Disclaimer: The following is an email I sent to friends and family in January 2013, preserved here for posterity.

Subj: Japan update!!!

Japan (日本)

Japan started out rather stressful but ended up in contention for best country so far (tied with Nepal).  

I landed in Tokyo without a place to stay.  I had messaged about 5 Wwoof farms and two had responded . . . that they don't speak English.  So I sucked it up and got a hostel in Tokyo for the first night.  The next morning I messaged 10 more places (I didn't want to mess around). And when nobody responded again, the next morning I messaged 10 more.  I had a couple responses from Kyushu, the southernmost main island, but in my eager desire to seek warmth I had neglected to research the logistics of how to get to said island.  Japan is bigger than I had thought and it's a few hundred dollars to get to anywhere on Kyushu.  What to do.  Well Tokyo was ransacking my monthly budget, and the Japanese girl in Thailand had said Kyoto was nice and it was on the way to Kyushu, so I spontaneously booked a night bus to Kyoto to get some history.

I didn't completely waste my few days in Tokyo, though.  I met some great people at the hostel (including a dude who makes an impressive passive income selling his colorful compression socks online) and managed to explore the "electric city" anime and gadget epicenter (Akihabara), watch Endo dominate the ring (sumo), and see the busiest crosswalk in the world (Shibuya) where I met some Australians in maid outfits who I ended up karaoking with.

When I arrived in Kyoto, I walked to my hostel (+1 for packing light) and checked my email to find that "Charanke Jamhouse Kyoto" had replied to my HelpX request saying literally "Are you in Kyoto now?  Can you come today?"  I have no idea how he knew that, but ...yes. So I walked on over.  I arrived just in time for the miso workshop, which they happily invited me to participate in.  I squished boiled soy beans and mixed in fermented rice and salt with 8 Japanese people for a few hours then they had a didgeridoo jam session in a circle around the new miso to give it "good vibrations." Needless to say, I emailed the 24 other hosts to let them know I had found my place, went back to the hostel I had booked, got my bags, and moved in to Charanke.

Charanke is a restaurant/guesthouse combo run by some awesome young Japanese hippies: Kosuke and Mina.  

Work:

I've been helping them turn the second floor of the building into a dormitory.  It started as restaurant overflow with a raised Japanese floor, but their AirBnB business wasmore lucrative, so we demolished that and installed a huge double size bunk bed held up by japanese cedar tree trunks (that we went into a snowy forest to pick up), and a loft to match. It's been more amateur construction and carpentry, but I've had a little more input (compared to Borneo) and the Japanese love quality, so I don't think this one will fall down.

Adventures:

• We've made tie-dye twice using the red roots of the akane plant, which has medicinal properties.

• Kosuke got a phone call one morning that his hunting friend had just killed a deer (4 point buck) in the forests outside Kyoto, so we got in the truck and went out and picked it up.  After the restaurant closed, we hauled it inside and started the butchering.  It was fascinating and exciting . . . for the first 2 hours. The next 4 were less interesting.  They added venison burgers, steaks, and even sashimi (slices of raw meat) to the menu.  It took forever but it was overall a great experience, and now Kosuke is going to make a lamp out of the skull (as soon as he can boil the meat and eyeballs out of it).

• I hand rolled real sushi.

• I went to a fire festival for lunar new year.

• I had a Mr. Miyagi experience making tekka miso.  It literally means "burnt miso" and is a condiment made up of finely chopped carrots, burdock root, lotus root (which looks awesome), and ginger.  How fine, you ask? "Like sand" Mr. Miyagi (Kosuke) replies. You can't use a food processor because he doesn't want it to be pulverized by the relatively dull blades and the juices to escape (I asked).  It took 3 hours to chop everything.  "Good, but half this size," means an hour of chopping, and then "Almost," means another half an hour. Step two is to add miso and slowly cook it on low heat while constantly stirring.  How slow, you ask? Three hours. Some spatula meditation and 6 podcasts later, they had the best tekka miso they've ever tasted.  This restaurant will owe it's success to Colin Vale. 

• KitKats come in different flavors in Japan! So far I've had white chocolate, dark chocolate, royal milk tea, and "Men's Almond," whatever that means.

• I've been to 3 different onsens/sentos, or hot springs.  These things are great. Japan being volcanic means sometimes when you dig a hole, lava-heated water springs up, and you can start an onsen and charge people a few bucks to enter. They usually have a sauna there too, which was my favorite part of Finland.  No pictures on this one.

• Kosuke has taught me the basics of didgeridoo, which he learned from a Japanese street performer in Thailand then refined in Australia with some aboriginals (He's travelled a bit).

Food:

The food is incredible.  Not quite as good as Par's in Thailand, but closer to that level than I thought I would get in the rest of the trip.  Charanke has an Okinawa style menu which means... it tastes really good.  Usually something rice or noodle based, often with slow-cooked pork, a half-boiled egg, pickled ginger, and always with homemade miso soup.

On Sunday I'll fly to Australia.  I didn't learn my lesson last time, so I still don't have anything planned.  At least everyone will speak English there though, so it can't be that hard. After my adventures so far, Australia seems boring, so I'm trying to find a way to spice it up.  I was considering busking (Paintings of the opera house? Didgeridoo? Keyboard? Harmonica?) for a while until I realized a few days ago that I'd need a work visa for that and Australia is crazy about their rules (they have busking permits in Sydney).  We'll see.  

How have you been?!  What's going on in your life?  The best days are the days when I get a message from you letting me know what's up at home (or that I put two 'L's in traveling again).  

Next update will be from Down Under.

Arigato,

(Colin)

Bonus:  A Note on Japanese Culture

Of everywhere I've been so far, Japan has the most interesting, different, beautiful culture.  Nepal is different from America, but mostly because their country is poor.  Japan is different for very different reasons. Economically it feels like America (people walking down paved sidewalks in suits?), but in every other regard, it is stunningly perpendicular.  I guess thousands of years of history and traditions will do that. Some examples.  

Tokyo felt so safe. It's a strange feeling to notice because it's usually taken for granted, but walking down narrow allies with all of my possessions, mildly lost while looking for my hostel was enjoyable instead of stressful.  I just looked up the numbers and I'm pretty surprised this kind of disparity can exist.  America has 112.9 robberies per 100,000 people.  Japan has 4.

Part of that may be related to how clean everything is (if you believe in broken windows theory).  In 3 days of walking Tokyo, I saw 2 pieces of trash. Two in Kyoto so far this month, but I don't get out much.  

Nobody crosses a crosswalk until the green man lights up.  Even if it's a one way street and nobody is coming. They don't even look. 

Nobody moved down to better seats at the sumo tournament.  In America there are ushers at every section to check your ticket.  Japan had one check at the entrance, to ensure you have a ticket, then you're free to go, and still everybody behaved.

There are three different ways to say "thank you" depending on how respectful you want to be (and a thousand other interesting things embedded in the language that I don't understand). 

There are little shrines/temples everywhere (especially in Kyoto) where real people (in suits!) stop for a minute and pray, shake the rope, clap twice, and carry on. 

Even public toilets are bidets with heated water and heated seats that play tinkle sounds to get you started.  And you can wash your hands with the water that fills up the tank.  Genius. 

We got some sawdust on the street when cleaning out the back of the truck, so of course . . .   (Kosuke in purple, Mina in truck)

Almost everything is done "right." Just look at this gutter (next to a bonsai of course).

The craziest thing I've seen these counter-culture hippies do is eat rice with a spoon, and soup with chop sticks.

Double Bonus: 

This gem was a block away from the hostel in Tokyo. 

I was disappointed to learn it's not an oversized practical joke about the powerplant. Turns out Fukushima is the name of a whole prefecture in Japan and also the name of a rather large company that makes many things in Japan (including the kegerator in Charanke) and "Fukuppy" is the name of their new mascot which is a clumsy and not-translator-approved attempt to combine "Fukushima" with "Happy."  But still...

Triple Bonus:

There's a town in Japan called "Obama."

Really.

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