Rural Kitakyushu: I Hope You Like Frogs

Here’s the third installment of photos from my April 30th bike trip. I spent a long time taking pictures at a very old-seeming shrine called Nishi Ono Hachimangu (西大野八幡宮—West Big Field Hachiman Shrine) in the Takazuo (高津尾) area of Kokura Minami Ward. While I have lots of photos of the building, today I’m going to limit myself to the local fauna.

Continue reading

Rural Kitakyushu: Introduction

It’s Golden Week—a series of public holidays—so we have a bit of time off. We took two vacation days (Monday and Friday this week) which gives a grand total of ten straight days off. We’re staying in Japan but we’ll be travelling a bit this week—day trips, but I’m not sure how much time or energy I’ll have to write—so I can’t guarantee daily posts. I’m going to schedule my blog software so that over the next couple of days it automatically posts the entries I’ve already written. But I won’t be sending out email alerts so either check back regularly—I’d suggest after 6am JST—or else use the RSS feed. You can find the RSS link at the bottom of each page.

With the housekeeping matters out of the way, let me tell you about what I did last Saturday. I went for a day-long bike, hike, and photo expedition through the southeast part of the city, an area that included the easternmost part of Yahata Higashi-ku (八幡東区—East Yahata Ward) and the southern part of Kokura Minami-ku (小倉南区—South Kokura Ward). I’d like to post about the entire trip at once, but there were so many interesting things that I’ll have to split it up into a number of posts. My outline shows between eight and eleven individual subjects but we’ll see how many of them blend together. And whether or not I run out of energy or lose interest.

Continue reading