I 💜 Wasting Ink → Diaries → These Walking Dreams → Day 19 (May 1, 2017)

Takachiho, Miyazaki

Map of Miyazaki with author’s route in the Takachiho valley highlighted. 🗺 Open map in GaiaGPS →

Some heads of cabbage drying on the rear engine cover of a tiny yellow sports car, a Honda Beat. 📍 Takachiho, Miyazaki

Cabbage drying on the engine cover of a Honda Beat, an impossibly cool kei roadster from the early 1990s. Many of them are still around and driven.

A group of schoolchildren in red baseball caps make V-signs for the camera.

Ears of corn drying on a pole.

Plants grow from the window of an abandoned house.

A very yellow leaf and pink petals on the ground.

A wooden statue of a cow playing a guitar and singing along. 📍 Takachiho, Miyazaki

Leaving cozy and beautiful Takachiho, I shared a bunch of bananas with a group of schoolboys who tagged along for a kilometer, dropping off as the road left the town and wound its way up the valley, towards the looming hulk of Mount Sobo.

Bamboo shoots drying in a round basket in the afternoon light.

The author hold a bamboo shoot cut lengthwise in half.

Panorama of terraced ricefields and jagged, forested mountains. 📍 Takachiho, Miyazaki

Bamboo shoots drying in the late afternoon sun. They are heavenly when fried in tempura batter or served in nishime, a stew of roots and mountain vegetables.

These Walking Dreams is a visual field diary of a 4,300-kilometer walk from one end of Japan to the other, in the spring and summer of 2017.

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