Day Thirteen: Nagoya, Ogaki and Gifu

at least I made an effort during the day to visit the office of my old mission.

I failed at that. it was just one of many things that happened during the day that made me wish I could drill a new hole in my head.

but at least the day ended well.

after the money spent riding the subway to the mission home and the thirty minute walk from the station, I come to find out that everyone I wanna see is gone. I walked back towards the station. on the way, I decided to take a different way, always remembering the road less traveled is often the best. I had taken this same route so many times, so I switched it up.

I found myself in a park where some small children were playing with their mothers. I looked around and observed the beautiful colors of the trees .

I took out the one book I brought with me, victor frankl’s “mans search for meaning”, and read this passage.

This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. “I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,” she told me. “In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.” Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, “This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.” Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. “I often talk to this tree,” she said to me. I was startled and didn’t quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. “Yes.” What did it say to her? She answered, “It said to me, ‘I am here – I am here – I am life, eternal life.’”

while this passage could have many different meanings, for me at that time it just meant living for the simple pleasures of life rather than focussing on the constant problems that we face day and and day out that seem to consume all of our happiness.

and im reminded of a time and a place where I did enjoy those simple pleasures.

walking back, I saw the boss himself.


to promote this coffee, they use the classic American tough guy. we could argue that clint eastwood may have been better for this job, but the stern and stalwart face of the man who played Harvey two-face in “batman forever” seems to get the job done.

im on a train from downtown Nagoya to gifu, and then from gifu to ogaki.

ogaki is the place in japan i would consider to be the closest thing to my home in this country. I came to love the area and the people and the time I was able to spend with my friends in this area.


I just stepped off the train and went on another short trip around. looking at shrines built around the station and fell across a few of the rare gems nestled around the station.

I got back into the train and headed on my way to gifu. on my way another edifice created to honor our own commander in chief himself.


that’s where I met richy.

richy is a working stiff in the kid business, like myself. he teaches kindergarten aged kids at a Japanese school.

im about to have a cuteness overload resulting in convulsions just thinking about it.

he has lived in japan for a little over five years and aced the Japanese proficiency exam.

I found myself that night sharing his house along with two cross country bikers travelling from Hiroshima to Tokyo. they were a father and a son named vlad and alex. both of them were fluent in English and ukranian. vlad was a little younger than me and also like me was taking the summer off from school as a time to get out and see the world.

richy is from new Zealand and has one of the coolest and deepest new Zealand accents I have ever heard. aside from being extremely cool and hilariously funny, he showed me and his two other guests one of the main attractions of this part of japan.

its called ukai, cormorant fishing.

when the sun goes down, boats along the nagaragawa river float downstream with huge torches attached to the front. torches are also lit along the shore. they use these torches to attract the fish to the light of the fire during the darkness of the evening.

the boats are manned by two men, the man in the front of the boat, next to the torch, holds a series of about seven or eight ropes in his hands. these ropes are attached around the necks of cormorants, a type of bird that digs on fish.

when the fish comes to the light near the front of the boat, the cormorants dive into the water and pick up a few of the fish in their mouths, after the man holding on to them sees a little of that action, he pulls the bird to him and throws the fish from the mouth of the cormorant towards his partner.

the other guy does whatever from there. in the case of last evening, he started gutting and preparing the fish to be eaten to people in other boats observing what was going on.

this is an old school Japanese way of fishing, and it worked well.

it was remarkable.

after that, richy drove us to a sushi place with each plate costing only 100 yen. we gorged ourselves on so many different kinds of sushi and called it a night. vlads father footed the bill for all of us, I felt the worst of all due to this because I was neither his son nor the man providing him with a place to sleep. but I did the best thing I reckoned I could do.

I said thank you


from then I fell asleep in richys house wondering my fate of during the next trip towards Osaka and imagining where I would eventually end up.

and you could never imagine what happens from here