So.....

I obviously haven't posted in a while. I didn't have money to hit an internet cafe, and enjoyed the lack of connection anyways. I left my digital camera in a guy's car when I was hitchhiking, so I don't have many photos to show you, but if you'd like to see pictures of Hokkaido and the northern regions of Japan, I'm sure you can easily find them on Google.

To make a very long story short, here's what happened during my journey north, (an adventure which I found somewhat reflective of Matsuo Basho's book The Long Road to the Deep North):
-I was picked up just north of Kyoto by a Peruvian guy who was ironically headed to a costal town called Obama where he invited me to join his family for a camp-out bbq and drunken fiesta. We communicated quite efficiently in a language which I now call "Spanglanese"- a hybrid of English, Spanish and Japanese.
-I caught plenty of rain and bad weather, as I was on the fringes of the typhoon that hit China. I slept beneath an overpass in Niigata, right by the ocean.
-I went to an art festival in Odate. I was picked up by an artist who bought me dinner and then was happy to show me his art exhibit.
-I got free food and drinks all night in a bar in Aomori, the port town that sends out the ferries to Japan's northern most island of Hokkaido. The barman bought me drinks, random strangers bought me food, a friendly couple bought me drinks--and even saw me hitching on the road the next day and picked me up, driving me 2 1/2 hours out of their way.
-Got to Hokkaido and slept in a truck with a trucker
-Went to an Ainu (Native Japanese) festival.
-Climbed Mt. Yoteizan, a large volcanoe.
-Went back to Aomori, where another kind Japanese stranger decided he'd take me out all night to a karaoke place. He heard I was from Denver, so, of course we sang "Country Road" by John Denver.


I do, however, have a few pictures, thanks to a sympathetic Japanese man who gave me a lift, and after listening to me talk about how I left my camera in Hokkaido, he bought me a disposable camera. The following pictures are of my trip hitching back down to Tokyo, and the remainder of my time in Japan.
The guy on the left is who bought me the camera. These three were associates working behind the scenes for a Japanese fast-food chain.
This guy had just finished a two-day cycling tour. We listened to Blink 182 in his car, and I tried my best to translate it into Japanese.... which is quite difficult, seing as how Japanese doesn't have any swear words.

Yes, Japanese hitchhikers do exist. Here is the proof.

This nice guy picked me up in the pouring rain. Very nice man... 6 kids, likes baseball, and was delivering boxes of KFC containers to Niigatan KFC's.

These two guys were Pakistanian men living in Japan. They owned a used car business and were on their way to an auction to pick up a car. It was the first day of Ramadan (sp?), which I thought was ironic, as I, too, wouldn't be eating much that day... but for financial reasons.

This woman was my very last ride, into the center of Tokyo. She was a gym teacher at a high school, spoke great English, and was on her way to coach track practice.

A Tokyo alleyway.

Don't know why this is upside down, but I saw this my last day in downtown Tokyo and thought it was funny.

Went to the observation deck of a government building, overlooking the park I planned to sleep in....

Until I met Hugo, from Sweden, who invited me to sleep on the floor in his hotel room in Shibuya, a popular area of Tokyo.
We had the thrill of experiencing one of Tokyo's millions of video game arcades, before hitting the streets of both Shibuya and Roppongi. Jun and his fiance Misato, "flashin' peace" ;)

Jun's birthday dinner.

My last meal in Japan.

Taken from the plane. The Japanese coast.