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Apparently, updating the blog frequently, isn't going as well as I had hoped - but that's what happens when you are constantly on the road! :-)
A few weeks ago we hit the road, heading south. We started out by hitchhiking our way down to Hiroshima, with a tent on our back, planning to camp wherever we would find ourselves at nighttime. With a sign in out hands, saying "Kaze Makase", meaning somthing like "Where the wind will take us" - this trip turned out to be an amazing adventure.
Touring the road gave us a surprise overnight stay at a temple, including good food, religous rituals and an evening in the company of the head master of the temple, treating us to expensive sake, and old whiskeys! Before reaching Hiroshima, we had another overnight stay, this time in a private home, as well as a surprise visit to Himeji Castle - a castle appointed part of the World Cultural Heritage.
All the way people where amazingly good to us - treating us to restaurant visits, pakked lunches and even money! We enden up with more food that we where able to eat! Hitchhiking in Japan is very rare, and many people has never seen a hitchhiker, nor thought it was possible to hitchhike through Japan, and indeed most of the people picking us up thought that we where in economic problems. But along the way we got to feel of the giving spirit of the Japanese people, and their welcoming attitude toward foreigners.
After a few days in the Hiroshima area, experiencing the memeories of the A-bomb tragedy, and the beautifull island of Miyajima, with tree covered mountains, wonderfull shirnes and temples, and deer mingling with tourist, we headed further down south towards the active vulcano of Mt. Aso. This was an amazing sight with clouds of steam violently rising from the depths of the vulcano. In the nearby surroundings there where two huge waterfalls with drops of 80 and 100m - two falls with where renowned for freezing up at wintertime. At the time we came, not much water was flowing down the falls, making it ideal to play in the falling water. So two boys spent a good day climbing and forcing the overgrown mountainsides leading up the the foot of the falls, and playing in the falling water.
This turned out to be an amazing eight-day adventure, where we without any real plan lead us to wonderfull nature, beautifull cultural sights and surprising overnightings in temples, private homes, public parks, beaches busses and vulcano tops!
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