July 5th, 2004
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Trips west, north, and center
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It’s funny how things that start out as trivial can become compelling. Mikiko and I trekked out to Takao-san guchi last Saturday [hardly a trek, 47 min by special express from Shinjuku]. It’s a nice little village at the base of a forested mountain ridge that extends west out of Tokyo-to. When was in college, I’d hear other people talking about going hiking and getting groups together. It was like trendy, or something. At the time it sounded incredibly boring to me, and I couldn’t see how people wasted their time just walking through the woods. Well, of course it seems there will never be an end to the stupid assumptions I’ll make about things untried, and this case was no different.
Hiking is fun for a number reasons, the first I noticed was to feed my ego, that I could scramble up the most beat path in three quarters the suggested time and not even get tired. But I wasn’t going alone, so you kind of have to ditch the ego when doing things with other people. I think Miki and I had a good time together. We got some exercise, pretended that we could see flying squirrels, and pointed out my house far away, a tiny dot on the bay plateau so far to the east (it’s easy to spot since I live so close to some of the tallest buildings in Tokyo).
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The basic idea for the toy is you have to knock one of the center pieces out with the mallet and keep the rest balanced on each other.
The people in the village were nice, and I bought a couple Japanese traditional toys for myself and other lucky individuals upon my inclination to post or return home. There was a totally sweet early 80s pearl yellow Countach parked outside one of the little shops. I agreed with Mikiko that it seemed out of place, but damn did it look fine. One of the shopkeepers and I jawed about it for a couple minutes before heading home. I was too embarrassed to snap a picture of it though, after having an embarrassing experience with a 911 Targa owner a couple weeks before.
