We got dropped off by the other foreigners here, between Saga and Fukuoka. These signs say, in Japanese, Saga and Fukuoka.

Yeah. Saga and Fukuoka.

We tried hitching a little longer, but got put off by a Japanese guy who beat us to the prime hitchhiking spot. He looked like a frog. We left him alone.

Night fell, so we left the service area and explored a park next to us. It was really high, away from the road, away from prying eyes of the local law enforcement. It was also near what seemed to be a very nice, upper end neighborhood. We found a dark corner and set up our tent, realizing that it was unreasonably cold. I put on all the clothes I had, climbed under my towel, and started feeling miserable.

So miserable that I accidentally did the ridiculous peace sign that Japanese people think is mandatory for taking pictures. My guard was clearly down.

I think an hour and a half was the longest stretch of solid sleep I got that night. Cold. Paranoid at every little noise, waiting for the Chinese to invade and take us away.

I’ll never forget the look on the faces of the old Japanese people taking their morning walks at 5:30am as two foreigners climbed out of a tent in their safe little park.

From there, we got hitchin’ right away. Slow start, but at least much warmer. An old dad and his 16 year old son picked us up on their way to some kind of motivational seminar, and dropped us off at the next service area, not too far. But it got us on a roll.

The next pick-up was a stylish bald dude and his cute, tall, willowy wife. He was really brusque, said he owned an architecture company. He took us for lunch, but it was weird, he was really rude about it. “Sit there. Eat. I won’t let you pay.” Like we were a burden. But what the shit did he pick us up for? Abs suspected he was involved in less-than-savory business practices (YAKUZA! YAKUZA!) and was thus used to just ordering people around and stuff. He even, in a bizarre attempt at helping us get to Kyoto, started walking around the parking lot to find Kyoto license plates, where he would undoubtedly tell the owner, “You. Take these kids to Kyoto.” Uncomfortable. Fortunately he ended up leaving.

The next ride was when we struck gold, though. A guy was returning from his mother’s in Saga, and happened to live just outside of Kyoto. He was returning the way we were going, and he took us like seven hours northeast until nightfall just outside of Kyoto. It was awesome

I guess he was in the Japanese Navy, a quiet, stoic kind of guy, but certainly friendly enough. He drove agonizingly slow (well, speed limit, but that’s agonizingly slow), but prob’ly if he got a ticket it’d be bad news, being a government employee. Anyway, yeah, it was great.

Here’s the bridge that connects the island I’m on, Kyuushu, and Honshu, the big, main string-bean island. Its quite magical, crossing it.

Then here was the hero of the day. We only remember fragments of his name, so I’m not gonna bother trying to reproduce it here.

We tried hitching a bit more, but it was too dark. And a scouting-out of the surrounding area revealed that there was no good secret place to pitch a tent. Fortunately this service area was open 24 hours. So we went to a small table, got some hot cocoa, and fell asleep like total bums on the table, drooling on our cardboard signs.

STILL MORE TO COME!