The Chronicles of Nara: Chapter Three - Deer Meat

All these dear running around acting like they own the place made me wonder if they would eat anything, even meat.

So me and amadeus, an irish guy currently residing at the nara tree, went out on an adventure to see if the deer had the guts to eat more than just crackers and other folks maps.

our first stop was at the huge buddha hall, where we were downright bombarded by groups of school kids wanting their picture taken with two guys from foreign countries. at one point, i started asking all of the kids what country they thought i was from, just by looking at my face, and every time i asked, they said france.

so what is it that french folks and i have in common? the world may never know, other than i like french fries. what do they call french fries in france? here in japan, french fries are called fried potatoes.

but whats even wackier...corn dogs...are called...

american dogs

did anybody know that the most popular treat in japan named after the country of america is the corn dog? corn dogs can be bought at many convenience stores, and since they are one of my favorite treats, i always find myself asking one of the workers there to pull me an american dog hot off the grill.

and boy they sure are tasty.

me and amadeus stopped my mcdonalds on the way to meet some of the deer, and i bought two burgers to try out on them. first was a regular hamburger, made with two buns, a pickle, some small shreds of onion, mustard, tomato, and something that looks and tastes like it might be cow meat. second was something called the mcpork, big in japan, made with lettuce, two buns, some weird pseudo-barbeque sauce, and something that looks and tastes like it might be pig meat. the mcpork is one food that i would never pay to eat, and thats saying a lot, because i eat AND like almost anything.


so we tried to give the deer this hamburger, and it worked. out of a small posse of about eight deer, one came up and started chowing down on it. the rest were not at all interested in the burger. it was a happy time for me and amadeus when that deer ate our hamburger.


later we tried the mcpork, and just like i hate it, the deer hate it too. one of the deer took one bite and walked away angrily, forcing me to throw the rest of it into a nearby lake the next day after it was too rotten for even a deer to eat. the turtles enjoyed it.


makes me wonder if the meat might be made of deer and the one that totally woofed down the burger might be a cannibal. im gonna go out and check outside to see if any deer are hanging from nearby trees with the words "traitor" written above them on a cardboard sign.

more havoc to come

The Chronicles of Nara: Chapter Two - The Tambo

I was riding on a train with yuki, who I had just met five minutes before on our way to a city that I am still not sure of the name of. yuki was the funniest Japanese person I have met. he carried around with him a doll of a snowman, telling people it was his friend, and pointing to everyone that, near the crotch of the snowman, there was a stain where the snowman had peed his pants.

we got along great

bob and mayumi told me that there were a group of people that meet together occasionally for the purposes of planting rice the old fashioned way. I had never done this type of thing myself, but had heard about people doing it before and seen it plenty of times during my stay here.

so why not go out and try it.

bottom line is that planting rice the old fashioned way sucks

there are fields covered in mud, knee deep, that you wade it laying out huge rolls of this construction paper, which you pole holes in and lay down these small rice shoots into. hundreds and hundreds of times. there were bugs everywhere, it was hot, and many of the people I was working with were crazy.

this guy here was one of the wild fellows. there was a wild snake just slithering around doing his own thing, and this kid walks over and picks it up and starts playing with it. he sat there working with the snake for about five minutes before he found a lizard and started playing with that instead.

the night before was fun though. me and yuki rode the train to the city and were picked up by the guy in charge of the whole deal. he drove us to the rice field where me met some of the workers there and introduced ourselves. they had already finished for the day and were preparing to go up into a lodge in the mountains and hang out until work the next day.

before we went though, the whole group of us when out to fields where we watched fireflies for about an hour. it was a great experience to be there with them enjoying fireflies over rice fields under a full moon. it reminded me of the movie i had seen just a couple nights before, the grave of the fireflies, which may be one of the best movies i have ever seen.

then we were on to the lodge.

I was glad I had my guitar, cause it made the party much more fun. it was a big giant sleepover with plenty of cool guys and cute girls. I taught them my favorite game, big booty, which I often used at the girls home where I worked before I came to japan, and the Japanese folks seemed to like the game. we sat around eating rice and all types of goodies before we all went to bed sometime around 3am. I was the only foreigner there.

the next day these freakin crazy Asians have me waking up at 7am ready to go out and work in the rice fields. I wasn’t ready after only sleeping for our hours, but because I wasn’t ready to fight, I gave in peacefully and we all went to the field where we worked for about eight hours.

trying to plant rice seeds in two feet of solid mud was one of the dirtiest and most painful jobs I have ever done, but at least I can tell people now that I have actually planted rice in japan.

during the day, I thought about something that my first mission companion told me when I lived with him in a city called yamato.

I was complaining to him about how much I hated the rain while we were doing a study session together, and then he looked at me and said

“but elder riggs, I love the rain, it is what makes the rice grow”

and that has always stuck with me. these muddy rice fields that become flooded during the rainy season are what feeds a nation, and the people of this country are so grateful for the blessings that nature provides for them.

after working for those hours, I was hungry, and incredibly burned by the sun.

all the folks went to a bath house from that point, I didn’t mention this yet, but I went to the same one before we went up into the cabin in the mountains. so, it was my second time going to this bath house.

and let me just reiterate to everyone out there, I love Japanese bath houses. there is one half of the place for women and one for men, and you all get in there, totally naked, and have a party like youre in a big giant naked waterpark, with only dudes of course, unless youre a lady, then you go with all your girl friends to the other side of the bath house, which has girl things like cosmopolitan magazine and mascara I guess. I have never been to the girls side myself, and could never imagine a woman not fully clothed, so I will only assume that those types of things happen there.

my friend yuki was hanging out with me in the bath and he told me that I needed to jump into the tub next to us, so without thinking, I did. after that I freaked out. the tub I was in was sending out pulses of electricity, which I guess some people like, but I was not up for it, so I jumped out of the electric bath screaming like a naked chubby American mad man.

the next shock was even greater. the attendant that works at the bath house has a clear view of both sides of the locker rooms, and because there are only two genders of homo-sapiens, that means that at any given time, a dude can see all the naked chicks or a chick can see all the naked guys…if they want to.

I had just figured based on the night before that only a male worked at this one, but when I walked into the locker room in my birthday suit, there was an old woman staring at me. yeah, so I freaked out a little, but I guess after you see hundreds of naked people every day for years and years, its no big deal. and even though she was old, I know she still thought I was a stud.

so another bath house adventure, complete with rice. it was a great time and even though it was hard, im glad I did it. it was worse that the paint business with bossman ira but better than the pool business with bug eiland. which is funny because the guy that worked as the boss reminded me of a Japanese bug eiland. his personality was the exact same in my opinion, he just wasn’t as generous as bug. when we were in the locker room of the bath house, he stood in the corner for five minutes blow-drying his hair while standing totally naked next to a picture of a woman modeling by mount fuji.


if bug eiland had been born a Japanese man with no reservations of going to a bath house, I could see him doing something like that.

he was my hero.

The Chronicles of Nara: Chapter One - Civil War

the people of nara are at civil war.

there are those who feel that sento-kun is the one that should be the town mascot and others feel that the title belongs to manto-kun.

but seriously, for the most part people want manto-kun to represent them.

in order to celebrate the 1300th anniversary of this city, they hired a man out of Tokyo to create a mascot for the celebration, spending big money in the process, something to the tune of 50000 american dollars.

after spending all that time and money developing a good mascot, they came up with this.

he is an ugly demonic like creature made to look like a baby Buddha with deer antlers. this seems appropriate as nara is associated with that old time Japanese religion and the city is famous for at least 1000 deer that live here and roam around uncontrollably.

but many people, including myself, think this thing is hideous and would like nothing to do with it.

so they created a rival. spending a significantly less amount of time and money, a designer out of saitama, the city above Tokyo, created this.

this is manto-kun. he is like a brown marshmallow with a temple roof and antlers for a hat. much more cute and much less blasphemous to Buddhism, he seems to be the perfect choice to represent the city.

manto-kun is the kind of guy that, just by looking at him, you would feel proud of having marry your sister. he is the kind of guy that looks like you could eat and would taste something like peanut butter. his white cape makes him look like he would fight crime using his horns and his deer hoof hands and feet. he has the smile and demeanor to break a lot of hearts.

because I love manto-kun so much, I was able to attend his birthday party. there was music, poetry reading, and some guys talking about a jail. I didn’t know what all that was about, but the poetry reading was just as boring, so the best part about going was being able to listen to an old woman sing enka music.

I got bored with the poetry reading and was heading out when I got the surprise of my life.

there he was…

it was the creator of manto-kun. he had come all the way from saitama to celebrate in the first birthday of his beautiful creation.

I told him how much I loved manto-kun and how sento-kun sucks and I hate him. then just got kicks, I made a birthday card for manto-kun.

then me and the father of manto-kun held up our own individual creations together. he said my art skills were very good, but I think he was just saying that. even though I know my art skills are great, he seems much better.


I never got the chance to talk to manto-kun in person, but being able to meet the creator himself was the next best thing.

the civil war continues here in nara, and with definite bloodshed in the future, I can only urge the disciples of sento-kun to lay down their guns and raise their flag of surrender, allowing manto-kun to take his rightful place as nara city mascot

The Chronicles of Nara

Thank you everyone for sticking with me on the journey of 60 cities in 60 days until now!

I am very happy to let you know again that I will be living in nara and working at the nara tree guesthouse until my return to America on july 2nd.

during my journey so far, I have seen twice the amount of things that I had planned to see in a single month, so it is in my humble opinion that I have seen at least 60 cities, I estimate that over the course of my daily travelling, I have seen at least a hundred.

which brings me here to nara.

I am beginning the next part of my trip which is based less on travelling and more on living the life of a Japanese person. I will still travel often and see nearby sites, and I will be visiting Tokyo in the days before I go to narita airport to return to America, but for now, I will be staying in nara, continuing to learn new things, meet many new people, and have a place to call home for a few weeks.

from this point, the blog will not be a record of the things that happen daily, it will be more based on highlighting many things that are happening while I live here. which may be good for people because it will be less of a travelogue and more of a look at daily life in a small Japanese city.

im excited. are you?

so welcome to the chronicles of nara

Day Thirty Five: Sobudai, Shin-Yokohama, Kyoto and Nara

I was up at about 10. the whole family was gone and I was there at lodging by myself. I just spent some time pondering on things before the horlacher family came back and met me there.

they had been gone doing the final preparations for the inspection of the house they were moving out of. I kind of felt bad that I didn’t go with them to do it, but honestly I didn’t know that they were going to be doing in the morning.

so I spent some more time with them in the morning and with ben before me and ben left at 1 to go to the train station where I would be riding the japan rail system to nara.

the pass I had to stay on the zama base was only good until 1pm or something stupid like that. so when I got to the gate to get out of the freakin place, the Japanese folks acted like they weren’t going to let me leave or I was going to get punished for exceeding the time limit or something. it was pretty ridiculous for a while and me and ben had to stand there waiting for Japanese army folks to make some trivial back and forth phone calls asking their higher authorities if it was okay for me to leave the place.

eventually they let me out of there and I was out of the clutches of the American military, which was good, even though it made me sad to have to say goodbye to the horlachers.

and then me and ben made our way to the station, said our goodbyes, and I was gone.

five hours of train rides later and I was in nara. I was carrying a rolling suitcase, a 50lb packpack, and a guitar around the whole day, and stopped in a restaurant nearby the station with all of my goodies. they were glad to see me and my money when I ordered what could possibly be my favorite Japanese food, coco’s curry.

I was out of there and went and met bob and mayumi at their house after the sun set. they welcomed me and showed me where I would be sleeping. I have a room upstairs where I will be able to sleep, by myself for the most part except when there are guests in the house, then ill get to share with who knows who else!

the thought of it is terribly exciting.

also, I live just about an hour by train from Osaka, so I can go play there sometimes, and they are even going to be doing a Japanese version of jesus christ superstar all this month, definitely something not to miss!

but of course the end of the huge bulk of constant travel is over, and that has me feeling sad. I have never been in a situation in my life where I didn’t know where I would sleep night after night until the last month. it has been an incredible experience that I have absolutely loved.

when youre living in such a way, your lifestyle is based on constant schedule changes, desperation and all types of surprises. almost every situation I experienced was never planned, it all just came to me as I went along. I had a goal to see every major city in the country, and I was able to.

you feel different when you live as a traveler with no real plan. while some senses are dulled and not utilized entirely, others are amplified to some extreme and basic instinctual level that we rarely realize we still have in our mostly civilized circumstances. a person living the traveling life with little money begins to learn how to live by using every single resource and hand and waste nothing.

I have never felt in my life so poor and so tired, but I have also never felt so free and so in-tune with what was going on around me.

this trip has been incredible and I have had the best experience of my life and I am truly grateful that I am able to stay longer thanks to my friends in nara

and even though I have been wet, hot, cold, hungry, fatigued, sick, anxious, and felt so often like I am in a place I don’t know well enough to feel comfortable in anywhere at any time, constantly moving with no nearby support or place to hang my hat…


I have loved every second of it

Day Thirty Four: Zama

then it’s the shinkansen from sendai to Tokyo.

im on the shinkansen for about three hours I guess, much better in comparison to the eight hour trip I took from Sapporo to sendai. but because the trip from Sapporo to sendai included a trip in a tube below the ocean floor, it seems like everything balanced out in the end.

I got into Tokyo about noon and I do another stop at shibuya and hiro-o. I try to meet up with my old mission president again, but he isn’t there, so I just visit the temple, try to call another one of my old mission presidents, without luck, and I movie more around the city.

I have a meeting that night with the man I met on the plane flying to narita when I first came to japan. his name is okimasa okada, and as a special gift to me, he took me out to dinner in shinyurigaoka.

it was great to see him again and the dinner was quite exquisite.

it was also decent to get back to shinyurigaoka. I had already stayed there one night during my trip when I visited laura and got to spend the evening with her splendid friend joseph.

shinyurigaoka is also very close to one of the cities when I lived while I was a missionary, Machida. most of the pictures I used for the city pictures in the headers for this blog were taken from Machida, including this one.


I visited the dog art wall, a few of my other favorite places and then went to donkihote and bought a jacket there. come to think of it, im wearing that jacket right now. see…


pretty cool huh?

so I went to dinner with okada. it was a rollicking good time, and after it was over, he dropped me off at the zama army camp nearby where I was going to stay once again with the horlacher family.

again, that family is amazing. they were living in lodging quarters for people preparing to leave out of the country, and still they allowed me to stay with them for one night and then they gave me a whole bunch of hot dogs the next day.

thanks so much horlacher family

so I slept that night on the couch of the horlacher family in lodging at camp zama, thinking that this might be, for the most part, the last night of my vagabond travels.

the next day would be the last day I could use my rail pass to get anywhere, and I would be spending the rest of my trip working in nara. the most adventurous part was over.

but maybe it really isn’t over, it just keeps going on and on as I continue my stay here.

I can only hope that the adventure isn’t over, because up to this point, I have had the absolute time of my life and just hope that it can keep going. I have learned more than I could have ever imagined and experienced things I would have guessed I would ever get myself into.

so, 60cities 60days lives on.

Day Thirty Three: Sendai

it took me about eight hours by train, the trip from Sapporo to sendai

i began in sapporo city, rode on a train to the city at the base of Hokkaido island, hakodate.

from that point, I changed trains and boarded the underwater train. as opposed to having a train that goes in bridges and whatnot, there are two options for getting from Hokkaido to mainland Honshu, you can take a ferry, or take a train that travels in an underground tunnel, something like the English channel train, only better.

so the train went into the long tube from Hokkaido to Honshu. I was glad after I made it out alive. I had never been on a train before that went not only under the ocean, but underneath the ground at the ocean floor. I was a little terrified during the trip that something weird might happen and I wouldn’t be able to live to tell the tale of how I made it out alive.

I arrive in Hachinohe and ride on the shinkansen bound for Tokyo with a stop eventually in sendai

I was in sendai city at sometime around 8pm.

I got out and did a little sightseeing. not much to see when its 8pm at night, so I went to the place where I knew all the folks would be, the entertainment district.

entertainment districts are just smaller versions of las vegas in the middle of larger Japanese cities. its where all the clubs and bars and all that fantastic stuff seems to be, and at night its entertaining to walk around the places and see what kind of things you can see.

in japan, people will randomly come up to you and speak English, I guess trying to practice with you or something. its even more fun when a drunk guy comes up to you, trying to speak English, and half of the words he says, you have never heard before, he is just speaking some hybrid language made of Japanese, greek, with English thrown in to keep you on your toes.

a guy comes up to me and says hello. I ask him whats up and im just looking around to see whats going on in the town. we talk for a while and it was entertaining while it lasted. he seemed like he was weaving a pretty big yarn of crazy mixed up stories.

he claimed he owned five businesses that provided people with massages, of the exotic type. he also said he was forty years old and had a wife in Thailand.

he told me one of his dreams was to eventually open up a guest house or a hostel for world travelers in his wifes city in Thailand. he could tell this would get me going due to the 50lb backpack I was carrying around with me.

I suppose I believed him, what reason would I have had not to?

he told me i could spend the night at his house, which i didnt. he was pretty drunk at the time i met him and eventually after we had been talking for about an hour, he just walked away. i have his phone number though, unless the one he gave me is some weird sensual massage place

from then I walked from the crazy part of town to the front of the station where I slept in an internet café for about six hours and boarded the first train in the morning to Tokyo.


the rising sun was so beautiful.

Day Thirty Two: Sapporo

the day begins and im out the door.

if anyone has ever lived in japan, visited, or noticed the signs and billboards in any film in or around modern japan, you might know about Sapporo beer.

the three people who were able to see or listen to me open my mission call can also testify that i predicted that this place was where i would become a missionary, the beer capital of japan.

even a non-drinker would have an interest in the beer of Sapporo. I didn’t even realize that japans Sapporo beer came from Sapporo until today. I could have only guessed. while I was on my mission, I never really was able to get a confirmation as to whether or not Sapporo beer comes from Sapporo. Japanese members of the mormon church start convulsing at even the thought of beer, nicotine, caffeine or mtv. subsequently, I never got the opportunity to ask about it, or maybe I never really cared until today.

anyways, I was walking around the town asking folks what Sapporo was all about, and what it was famous for, and I finally found out it was all about the booze. its the great stuff that makes calm and collected businessmen vomit on train platforms late at night.

Sapporo even has a beer museum, which was originally one of the first places to produce japans famous Sapporo beer.

I didn’t feel too bad about going to the museum, and even paying to get in. of all the good mormons out there, please raise your hand if you have ever been to busch gardens and payed at least 30 bucks to get in.

see? there. I only had to pay 100yen. don’t be all judgin your brother.

it was an interesting place. but I didn’t know anything that was happening cause it was all in Japanese, no English subtitles in this museum, so I just kinda had to guess what was going on.

I found some delightful little models that make the production of beer in northern japan look something like how presents are made by elves in the north pole. there was even beautiful and delightful music that played along with these moving and grooving models.

it reminded me so much of duff land from the Simpsons, a place meant to glorify and make beer look like some sort of theme park attraction.

there are some things in life that will make a man tear up a little. hearing lee greenwood sing "god bless the usa" live is one of them.

i could imagine my grandfather witnessing this place and having a tear come to his eye. the grandfather on my mothers side of course.

after I had left the museum, I was feeling a little hung-over with fun, so the next best thing to do would be to go and check out a little of the Sapporo downtown area.

so I was on my way.

watabe mai told me that Hokkaido was all about flowers, and there were beautiful ones here, even in the park area of downtown Sapporo. it was one of the more beautiful city parks I had seen since coming to japan. it was well kept, had lots of beautiful flowers, and this Eiffel tower thing at the end of the park that I reckon was supposed to send out tv signals or something.


after I left the park, I went looking for the Sapporo botanical gardens. people had told me that when I went to the city, the two things I needed to see were the beer museum and the botanical gardens.

beer museum? check.

botanical gardens? soon enough.

it took me about an hour to walk there. and alas…

it was closed.

on monday, the only day of the week its closed. it sure did look beautiful from the outside though.

in some other life ill see those botanical gardens in the place known for its beautiful flowers

but not yet, not yet.