A Trip With Beaver

Here's a typical weekend daytrip in Japan.

Get up at 8am back some stuff for a day trip and hit the road. You want to drive about 30km to a nearby putter golf course, but you don't want it to take 2 hours to get there, so you hope on the expressway (and say goodbye to $8.)

When you finally find the place (after driving through farm fields, and busy downtown steets) you find out that it's a run-down junky course that is no longer operational, and settle for one hour of rental badminton instead. Indoors, in with minimal ventilation in 30 degree weather.

After the badminton you hit the road again and find a nice flower park. Free admission is always a plus. Because you happen to be the only a) foreigner b) under 50 year old, in the garden, the army of geriatric volunteers bombards you with questions like "where are you from?" "how tall are you ?" and "will you pose for us for our town newspaper?" (Actually the words used were "hold this umbrella and stand over there!" See related shot.

Escaping the lovely garden and its eager volunteers, you find yourself and Japan's most famous tile manufacturer factory/museum/art gallery. Some pretty nice stuff in there, but what capped it off was the permanent toilet exhibit! Yes two whole floors dedicated to the history of toilets in Japan! There were minature models of outhouses, and a dock were you go out over a river and do your thing. There was even a sign saying "The emporer sat on THIS toliet." When we thought we had finally escaped the insanity of that building, we found ourselves outside in a "toilet park!" I kid you NOT! There had to be like 10 or 12 individual outhouse/toilet/urinal buildings in a 25 meter radius with fountains and flowing water to boot. I know one thing for sure, INAX (take a look at the next toilet you use to see if it's made by them) take the toilet business very seriously.

To finish the day you off you can have a nice relaxing 3 hour drive through congested city streets on your way home, because you decided to save on expressway tolls.

Hope you enjoyed your trip!

(PS for those if you who were wondering about the title, take a look for our pet beaver in the picture.)