Japan is a great place, and I love living here. The country is beautiful, the culture always new and fascinating, and the people are very kind. One of the drawbacks to life in Japan, however, is the abundance of concrete and asphalt around me. Roads seem to criss-cross every inch of Japan, even high in the mountains in the center of the country, and it’s common for the Japanese government to cover the sides of mountains in concrete to guard against falling rocks, so you can’t even see the mountain you’re currently driving on. Virtually every river in the country has been extensively “engineered” to guard against dangerous floods, which can make them look quite unnatural, with reinforced concrete slopes on both sides. We have a “vacation mansion” up in the mountains around Karuizawa, which sounds really cool until you learn that the word “mansion” in Japan means an apartment that is owned as opposed to being rented. As we were driving home one weekend, I caught a really nice view of Mt. Asama, a large volcano that’s erupted several times over the last century. It was spectacular, with steam coming out of the top and everything, but I was having a terrible time snapping a picture of the mountain without getting a power line in the picture. Kind of lame.
