My first day in Sapporo, my third day in Japan, I was lucky enough to meet up with Lal, a very cool guy who’s been out there online for years — about 6 years, as he notes, of contact on the Culture List (and I think he showed up on the Brin-L too) and who happened to be in Sapporo studying. It was a great evening, though a pity there was only one chance to meet. Just before he caught the subway back to his dorm to finish packing, he asked a random passerby to take this picture. And there …

And though WorldCon was fine — and spending time with friends there was great — I have classes sometime tomorrow so posting about it shall have to wait. Expect pictures, though none by me from the Con. I just never felt like it. But I will link to those posted by others. And I’ll photograph more when I have a lens that allows me to get enough zoom to get the shots I actually want. Now, to bed…

… sounds a little more dramatic than, “removed some very dry and hardened pieces of skin that were causing massive blisters, swelling, and pain,” but I swear, it felt like the latter. I have gauze on my foot. It was just this morning. I’m a little afraid to look. The worst thing to be told, while traveling, is “try not to walk too much.” So today is a lazy day, and I’ll just take it easy… lots of breaks and so on. I picked up a few Japanese jazz CDs at an HMV and my goodness one of them is downright amazing. Some …

I’m in Tokyo again. Looks like I’ll be there until sometime on Wednesday evening, when I make my way to Yokohama. If there’s anyone in Tokyo who reads this blog and feels like meeting up, email me! (I’m not expecting anything, but I do get some hits from Japan — in fact, more official hits from Japanese servers than from Canadian ones! — so whatever, hey? Email me, we can do lunch or hit an izakaya or something.) My feet are much happier now now that I have some new sandals and took care of my feet a little. It’s …

Hiroshima. I was only there for a day. I liked it a lot, maybe more than Kyoto. Probably because my feet hurt so damned much and Kyoto involved so much walking for me. There was something about the Hiroshima vibe that was more comfortable — maybe vaguely more familiar — to me. All the monuments to the dead… it’s depressing. Yet I have to say, I’ve never seen more concentrated discussions of war and anti-war sloganing anywhere (except maybe some radicals I knew in high school). Yes, Japan has the black vans with the right-wing idiots; it has bunkhead politicians …

Still in Kyoto. Today was a very fruitful day in many ways. The best thing is, I found a place that has computers that aren’t crippled. This means I can back up the photos from my MP3 player on the portable hard drive I brought along. This is very good, because when you are trying to shoot as much as you can in RAW, a 20-gig MP3 player just isn’t going to hold a lot of pictures. Not that I’m shooting THAT many. I’m mostly trying to relax and enjoy traveling, enjoy standing in the middle of temples and feel …

I’m in Kyoto now. Have been for a few days, but the bizarre internet cafe I was using has something seriously wrong with the computers, and was tripping a spam-block on my hosting server, so I couldn’t even comment on posts on my own site. Lovely city. I could spend weeks here wandering. Would prefer it to the hectic running about. Was caught in a rainstorm today. I wish I could say it was lovely, but it was kind of horrible. My Lonely Planet book is wrecked, my rentaphone was acting weird, I was soaked, and I was too flustered …

Is where I am now. Attention saving announcement, I’m just blabbing about trip activities, so if you’re not interested, skip down to the bit on travel-photography. It’s been interesting and mostly quite cool. I met up with a guy I’ve sort-of known online for years now, Lal. He’s cool and we had a lot to talk about. Unfortunately he was flying out the next morning, but I’m sure the next time our paths cross will be good fun. I’ve been eating lots of Sapporo ramen. This puts Korean ramyeon to shame, it’s amazing stuff and I am going  to find …

I flew to Tokyo on Tuesday evening, got a ticket for Sapporo for Wednesday night, and went wandering in Tokyo the rest of that evening. Next day, wandered some more, and (barely!) caught my train for Sapporo. Overnight train, got here Thursday morning, and found myself a room so I could shower and so on. Tokyo is boiling hot, but Sapporo is nice and cool. I need new sandals — my feet have blisters already — but I’m feeling like a new person after a nice soak in a big, warm bath. Anyway, I’ll only be in Hokkaido a few …