Below is the beginning of the multimedia travelogue of my trip. For now only the prologue is available, and I really can't say how long this project will sit on the back burner, but if you're hungry for more check out the Tohoku documentary movie.

Instructions
As you're reading through the journal click to view the related videos, which are in Quicktime format. Each is available in low and high quality versions (the file sizes are given next to each link). Should you need it, here's a link to get the Quicktime player.

Prologue: May 26-27
I'd say my trip began as I left my house on the evening of Tuesday, May 26th. The plan was to take the overnight bus to Tokyo and meet up with my friend Hideaki (Hide for short). First I took the train over to my good friend John's house to see him before he returned to Florida the next day. John was a linguistics nut who actually loved teaching English, which is rare for gaijin (foreigners) in Japan. He didn’t even need the money, he made plenty from his other job as a hair model for a local stylist.

John lived with the Tazawa family; quite a wonderful cast of characters. He had three host brothers aged 17-24, Kaoru, Shingo, and Masakazu. They were all rather wild (well the youngest one aspired to be at least); out riding their motorcycles all night, sleeping all day, swinging from girl to girl, cutting classes, working at bars till 4am, living with their parents. What a life. I found them extremely likeable, but I suppose they were every Japanese parent’s nightmare. Once John and his host mom were looking for an extra futon (one futon only went to his knees) while the boys were supposedly at class. They opened a closet to find Kaoru sleeping, curled up in a little ball. His Mom sighed, said "Look at my worthless, sleeping son..." and shut the closet. The two older brothers were English majors at the same college John and I went to, the middle about to fail senior year and the eldest redoing his. Needless to say they couldn’t speak much English.

As I came in John was helping Masakazu come up with an English song for his voice mail message. <Normal (0.8MB) / High (1.7MB)> The brothers had bought a whole load of fireworks for John as a going away present, not realizing how much trouble he would be in if he tried to board a plane with them - so we went to the river and blew them all up. <Normal (2MB) / High (4.8MB)> Fun was had all around, although things got a little tense when Kaoru started shooting bottle rockets at the cars passing on the bridge above.

All the men of the Tazawa family walked me to the train station while the women saw me off at the door. <Normal (0.2MB) / High (0.5MB)> As we walked the three brothers were saying to each other things along the lines of “Can you believe Dave’s going hitchhiking? Damn, who would have thought he’d do something so crazy.” All the same, as my train left for Kyoto Station they gave me the best send off a guy could ask for. <Normal (0.6MB) / High (1.4MB)> When I looked to see who was calling the Tazawa boys “fools” I found that their father had slipped onto the train. Unbeknownst to me I was going to be escorted right to the door of the bus.

John's host father was a really nice fellow, but had a bizarre streak to him that came out in odd little moments. For instance, before we left the house he ceremoniously presented me with a pack of gum. <Normal (0.2MB) / High (0.4MB)> Whenever I saw him there was some new surprise. He might show me his “Giant Phalluses of Japan” photos (that he took himself) or talk at me in impossibly difficult Japanese until I would look up the one word he repeated over and over and find that he expected me to know "transcendentalism” and be able to debate it. It was nice of him to go with me, but none the less I felt a little uncomfortable being near his aura of silent determination. <Normal (0.3MB) / High (0.6MB)>

I found you don’t get much sleep on an overnight bus, but I did snag a nice pair of Japan Railroad headphones.

I arrived at Hide's house in the wee hours of the morning where I was greeted by his mom. She was great fun, always saying that everything about me was sugoi (amazing). Everything. That I found the house on my own, sugoi. That I knew basic Japanese phrases like “excuse me”; sugoi. That I could eat rice in the morning; sugoi. When I first got to Japan this sort of attitude drove me crazy, but I learned to roll with it and so by this time just enjoyed being thought of so highly. I feel that most Japanese people think that their way of life differs more sharply from ours more than it actually does.

After Hide got up we spent the day planning for the trip and getting stuff together. We needed to get poster board and a big, fat, stinky, black marker to make our “Please give us a ride to ____” signs (the thumb doesn't work in Japan). <Normal (0.1MB) / High (0.3MB)> Other necessities included a detailed road atlas of Tohoko (we deiced to go with the SRM brand - that's Super Road Map), and cute little candy gifts for our benefactors. I wished I'd had some statue of liberty pencils left, they had always been such a big hit - yeah right. Did anyone really want those?

The route we planned was to go up the east cost of Tohoko, across midway, and then back down on the west coast. Japanese travel extensively within their own country, but strangely enough the Japanese language travel guides were useless to us. They were all aimed at big budgets and based on the idea that you travel exclusively to (A) eat the local specialty dish, (B) tour the number one sight around, (C) take a nice bath and (D) go home.

We would spend nights at Youth Hostels, Japan has tons of them (over 350 in a country the size of California) and they're pretty cheap (free soap and shampoo too!). Even though we were feeling sketchy about the reliability of the whole hitchhiking thing we called ahead and made our reservations.

Hide's mom asked me what food I had missed the most during my time in Japan. By telling her “Mexican” I unwittingly chose dinner (should have seen that one coming). With our semi-authentic Mexican dinner we had these amazing fried shrimp chips from Korea. <Normal (0.3MB) / High(0.8MB)>

I spent the rest of the evening bugging out whether I was forgetting something important. I was rather nervous over the idea of hitchhiking out of Tokyo’s urban labyrinth, and Hide’s dad didn’t help with comments like, “Give up and come home on the train before it gets dark.” I laid down to sleep with a knot in my stomach, telling myself it would all work out. Little did I know that of all things, I would forget my damn toothbrush.

Want to see more?
If you like, go on to see the documentary movie.