Since today is April fools day I’m publishing old photos I took in the year 2011 :)
My last photos of Fujiyoshida :)
Fujiyoshida to me means Udon and the smell of wood as well as rain between 3 and 4 p.m. :D
At least during the weeks I spent there in 2010 and 2011 it seemed to rain every day between 3 and 4 p.m. :D
This place felt so calm and nice to me :)
I could enjoy the rain each day due to it only falling during a short time of the day and the buildings and landscape making the rain look and sound beautiful :3
Back then I was just starting out exploring the places somewhat off the trodden paths :)
The possibilities of booking hotels and getting to places like this were far less documented and translated than they are now so I did most of my research doing google maps :D It was challenging and thrilling and right now I’m still feeling the same way every time I’m laying out my trips and looking at the places I’m wanting to visit :3
Fujiyoshida did strike me as a place that was rarely mentioned in the guide book to Japan that I was using and that I do still possess :D
The only thing it mentioned about Fujiyoshida was Fuji-Sengen Jinja (of which the Torii can be seen in the last photo :)
I was not sure what to expect of this place that had barely anything written about it in sources that I could read. Naturally I was nervous about what spending a week in a foreign place like this would be like as there might be the chance it would not be interesting enough and make me feel like I would rather be somewhere else.
I still took the chance and went there anyways :D
At first I wasn’t sure if I was at the right place as Fuji-San could not be seen from the ground (^-^;) and my ascend to Fuji-San was kind of a disaster due to massive amounts of rain but I fondly remember Fujiyoshida :3
I decided to return next year to climb Fuji-San again :)
I stayed for a week in Fujiyoshida again and this time the weather was just wonderful. :3
I went hiking in the surrounding mountains, rode the cable car from Tenno-San and ate lots of delicious Udon :3
I also remember all of the kind people I met in this place and the delicious Udon I ate :3
2011 was a hard year for Japan but I admire the calm determination and perseverance with which the Japanese are facing the challenges nature and technology gave them that year.
In many ways I feel like Japan has grown from that experience without taking rash decisions. I do not say that everything went perfectly but it went well enough considering what had happened :)
In some way I feel like I have grown too since then :)
Fujiyoshida is one of the reasons I fell in love with exploring Japan :)
There are many wonderful places and this is the reason why my passion matured and the desire to know more about Japan is still burning within me :)
My photos from Fujiyoshida are also one of the main reasons I started writing about Japan on my blog as friends told me they liked my photos (^-^)
In many ways my passion for things Japanese matured and I’m also much more familiar with the not so nice sides of Japan but! in many ways I learned to like something about Japan that is hard to grasp.
For most of my life my aesthetic preferences have felt off to myself and one of the reasons I started making things was that I couldn’t find things that just felt right to me so I started making them. I found inspiration in Japanese things and in the way Japanese work on things :)
I hope one day I can visit Fujiyoshida again (^-^)
I want to say Thank you to this wonderful little town with its nice and kind inhabitants :)
I think last weeks interview went well :)
Sadly I’m incapacitated again (>_<;)
Usually I’m rather robust but I guess working a lot and having all kind of things to do makes me a bit more susceptible to that…
I wish everyone a great new week with sweet dreams and happy memories
(^-^)/
