Just as another point of view, I had no problem with the “coming home” part. For me, the temporal flow is very much secondary to the impressions conveyed.

Wish I had more time to sit and read your recent posts quietly, unhurriedly. (And thanks for your perceptive comments :^))

I lived mostly in Fukui Prefecture from 1994 to 2004. I now live on Vancouver Island, in Canada, but long to relocate to Japan.

I started out on the Noto Peninsula, and then moved to Kurobe, in Toyama. After that, I lived mostly in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, just 20 minutes from Lake Biwa, and about 2 hours from either Kanazawa, Nagoya or Kyoto.

Fukui is truly one of the most underrated parts of Japan. The food is good, the hiking is good, the weather is good, and the ken is dotted with “Little Kyotos”: Takefu, Ono, Obama.

It’s not really a destination, but it’s a great place to stop and look around before continuing on to Kanazawa (or Hakusan). It’s also a great place to live. While the locals could hardly be called cosmopolitan, the region is fairly laid back, unpretentious, and “foreigner” friendly. Alan Booth didn’t seem to think so when he walked through the region in 1977, but I think he was dead wrong.

I’d rather live in Ishikawa, but Fukui is where my family is (and where my son was born) so I suppose it will always be home.

A good trip: in July, after the mountain opens (after the tsuyu, but before the typhoons start in late August) take the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Maibara, and then switch to the Hokuriku line. Stay in Katsuyama and visit the dinosaur museum. Get an early start on the Hakusan trailhead the next day. Overnight at the top, and try to make it to Yamanaka Onsen the next day.

Yamanaka Onsen in Ishikawa is the ultimate, the best, the soul of Hokuriku.

But I’ve nattered on long enough…

Anyway, let’s see…

Marja- Leena, you did mention once about your daughter, more than a year ago, though I don’t recall your having said anything about where she was. How did she like Japan?

Christy, I’m glad that my words and pictures had the ability to carry you away a little, but I still wouldn’t want to be responsible for your complete dissipation!

Yen, a new face! (or rather “Bewegung” as the German’s would call it, a movement in space… a “disturbance in the Force”...). Welcome!

May, thanks, as ever. Still trying to figure out what you mean by “essential”, though. I guess you mean the feelings that you, too, would experience at such a time? Yes, personally I feel that every life, human and non, needs a proper symbiotic relationship with the place they inhabit in order to realize the full potential of their lives. When a creature constantly experiences stress from the environment it dwells in then the creature cannot attain its own sense of completion. Unfortunately it seems as if humans are bent on destroying all semblance of harmony and holism, and by using these loaded words I am not referring to Hippie peace or teenage idealism, but rather the equilibrium that results from centuries of coexistence, where time and experience weed out what doesn’t work or doesn’t fit into the society of living things. Unfortunately, too, humans seem to have developed this attitude that we are somehow exempt from checks and balances, that we are a species floating outside the sphere of “nature”... we even separate ourselves from that word, as if it is possible to not live within nature.

I believe that a lot of spiritual, mental, and emotional problems stem from this distancing of ourselves from the land and other living creatures. It is a very sad and destructive way of looking at life.

So walking through this new place is my first step toward at least equipping myself with the bearings to know who I am where I am.

Zen, sorry about the confusion in the writing. I was pretty much writing at the tip of my fingers, barely aware of how the words were coming out, I was so tired. I just wanted to get something out before I let another few weeks go by unnoticed.

Dave, those little shrines really recall a time when Japanese were intensely aware and respectful of their surroundings. The plots of land around the shrines nearly always harbor old growth trees, usually cedars, gingkos, and camphors, and are like cookie cutter islands of both biological memory and human history. They are sadly disappearing as more and more houses are being slapped together, often by razing entire hillsides or burying rivers just to accommodate a few extra houses. If this continues then the Japanese will soon have just about nothing left of their original, traditional landscape… nothing to identify them as “Japanese”. Kyoto is beautiful, but it is museum and more and more culturally isolated. A few Buddhist priests who own or run the temples and shrines along the outskirts of the city have told me that because of the unchecked development of the land surrounding them, the temples no longer look out upon the contemplative landscapes that were an essential part of the temple’s reason for being.

CNT, I hear you! Actually I very seriously considered turning down this job just so that I could look for whatever job and home I could find in the Iiyama region of Nagano. I like the way the people think about the land there and of course the land itself. I love Toyama and have traveled several times, both by bicycle and by walking, through Shiga, Fukui, Ishikawa, Gifu, Nagano, and Niigata, all of which would answer my need to live with mountains. I also really love Yamagata, Fukushima, and Akita, and have promised myself that if I do end up living in Japan for the rest of my life that I would move to one of these places. I just couldn’t remain here in Chiba for too long; my heart would constantly be yearning for a richer landscape. This job is something that I need and personally want to grow with for a while and the areas you describe are, as you mentioned, difficult on the wallet. But maybe that’s part of the answer… those places without money tend not to waste money on useless development..

Where exactly do you live? You’ve got my chewing my cheek with jealousy!

Of course, it’s difficult to find a job – any job – either Fukui, Ishikawa or Toyama, but the region really has it all: hiking, country life, one beautiful urban space (Kanazawa) and wonderful weather (if you like snow in the winter and hot hot heat in the summer). However, it’s the character of the region that I love best. The Kaga region is located mostly inland, the houses typically have red tile roofs. Go up to the windswept coast of Noto, and you’ve got wonderfully silver weatherbeaten wooden houses with black roofs, that constrast nicely with the yellow sand of the beach that runs uninterrupted for about 100 kilometers up the coast.

I’ve lived all over Japan (including just up the street from where you are, in Hitachi, Ibaraki) and Hokuriku rules. It will cure any ills in your soul. The cementzilla, while present, is not omni-present.

What the region won’t do is cure the ills your pocket book. But, god, I love it.

Saddly much of the country life is fading away as the cementzilla eats up land for highrises.