Mr. and Mrs. Itou August 11: Today is the last day of my road trip since last July 25th. It took only 4 vehicles from the Suita Service area in Osaka to get home. Two of the drivers went way out of their way to help me! During the 8 days I hitchhiked in this trip, I traveled 3036 kilometers in 33 vehicles. One of them was a motorcycle! (See … Continue reading →
August 8: It was fine weather, a Saturday and close to the beginning of the Obon Festival when family travel long distances to their home towns. My destination is Mount Rokkō in Kobe, a distance of over 600 kilometers. I never hitchhiked to the Kansai area in a single day from Oita, but because of the 3 positive factors in my favor, I decided to go for the gold and … Continue reading →
Youji and Miki August 5: I hitchhiked to Oita City down route 10, a distance of over 60 kilometers in only 3 cars! The first driver, Mr. Kihara saw me standing outside a hospital hitchhiking and wondered if I was a disabled man who needed help! He turned around and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was hitchhiking to Oita city and he offered to take … Continue reading →
New friend Shizu with Mannah, daughter of Caleb and Tabita The third driver was a lady, Mrs. Kuwahara. She has been married for 6 years but has no children. It turns out she has a problem with her husband. It’s not uncommon for drivers to pour out their heart and personal problems to me. With women especially I try to listen without offering advice. I learned that women often feel … Continue reading →
August 2: Today I needed to travel as far as Fukuoka City in Kyushu – a long distance of over 600 kilometers and unfamiliar territory passing through Hiroshima city which is the halfway point of this trip. Though I got off to a very slow start of less than 10 kilometers the first hour, I knew from experience my pace would get faster and faster the closer and closer I … Continue reading →
July 30: After a short wait at Hamamatsu Nishi IC, Mr. Sawaguchi took me to the Miai parking area near Okazaki. He said that he picked up a Christian pastor before from Niigata! The hardest part of this trip was to get past Nagoya. I waited two hours at the Moriyama parking area. A dozen people offered me a ride but they were only going as far as Komaki or … Continue reading →
July 28: Today is low atmospheric pressure throughout Japan with intermittent and sometimes very heavy rain. My destination is Hamamatsu City in Shizuoka Prefecture, the city I visited on May 26th this year. I’m travelling from Osaka and the distance is only a fraction of my previous trip from Niigata. Nevertheless the trip wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. I had to take refuge from the rain from time … Continue reading →
July 25: Today is the start of a 3 week hitchhike adventure from Niigata in Northern Honshu to the southern island of Kyushu. I won’t go directly to Kyushu from Niigata because others in the Honshu area are asking me to visit them first. This turned out to be good for my schedule because Kyushu today was drenched with torrential rain! Heavy rainfalls are frequent this time of year in … Continue reading →
July 19: This is actually the continuation of my previous post of my adventure to Kita-karuizawa. Word Press apparently doesn’t like long posts! Today I’m on my way back home from Shiojiri City in Nagano Prefecture. There was a low pressure area all over Japan, but except for a few drizzles of rain in the early morning in Shiojiri, it still looked OK to hitchhike. The first driver was a … Continue reading →
July 17: The purpose of this trip is to visit new friends, Brian from the UK and his Japanese wife Mieko. They spend their summers in Kita-Karuizawa near Mt. Asama in Gunma Prefecture, which is about 370 kilometers or 230 miles from my home. They first contacted me because of their interest in this blog. I had never met them face to face before. Though Kita-Karuizawa is in Gunma, I … Continue reading →
June, 21, 2009: Today is my 59th birthday. I went to one of my favorite traffic lights to hitchhike to downtown Niigata City to meet a friend to do some street evangelism. The first day of summer was a hot one, about 31 C. Though there was a lot of traffic waiting at the red light, everybody was ignoring me. After about 10 minutes I heard a voice calling from … Continue reading →
I hitchhiked to Hamamatsu city in Shizuoka Prefecture to bring a laptop PC to my friend Maria and teach her how to use it. It’s a Windows Vista PC which she is unfamiliar with. To hitchhike such a long distance (about 560 kilometers) passing through Tokyo is a real challenge for me. I calculate what time I should be at certain points to see if I can realistically reach my … Continue reading →
The third driver who picked me up today is one of the few Japanese believe that at least part of Japanese ancestry is from Israel. He told me that some of the people of Aomori in the Tsugaru area have blue eyes and that there are Hebrew words in their folk songs. The 5th driver, Mr. Nakabayashi is an electrical engineer who owns a small company. He referred to himself … Continue reading →
A shop in Hegewisch I used to visit I was happy to receive messages via classmates.com from long-lost friends I knew in high school! One of them was from Debbie Olson Chancey who I used to call “The Hot Dog Queen” because she worked at her father’s Vienna Hotdog where I used to hang out in the Chicago neighborhood of Hegewisch where I was raised. The other two were from … Continue reading →
I had a fantastic 10 day trip traveling 1460 kilometers in 28 vehicles during the Japanese holiday season from April 29 to May 5th known as “Golden Week“. April 30th: It took me over two hours and 6 vehicles just to get out of Niigata City! A lady took me as far as Toyosaka on the edge of Niigata City. She said her 29 year old daughter lived one year … Continue reading →
I always consider it a miracle to hitchhike from Niigata to Osaka in a single day. The distance is over 600 kilometers or about twice what I usually travel. This time it only took 5 cars to get to my destination, and the last driver went out of his way to take me to the very residence I needed to go! I left home just after 9AM and arrived at … Continue reading →
Sunday, April 5, 2009: A lady picked me up and told me at first she would take me to the center of Niigata City which was my destination. However, when I learned that she was on her way home, at about 2/3rds of that distance, I offered to disembark at an intersection that I thought would be convenient for me to continue to hitchhike from so that she wouldn’t have … Continue reading →
March 27, 2009 The main purpose of this trip was to bring a desktop PC to a friend in Noda city, Chiba. I took it in a carrying case with wheels so it wasn’t so hard to carry. The destination today was the city of Kashiwazaki, home of the largest nuclear power plant in the world, to see my friends Nobuo and Miwako and their friends. An elderly couple with … Continue reading →
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2An old, blind cowboy wanders into an all-girl biker bar by mistake. He finds his way to a bar stool and orders some coffee. After sitting there for a while, he yells to the waiter, ‘Hey, you wanna hear a blonde joke?’ The bar immediately falls absolutely silent. In a very deep, husky voice, the woman next to him says, ‘Before you tell that joke, Cowboy, I think it is … Continue reading →
Ikebukero is one of the large commercial centers in Tokyo with one of the busiest train stations. I intended to spend the night with a friend in Ikebukero so that I could easily go from there the next day to the American Embassy to renew my passport. It’s been ten years since I got the passport in Hawaii. The first driver was a off duty policeman who specializes in the … Continue reading →
