You know, Vox's buggy shit has pissed me off the last time.  When I'm trying to type a post, and I create a link, sometimes it fucks up and thinks I've clicked the link, and then loads that link IN THE EDITIng IFRAME, and then when i go back i've lost all the writing I've already done.

There's also the issue with uploaded mp3s never getting the cover art or tags parsed right, because "we cannot accept this file", an issue I've complained about both here and in support tickets several times, but which has never been fixed over the years.

So fuck it.  I'm through with you, Vox, at least until you do a major fixity-doo.

I'll be at http://life.enhasa.org/ if you please.

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Epic pic spam in 3... 2... 1...

There! Pictures!

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I got back last night, but I've been too lazy to do anything at all since I got back.  -_-

First! Statistics.  This is based on leaving Takanabe Town, in Miyazaki, at 4am on Wednesday, and arriving home in Toyama at 5pm on Thursday.  Of course, the time only counts for when the navi was on (aka, not when I was sleeping).

Distance Travelled: 1142.4km
Avg. Speed: 53.7km/h
Stopped time: 3h 10m
Max Speed: 83km/h (this is subject to some debate, as the navi frequently claimed I'd gone 180km/h or higher in the stats section -- I reset when that happened, because I think it was just error arising from it becoming confused about my location, during loss of sync, or while I was 'offroading' on new roads it didn't know about)

TOTAL DISTANCE: 2798.7km

(That leaves my car 3km from it's next oil change D:)

Anyway, I left the hotel so early because (1) I knew it was going to take bleeding forever to get home (2) I'd spent too much money and so I did kinda just wanna go home and (3) I wanted to take pictures of a sunrise. 

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Sunrise at the Hyuga Michi no Eki, in Hyuga City, Miyazaki Prefecture.  Didn't end up being the best location (turned out, as I set off after spending an hour there, that there was a much better situated beach about 10 minutes up the road D:).

Then I drove and drove and drove, and drove some more.  In the wilds of Oita, I started getting drowsy for no apparent reason, but since there was no REAL hurry beyond my own desire to be home, I pulled over at a convenience store and napped for two or three hours.  I kept seeing weird zippy lights, like someone was teasing me with a laser, but they weren't, and that is generally for me a sign of near total exhaustion and about-to-pass-the-fuck-out, so napping was the right answer.

Woke up, drove drove drove again.  Navi wanted to take me on the asshole tiny narrow bendy road in the mountains above Beppu again to get back to Kitakyushu, which cannot possibly have been that much faster (I did have the navi set to find fastest route, not shortest route).  It was getting quite annoyed when I refused to take its turns to reach the crazy batshit mountain road.  It finally recalculated a route that didn't use the mountain road, but I was sure it was up to something, so I pulled over, and looked at the full route, zoomed out.  IT HAD ME GOING TO KITAKYUSHU FROM BEPPU VIA NAGASAKI.  THAT IS NEITHER SHORTEST, NOR FASTEST, NAVI.  Here is a graphic for the benefit of those of you without knowledge of the geography of Kyushu.



Yeah. Yeah that was batshit dumb.

After that, she finally picked me a route that wasn't asstarded. I kept driving.  Got to Yamaguchi, and instead of following Hwy2 to Hiroshima (which is a hellhole, don't go there, ever, you're only encouraging their WE WERE BOMBED, YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD mentality), I turned north and took Hwy9.  It was kinda dodgy for a bit but then it opened up into some of the most beautiful valleys I've ever seen, but with nowhere to stop and take a goddamned picture.  Oh well, such places will have to live in my memory for the time being.

Drove and drove and drove. Drove some more. Drove drove drove. Stopped for a little bit at Hamada, and got a picture of the sunset there.

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Drove and drove and drove. Drove some more.  All during this time, the navi was having a fit because someone had rerouted 9, and not informed my satnav.  Several times, it was directing me down roads that went through the heart of small towns and had lots of stop lights, but the roadsigns were pointing me towards bypasses, roads that carried the same number and the same destination, but had fewer (or no) stop lights, and often had elevated speed limits (or no speed limits), so I'd take those.  My favourite one was in western Yonago in Tottori Prefecture, when I took a bypass instead of faffing about in downtown Yonago, and it took me over a river. Unfortunately, the entire road was unknown to the navi, so it was like OH GOD DO A U-TURN NOW, DO IT, or TURn LEFT, but I'm already in the river as far as its concerned, and it just doesn' t know. I laffed.

Anyway, I kept driving, finally stopping just before midnight at a Family Mart in Tottori that I've slept at once before, in 2005.  I napped there for 4 hours before carrying on.  At that time, it was too early to visit the sand dunes, but I've been there twice, so I don't feel too upset about it.  I have to say, Hwy9 in Tottori is friggin' sweet to drive.  It's straight, it's smooth, there's lots of Eki no Michi, situated near what are supposedly good place for photos (I couldn't tell -- it was night time ._.), etc.  All road authorities in Japan should take a hint from what they're doing there, frankly.  There's also a portion with like, 20 giant wind turbines. Again, had it been daytime, i would have stopped for pictures, because they're pretty impressive.  As it was, they were just creepy with their single red lights that blinked seemingly at random and made me feel uneasy.

Anyway, when i woke up at 4 am-ish, I kept driving and that's when the rain hit.  Damned rain, making shit dumb.  I didn't drive for too long, though. I ended up somewhere in northern Hyogo around 5:30, and bought gas, and then maybe 20 minutes later I had the zippy lights and I had to concentrate very hard on making a very profoundly angry/alarmed face so as to keep my eyes open.  Found another Family Mart and pulled over, sleeping for another 3 hours or so.  Somehow broke the plastic that holds the strap onto my left Croc when I got out of the car after the nap, which annoys me... ripped the other side off, since the strap was useless then anyway.  I just got those a few weeks ago :<

Anyway, woke up and made a mad dash for it again.  In northern Kyoto, just before Maizuru, I stopped for picture taking because the way the clouds were hugging the trees in the valley I was in was purdy.  Haven't even hooked my cam up to my computron to move the files yet, let alone started processing, so please wait a little longer.

Saw that Maizuru, in addition to having an Air Self Defense Force base and a Marine Self Defense Force base (with a variety of middling-sized ships in dock), is home to the World Brick Museum.  JOY. BLISS. I didn't go, fuck that noise.

Next up was Obama.  Perhaps you have heard of Obama. They're so thrilled to have a name that sounds the same as the name of the US president that they've gone Obama-mad.  All through town are I <3 OBAMA signs and posters, and there's a variety of Obama goods to be had.  There's also a new pachinko parlor, just completed, called DAITORYO (which is romaji for 大統領, which means president, or chief executive, or Big Leader, or, literally, large ruling collar) which has Obama shizzle all over it.  It's silly.

Drove drove drove, stopped for lunch and a break at the Circle K in Tsuruga that I stop at whenever I'm in the area. I've done this ever since my first road trip to Tottori in 2005. It came after a particularly challenging (at the time, for me) portion of Hwy 8, and it was scenic, and I said I AM STOPPING HERE, at that time, and it has since become a tradition.  It was raining and cloudy, so I dunno how well the pictures I took will turn out, but when it's sunny it's very pretty there.

Continued driving, and it had been raining all the way from Hyogo at this point, so that was fine, I was used to that. Then the torrential rain started, and that was pretty fun. Then I came out of a tunnel and it was super foggy, like mad, pea-soup fog, which, coupled with the torrential rain, made for a really fun drive.

Drove drove drove.  Nothing else of note really happened until I got to Oyabe and the navi said I'd be home at 5:05pm, but then I got behind some asshole in a dump truck doing 30km/hr.  I turned off, and then it became a game to see if I could find a route that would gain me back the 10 minutes the navi said I lost by not taking route 359 as far as I ought to have.  I succeeded, nearly. Gained back 8 minutes, so arrived at 5:07 instead.

Since then I've not done much of anything.  Just sitting, vegging, relaxing. Did laundry today, but took bleeding forever to do it because I just didn't care.  it's good to be relaxed, I guess?

Oh, my plants didn't die while I was gone :)  My fern that I'd sat in water nearly up to its rim was surprisingly still dryish, but was in as good condition as normal.  My Rubber Tree Plant had gained a new leaf and a new spike-that-will-be-a-leaf-one-day. The new leaf came from a leaf-in-waiting spike that's been there since last September, so that's pretty neato.

Yup. That's it.  If I ever get around to processing pics, I'll picspam here.

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FIRST!!! Stats, because the thingie is on and I don't want to forget.  Also, it has somehow acquired satellites from within the hotel room, with the window covered with thick wooden shutters, and it thinks i'm moving in circles at a rate of 3km/h, which is weird...

Distance Travelled: 223.3km
Avg. Speed: 39.1km/h
Stopped time: 2h 02m
Max Speed: 79.2km/h

TOTAL DISTANCE THUS FAR: 1646.3km

Morning was sunny, and that made me happy ^_^

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Right, started off south, aiming for Cape Toi. Drove and drove. Made it through Miyazaki City alive, despite being behind and/or beside a huge tour bus with 日本同盟 painted on it blaring old timey (and, assumingly right wing) music.  That was... fun.

Once out of Miyazaki, there were lots and lots of parking spots along the road specifically for pretty pictures.  We'd seen them last year, but they'd been on the wrong side of the road for us to use them. This time, headed south, I stopped at almost all of them (but some were super duper full, so I didn't bother).  All my pics are in RAW on my camera though, so I can't share them with y'all yet. :/  There's this one I took with my cell phone...

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So yeah, kept driving south. Passed the turn off for Udo Shrine, and thought, "I'll do that on the way back, if at all -- it's probably stupid amounts of stairs, and I dunno if the alleged tit rocks are worth it."  Passed Sun Messe (which has Moai statues for some reason...), and since it was on the other side of the road, decided I'd just catch it on the way back, npnp.  Kept heading south.

Eventually turned off National Road 220 and onto the road for Cape Toi (National Road 448), and it was very wild on both sides, any habitation that was here was all overgrown with kudzu and other shizzle now.  Kept driving.  At one point there was a pretty friggin' awesome view of a long beach and there was parking along the side of the road, so I stopped and got out and took some pictures and stuff. When I got back in, I noticed the satnav had decided I was here:

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Yeah, wtg satnav. At least you didn't try to kill me today!

When I was about 12km from the Cape, I ran into the backlog of traffic.  I made a judgment call: based on my previous experience with capes (in the form of Cape Ashizuri in Shikoku) and on my knowledge of Cape Toi (there's a light house and allegedly wild horses), I decided to pull a u-turn out of there.  I'd driven the road I wanted to, and now I could drive it the other direction, npnp.  Hit up the other places I wanted to, as well.

Well, the line of cars at Udo Shrine was stupid, so I decided to give that a miss. Better to skip it than to wait forever to be disappointed by decidedly un-breastacular tit rocks.  Sun Messe, with its moai, then, was my last chance to actually DO SOMETHING today.

But when I got there, they weren't letting cars in anymore! It was too close to closing time, they said, and the place was already full, so no more people could come in.  So I didn't get to take pictures of ridiculous Easter Island replica statues. :(

At this point it started to rain, which is perfect pathetic fallacy, I guess.  I was pretty bummed, and I was leaving this great area, and though I'd taken a bunch of pics earlier in the day when it was sunny, I was still sad to be leaving the Nichinan Coast, because it's fucking beautiful. I was sad to be leaving the smell of the sea air behind me. I was lonely.  There was nothing good coming up on my iPod.  And then there was a detour in Miyazaki for some reason and I ended up way too close for comfort to SeaGaia.  I was afraid the fail of SeaGaia would rub off on me :<

Before I got to Miyazaki, though, I should point out that I apparently drove on a new road. It was there last year, but apparently not when the maps in my navi were made.

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Yeah, gg, satnav, gg.

So, I kept driving north, not sure what to do now that it was nearly sunset.  I knew I had a sunburn on my window-side arm, and so I stopped into the biggest, most spacious, and most offputting drugstore/supermarket I've ever seen.  "Hello, where may your sunburn treatments be?" I asked.  Then the guy tried to sell me 4000yen upmarket moisturizing spray. What? Fuck off.  I ended up buying something that's not actually sunburn treatment, as such, but can be used to ease the symptoms. It works best when it's kept in the fridge though. FFFFFFFFF- I AM iN A CAR ON A LONGHAUL DRIVE DOUCHEBAG.  Whatever. WHATEVER.

I decided I wanted to shoot the sunrise from the Hyuga Michi no Eki (it's a government-run rest stop) tomorrow, but I was too close to there to just drive there and sleep there in the car -- I would have gotten there at like, 7pm.  Then I realized I hadn't passed the hotel I stayed at last night, so I didged in, and they had a room and so here I am again.  Planning to leave here around 4 or shortly after tomorrow morning so I can get to Hyuga Michi no Eki in time to catch the sunrise.  Then I'll continue on north. Destination: Home (though I won't get there for a while yet D:)

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Right, today I left Kitakyushu around 9, I guess, and went on what was a ridiculous drive. But first, the stats:

Distance Travelled: 364.9km
Avg. Speed: 43.0km/h
Stopped time: 1h 38m
Max Speed: 82.7km/h

TOTAL DISTANCE THUS FAR: 1423km

So, the first several hours were boring. I can sum up the first several hours with this picture:

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Then SatNav told me to turn off the main road, and head along some other crazy thingie, and that was fine.  Ended up in the onsen district of Beppu, surrounded in sulfur steam, and loads of tourists holding me up.  Continued along the road a little bit and got here:

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That was pretty win.  Drove through landscape like that for the next several hours, but there was no where else to stop to take pretty pictures :(

Saw lots of horses and lots of crazy hills and green on the plateaus.  To get up to the plateau though, I had to climb quite far, you know.  When driving up mountains or whatnot, of course, there'll be switchbacks and hairpins, and that's normal, that's how shit works.  When THIS appeared on my SatNav though, I did sort of whimper.

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As I continued on, just shortly after this, I approached what is apparently Japan's longest walkable suspension bridge, or something. It was pretty impressive to see, but there was a lot of back up because everyone and their sister was trying to stop there.  While stopped in traffic, I glanced at my SatNav and saw THIS

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and that sort of broke my mind D:  Yes, you can see the route it intended me to be on in the top right there, but I followed it's directions and ended up there.  I was on a road, I swear I was, but try telling it that.

After I gave up on Aso (because it was gonna take too long and I had no intention of spending that kind of time in Aso), I put in my next destination, on the Miyazaki coast, and had the SatNav do it's thing. Drove through more of the highland plateau funtime with horses and whatnot, and then suddenly I was very alone on one lane roads with weeds growing on them, and no one around but cows.  Oh, and I was out of cell phone service range. D:  That was pretty horrifying.  Eventually got out of that, and found myself on a national road (instead of a prefectural road), and it was wide and big and there were people and it was good.

And it was beautiful, but again, no where to park (or when there was, it was miles from the pretty :( )

Then it had me turn back on to a prefectural road, and Iwas worried, but it ended up being a nice road, no problems, so when it had me turn back onto a national road (National Road 388), I was pretty confident there'd be no problem.  Then, less than a minute after turning, I had to wait for an oncoming city bus to vacate a one-lane portion of the road. "Ah," I thought, "This is the only bit right?"

No, the entire time I was on it, nearly (20km) was one lane, and I'm not talking "narrow" or "a lane and a half and if you slow down and watch what you're doing you can pass two vehicles", like most so-called "one-lane roads" in Japan are.  Nono, this was actually one lane. In some places, if I stopped, I wouldn't be able to even open the doors, that's how narrow it was.  It was ridiculous!  Pretty, but also pretty ridiculous!

Made it back to the main road south to Miyazaki (on which I'd started the day), and it told me to turn south, so I did.  At this point, the road is a boulevard-type dealie, with two north lanes and two south lanes, seperated by a big ol' median.  Apparently it's changed, or it wasn't as accurate about where I was as it wanted to be, because for the first 5km it kept telling me to turn right at the intersections and then immediately turn left, thereby driving south in a northbound lane, because it was convinced that the southbound lanes I was in were actually just random alleys.  It got over it though, and I made my way to Takanabe, where my hotel is.

Missed the turn for my hotel, of course, and then had to do a u-turn... which I ended up doing with the aid of the police station's parking lot :O  But whatever, npnp.

So yeah, that was my day. I still haven't taken many pictures, and it's kind of bothersome. Tomorrow's supposed to be cloudy and bleh, which annoys me, but whatever.

Tomorrow, I'll drive south.  That's pretty much my only plan. :)

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Picked Spiff up this morning and we headed for Fukuoka for the Ayu concert. It took bleeding forever, and the road was neither fun to drive nor fast-moving.  We stopped for lunch at Royal Host. I had a club sandwich that took forever to come, because I think they had to kill three animals for it.

Concert was pretty awesome. We were nearly floor level, second row of the stands, maybe 6 seats from the very front. It was a better seat than the Fukui ones, because though we weren't on the floor, we were still closer than we had been in Fukui.  Didn't get a sign ball (but it relied on Ayu's ability to hit a ball with a novelty bat -- there was never any hope of it), but I did get two of the streamers (unlike in Fukui where some whore blew most of them away with her fan, and then the one I did get was snatched from me by a horrible old bag).  All in all, good times.

Then it took us forever to get out of the goddamned parking lot. It was then a very long drive back to drop Spiff off, and then I had to do a u-turn and make my way back to the hotel only to find that THERE WERE NO PARKING SPOTS LEFT.  There were busses, and big trucks, and motorbikes taking up spots, and then when the spots ran out, people just parked willy-nilly all over the place, but even the patterns they had fallen into parking in were full by the time I got back.  One guy had parked in the driveway, heading in, up the hill, half way up (so he was neither up nor down).  I just sort of pulled in from the top to touch noses with him.  I'm not blocking the vehicles around me, and I'm not blocking him (he can back out), so I hope it's okay... I asked the lady at the front desk, and she was like "WELL UM, WE OFFER PARKING AS A SERVICE, YOU SHOULD PARK BETWEEN THE LINEs." 

Uh... there's no such spots left.

"WELL, PARKING IS A SERVICE, BUT IT IS NOT THE CONCERN OF THE HOTEL STAFF."

So, I guess I'm just taking my chances. :<  I hope it'll be okay...

You can't see it well, but the parking lot is full. My car is behind the light. :<

Anyway, GPS stats:

Distance Travelled: 180.3km
Avg. Speed: 40.1km/h
Stopped time: 2h 25m
Max Speed: 80.6km/h

TOTAL DISTANCE THUS FAR: 1058.1km

Assuming my car isn't wrecked/broken/towed/fucked up in some way before I can leave, tomorrow I'm heading for Mt. Aso, via Beppu, unless I decide Aso isn't worth it.  Via Beppu at any rate, though.

Bedtime!

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Right, I've come to Kyushu again for Golden Week.

First up, statistics, courtesy of my delightful GPS thingie (aka one of the best things i've ever purchased):

Distance Travelled: 877.8km
Avg. Speed: 66.2km/h
Stopped time: 1h 41m
Max Speed: 139km/h

This, of course, doesn't include the 8hrs I slept at Kodani SA.  Just the time when the car was actually on.
That's a shit average speed... it's like, that's what I drive on local roads.  Too many highway noobs who have never used the highway and are like "well i'll drive like it's normal roads, only i'm paying for it ^_^" WRONG ANSWER!
 
Max speed was achieved between Sabae and Maibara on the Hokuriku Expressway.  No one lives in Hokuriku, so the highways tend to move well.

Only problem I had with the GPS was (1) tunnels were JUST long enough for it to realize it had lost satellite sync, so the woman would yell NO SATELLITE RECEPTION at me 2 seconds before exiting the tunnel and (2) one time when traffic was moving really shite, I was in a tunnel for a very long time, then came outof the tunnel and sat in one spot for a very long time.  The sat nav (a) knew where I had been but wasn't totally clear on where I was then and (2) apparently didn't like the fact I wasn't moving, so it was like RECALCULATING.... TURN LEFT. RECALCULATING... TURN LEFT. RECALCULATING... for 10 minutes. (I couldn't turn left, as I was on the highway etc.)  But other than that small annoyance, it worked like a charm and got me here with no issues.

I'll reset the values now that the main crazy long drive is finished, and just let it go day by day.

No real issues beyond the congestion around Hiroshima.  Oh, and I guess between Kobe and Okayama, in the middle of the night, there was suddenly congestion like mad, and then ppl in the right lane started moving en masse into the left.  I was like, "WTF is this bullshit???"  Got up to it, though, and saw that some little yellow plate stupid shaped thingie had rear-ended a cube van at high speed. The cube van was a hundred meters up the road, and the rear end was completely smashed in, in the shape of the tiny car.  Its occupants were chillin' on the side of the road.  The tiny car's occupants were chillin' on the side of the road not too far from their vehicle (which was still in the middle of the lane), and I mean chillin' in the literal sense. They were those types of women with short shorts, giant stilettos and poofy hair. 

Well, I say they were chillin', but actually, they were standing close enough to their car, which was burning quite vigorously, that they can't have been too cold, I guess...

Going to an Ayu concert in Fukuoka tomorrow with Spiff.  For now, about to hop in the shower, as I'm really fucking gross right now.  Woo~

View from the Hotel

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Water

Water

Water

A whiff of jasmine

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Cherry Blossoms in Kojo Park

Cherry Blossoms in Kojo Park

Cherry Blossoms in Kojo Park

Cherry Blossoms in Kojo Park

Cherry Blossoms in Kojo Park

Cherry Blossoms in Kojo Park

Cherry Blossoms in Kojo Park

Cherry Blossoms in Kojo Park

Cherry Blossoms in Kojo Park

Cherry Blossoms in Kojo Park

Cherry Blossoms in Kojo Park

Cherry Blossoms in Kojo Park

Cherry Blossoms in Kojo Park

Cherry Blossoms in Kojo Park

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As you may know, my contract here ends on Aug 1.  I want to stay in Japan after that, so I'm currently looking for a new job, but even then, it won't be around here. Less than 4 months until I leave Tonami.  Anyway...

I went to elementary school today for a brief meeting in advance of starting next week (actually in two weeks because of regional meeting). They gave me the curriculum and explained my schedule, and that was fine.

At the end, they're like, "Oh, because we all need to be better at English now, we were hoping you could run a couple fun and informal conversation workshops for us teachers!"

"Yeah, I can do that I guess. When would they be?"

"August!"

At this point I made a bit of a face, and my guy at the elementary school interpreted it as, "August? I don't work in summer vacation, who do you think you are!"

As I started to explain, he cut me off, "Nono, wait hear me out!"

"Hang on," I explained, "My job ends August 1st. A new teacher will come to replace me. Maybe they are as experienced and skilled as I am; they probably won't be."

"What? You're leaving? "

"Yup. If you can swing the workshops in July, but give me dates really soon, I'll try to make the time. July is busy though, so get crackin'."

"AAaaah ok!!!"

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