JAPAN

Being about my short stay in the
Land of The Rising Sun
2002

I arrived in Japan on 19 March 2002 and left again on 21 July 2002. In those four months I saw a fair amount of part of Shizuoka Prefecture, about 150 km southeast of Tokyo. I was unfortunate in  that I never visited Tokyo itself, but very fortunate in that I saw a great deal of the Japan most visitors do not get to see -- the rural areas and small towns.

On my arrival my friend whom I was to visit was still living in Yaizu City on the east coast. 
Yaizu is a bustling small city (by Japanese standards) with a large harbour used predominantly by fishing vessels. As in most large Japanese towns, there is a mixture of the beautiful, the plain and the ugly. 

Away from the large main streets with their ugly big buildings, one soon enters the small 
residential streets where the little houses are crowded close together, each with its little garden of potted flowers on the street side.  In between there are apartment blocks of various sizes and the occasional larger dwelling with its bigger garden.

We soon moved to Okabe, a small town just inland from Yaizu.  Here life is more relaxed, children can still play in the streets and everyone is friendly, although the Japanese are still fairly wary of foreigners.

Here are some photos from my stay. They are not of a high quality, because the camera was a very basic digital model, but at least you can get some idea of what it was I experienced there.

Yaizu: Cherry blossoms along a canal

Okabe: the village seen from the hill, with Yaizu in the distance

Okabe: the main street

Okabe: a rice paddy near our house

Okabe River

Asahina: a tea plantation on the hillside (Asahina is a village a few kilometres further inland from Okabe)

Asahina: the New Year's Bell

Asahina River in flood after a typhoon

Asahina Temple

Asahina: An old tunnel

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