I 💜 Wasting Ink → Diaries → These Walking Dreams → Day 40 (May 22, 2017)

South Awaji City, Awaji Island, Hyōgo → Sumoto, Awaji Island, Hyōgo

Map of Awaji Island in Hyōgo Prefecture with author’s route between South Awaji City and Sumoto highlighted. 🗺 Open map in GaiaGPS →

An open-air statue of five young sumo wrestlers: three watch while two wrestle.

A field a dark green spring onions with a Japanese village in the distance. 📍 South Awaji City, Awaji Island, Hyōgo

A man hoses off a small fishing boat in a harbor. 📍 Nada, Awaji Island, Hyōgo

A sika deer stands between flowering plants on a steep wall of rocks. 📍 Awaji Monkey Center, Hyōgo

Heaps of trash in the undergrowth of a steep hillside.

Discarded appliances, like a TV and a refrigerator, poke out of the flowering undergrowth. 📍 Yura, Awaji Island, Hyōgo

Japanese stereotypes of tidyness and respect for nature are quickly proven wrong on Awaji Island. It is covered not only in the petty trash of coffee cans and ice cream wrappers which dot even the cleanest roads but Balkan-style dumps of used household appliances. The mountain road which wraps around the southeast corner of the island, an otherwise wild, beautiful place, is an endless heap of refrigerators and televison sets which had obviously been trucked and dumped there.

A sign advertising a UFO shrine, whatever that is. 📍 Yura, Awaji Island, Hyōgo

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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