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3July 16, 2012: The previous day I sprained my back while on the road in Hirosaki City, Aomori Prefecture. This morning when rising at 5:20 a.m. from the bed in the capsule hotel where I spent the night, an excruciating lower back pain greeted me. It was difficult to stand up and walk. To make matters worse, though I expected the weather to be fair and sunny, a low pressure … Continue reading →
June 29 – July 1, 2012: This weekend I went to Hirosaki and back in only 12 cars traveling 768 kilometers. The trip to Hirosaki was the fastest ever! It took only 4 cars with an average waiting time of only 9 minutes.wait between cars. I arrived at 3:00pm. On the return trip, a man took me from Noshiro city to Honjo. Rather than take me to Route 7, he … Continue reading →
It’s now my 4rd trip to Hirosaki this month! The first one was with a friend who drove all the way, the rest by hitchhiking. I still have one more trip on the 29th of the month! Today was supposed to rain but it turned out sunny. The train to Majima was 25 minutes late which meant I started hitchhiking at 8 a.m. Rather than walk up Route 7 as … Continue reading →
Mr. Murata playing his handmade shakuhachi On June 22, 2012, Mr. and Mrs. Murata picked me up from Nikaho, Akita Prefecture, and invited me to drink tea with them in their home in Akita city. Mr. Murata’s hobby is making and playing a musical instrument made from bamboo which is called Shakuhachi. Mrs. Murata plays the Koto, a stringed instrument. I was honored to be their guest and hear them … Continue reading →
I began my journey home later than usual, first a train from Hirosaki station at 11:25 a.m to Nagamine, 3 stops out of town, arriving 10 minutes later. This puts me right on Route 7, a good place to hitchhike. After a relatively short wait of 19 minutes, a car with two 18 year old girls stopped and offered to take me to Odate City. Their names are Mari, and … Continue reading →
June 15, 2012: The day is bright and sunny with thin and wispy cirrus clouds. Again as I did the previous week, I started off from Majima station on Route 345 at 7:35 AM. This time I didn’t catch the first ride till 8:25, about 50 minutes later. The driver was a cook on his way to work at a restaurant in Sasagarenagare, a spa and resort area in northern … Continue reading →
Mr. and Mrs. Sakura in their living room Sunday, June 10, 2012: I hitchhiked 404 kilometers (253 miles) from Aomori Prefecture to Niigata City in 9 cars. They consisted of 4 married couples, two small children, 4 single men, 2 ladies and one single couple. A highlight of this trip was visiting Mr. and Mrs. Sakurada’s home in Noshiro. They picked me up when hitchhiking exactly one month before on … Continue reading →
On June 8, 2012: I hitchhiked 402 kilometers from Majima Station in Murakami, Niigata Prefecture, to Aomori City. The drivers consisted of one elderly couple, two recently married young men, a man about my age driving a large truck carrying tons of rice, a car with 3 ladies and a man, and finally, a middle age lady who took me to the very door of my destination. Hitchhiking from Niigata … Continue reading →
Toshiba Satellite J40. Broken CPU fan on the bottom right A local company gave me the laptop PC you see in the photo. They often give me older PCs because I’m actually doing them a favor to take away their junk! It costs money in Japan to dispose of materials. I was interested in this particular laptop PC because the keyboard looked so clean. It was as if it had … Continue reading →
Sunday, May 20, 2012: Today was the last day of my trip and my return to home. The challenge was to hitchhike 600 kilometers (about 400 miles), the same distance I traveled on day one of my journey, but this time I would be crossing Tokyo. It’s not easy to cross Tokyo by hitchhiking, I usually take the train. Today I was successful. After waiting a whole hour at Mikatahara … Continue reading →
May 18, 2012:Today was the second day of my trip. The main purpose was to help my friend in Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture, to purchase and set up a laptop PC. It’s only 290 kilometers (180 miles) from Osaka to Hamamatsu, half the distance I hitchhiked the day before from Niigata to Osaka, “a piece of cake!” It was just after 9 a.m and only few minutes after arriving to … Continue reading →
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1May 17, 2012: Osaka is about 600 kilometers or 400 miles from home. I made it in a very good time, 8.5 hours in 4 vehicles spending less than $10 that day for food and a bit of public transportation to get me started. The first driver, Tomoshi, is an airplane mechanic serving in the Japan Self Defense Force. He’s stationed in Higashi Matsushima, Miyagi Prefecture, very close to where … Continue reading →
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1Hirosaki was under a clear blue sky when I boarded the first train out of town at 6:54 a.m. My destination was home to Niigata and I was hoping to hitchhike all the way back from Nagamine station, just 3 train stations from Hirosaki and right on Route 7, a straight shot to Niigata. It turned out I was able to hitchhike in 5 rides only as far as Akita … Continue reading →
“BBC’s killer documentary called “The Power of Nightmares“. Top CIA officials openly admit, Al-qaeda is a total and complete fabrication, never having existed at any time.” (Quote from: Top Ranking CIA Operatives Admit Al-qaeda Is a Complete Fabrication) In 2010 while riding a train, I met a man from Pakistan. This was just after Terry Jones, the pastor of the Christian Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, U.S., announced … Continue reading →
On Wednesday, April 18th, I began another week long hitchhike adventure. This time I hitchhiked 1430 kilometers (894 miles) in 17 vehicles. Among these were only 2 trucks. The drivers and passengers consisted of 6 married couples, 1 single lady, and the rest male company employees. The total cost of the trip was about 10,000 yen or around $78 US. About 4000 yen was used for transportation in and around … Continue reading →
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5A dear lady friend in the USA urged me to listen to hours 2 and 3 of the March 27, 2012 Power Hour radio show broadcast hosted by Joyce Riley. She was afraid that I and my family were in extreme and imminent danger due to nuclear radiation contamination. She knows I live in an area that is neighbor to Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. After listening to what Joyce Riley and … Continue reading →
“We are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species, but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time.” David M. Raup, University of Chicago paleontologist.” I got this quote … Continue reading →
On Monday, March 5th I received an assignment to build a new website, SongwriterMarie.com The next day it was live on the Internet. By Thursday all the material was posted and all the tweaks applied. My client was pleased I did it so quickly. This is all due to the ease of working with WordPress CMS, the power of Gimp (a free alternative to Photoshop), and a bit of knowledge … Continue reading →
