Voodoo Cadillac

 When we last left our peripatetic hero, he was reeling from his encounter with the seamier side of life. What better way to recover than to spend the evening in the quaint, quiet hamlet of Uchico. And - surprise, surprise - it is actually quite unspoiled and peaceful. Just what the doctor ordered.

My lovely 180 year old pseudo-ryokan

The beauty of this town was that it looks lived in, not just set up to impress gullible tourists - a welcome change.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that I made a couple of disastrous culinary decisions, which, for a Brownie, completely negates all other positives.

Disaster #1: 

My host recommended this place as “authentic”. Looked good, and probably was. The mistake was not the choice of where to eat, but what to eat. The tempura really looked good and I REALLY wanted to go with that but then guess what I thought?

“Come on! You’re in Japan. This guy looks like he knows what he’s doing. You’ve got to get the sushi.”

Fine. Seemed like the right thing to do and it does looks good, doesn’t it? Unfortunately it was virtually inedible, at least by me, due mainly to the texture - rubbery for some pieces, squishy or pulpy for others. I was too busy trying to swallow it and keep it down to even think about the taste.  Oh, I ate it all, but it was a tough row to hoe. And totally my own fault. Fuck me!

Disaster #2:

 Not as much my fault, since “Sharon’s” was the only breakfast game in town and it sounds Western. But I paid nine bucks for this. Look at it. WTF? 

Cold spaghetti, weiner bits and salad? At least the toast was good.

Non sequitor time. While I was walking around Uchico, I spotted this:

You may need to zoom in to see it’s a “campground”

Then the other day I came across this beauty.

Two more reasons I’m SO glad I decided not to do the campervan thing in Japan.

Japanese Fun Facts

Let’s talk tunnels. Since I seem to be driving through quite a few every day, I started to wonder (as you probably have) just how many road tunnels there are in Japan. Turns out there’s almost 11000. That’s a lot of tunnels when you consider the size of the country. How many in Canada? Less than 500. Out worked by the Japanese again.