MORE IN JAPAN plus SOME NEWS

we've been crossing mountains & passing through tiny villages on perfect roads with no traffic - almost as though we are alone in japan - with occasional meetings with extraordinary japanese travelers who tell the most interesting stories.  too much for this email...  and the scenery - think of the old master japanese prints of mountains, forests, streams & waterfalls, mist covered landscapes, songbirds, and add the flooded rice paddies terraced onto the hillsides with water gushing down from the mountains.   ahhh, it's almost too much beauty to bear.

we came across a statue of basho at a mountain shrine.  yes, i have a picture of me sitting reverently at his feet, but i'm ashamed to say i left the camera cable at home so i can't download.  i'm using masa's mac laptop each night at the hotel but am unable to send my photos, which are pretty good, i think.  i'll send them to whoever wants when i return.

one of the many highlights of this journey is our nightly visits to the local hizakaya, a tiny country tavern, which we visit after checking into our hotel for the night.  the best ones are owned & run by an older woman, who pours sake & serves little plates of wonderful food, each thing a surprise that she prepares for us on the spot.  there are usually 3 or 4 businessmen at the bar with us & we all fall into conversation - masa translating, of course, although here & there a few words of english come out from the most unexpected sources.  people are so surprised to meet a foreigner in such out-of-the-way places, in the most remote regions in japan, and want to know about me.  and i want to know everything about them.  

i also had the best cup of coffee of my life at a coffee shop where the owner selected, sorted, roasted & brewed a perfect cup for us while we listened to bach music in the background.  

now, a new development: as we were crossing the snow-capped bandai mountains, on our way back to the sea of japan (and more raw scallops), masa got a call from an agent asking him to perform on friday the 21st. at a special concert in hiroshima.  what to do?  we talked about all the possibilities & i said i was willing to change plans & accompany him to hiroshima for the event.  he would have forgone it, but, i thought: how could i not?

so here we are, on the freeway, heading west instead of ambling north.  but what the hey?  i have loved & enjoyed every moment of our bucolic voyage for 10 days, & am certainly up to a change of pace & scenery - especially to see masa peform, something at which he is great.  and, fortunately, masa is a skilled man of the road who loves to drive.   after the concert we'll go to kyoto for a few days, then masa will put me on the bullet train to tokyo where i'll be on my own for 4 days until departure time.  i can't imagine a big bright city after the sweet tenderness of the japanese countryside, but i'm ready...  like i said, this is a trip of a lifetime.

more later.