to stand inside while smoking--which is uncomfortable--or to magically bind the ashtray from wandering around--which is likely.
We're smiling.
Green.
The fall looks like a moustachio'd monster
Falls from the top, as seen in another album somewhere on the site.
Saw this guy being cool, tried to copy him.
Didn't work out so well.
Yo.
Upthestairs.
And up.
Rest stop.
Do you see that?
That giant eye and nose out from the mountain?
Maybe it's dead.
Top of the hill.
You'll find similar pictures in my previous Fukuroda album, but with someone rather less sexy heralding my pictures.
We're back. She drank Coke, I a beer.
The Sign that Reads Water.
Waiting for the train home.
This'll be the picture on my nightstand after I become Dr. Manhattan. I'll take it with me to Mars.
The next day, with Dan. Our plan is to sit on the train all day and chat as pretty town and mountains slide by.
This is not where we ended up, but it was a pretty sign.
We ended up here, at an unforeseen end-of-the-line. I guess we took the wrong branch of the train. But it was fortuitous: the town, Oku-Tama, turned out to be a rather scenic hiking spot.
Go!
Here I am drinking. Later I'd see the big industrial factory a hundred meters upstream and hope it wasn't dumping anything nasty.
I'm either falling or about to pounce on a delicious trout.
Dan being a Muppet.
There's that factory.
The town. I couldn't read all the kanji of the town's name, but my guess is it translates to Waysmalltownsville.
Here's a building with no windows. Potlovers' paradise.
Up to the hillside graveyard.
There it is.
I like this picture in how it makes me look 10% more philosophical than I did in the previous one.
A grave. That's beer there. Must be a custom, but I've never understood it. Some people put tea in front of their loved ones' graves, which seems to me altogether more understandable.
Stimulus package'd fix that.
Spiderweb.
The factory in context.
The factory up close.
These next three pictures capture my ever-growing spite, which I didn't think I was feeling at the time.
A cool parking lot.
A Woodringesque plant-berry-holder thingy.
That curvy branch I'm holding looks an awful lot like wooden pee from this angle.
Halfway up the mountain.
The previous house's front yard.
Afterward we were careful to watch for flying electric mushrooms.
A caterpillar.
Ruddy things are hard to capture on film.
Another roadside mountainshot.
The coolest thing wasn't the utter steepiness of the hill of the straight tall trees upon it, but the work that went into building those avalanche-slower-downers that make the whole hillside look like a tree-attended colosseum.
The went up as well as down, for as far as we could see.
Still obsessing.
Here's a hut stretching precipitously over the droppy hillside.
Here we are inside.
Here I am with my hands.
Here's Dan's approval.
Here's the floor.
Here's a rocky outcrop.
I was standing on top of this thing at the time, which was probably making Dan most uncomfortable, as Certain Death-by-Fall awaited me to my right.
This is as high as we got: soon after this we encountered a guy who told us the top of the mountain would take another two hours--till about sunset--and that we'd get lost on our way back. He also said there was a college about five minutes farther up the road that we shouldn't trespass upon, strict as they were apt to be. Odd place to put a college, I reckon.
Way Back Down.
It's creepy that every part of the photo is blurry except his eyes.
The station. We drank next to here before heading back.
