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Ask most people who've visited Japan where they stayed, and most likely you will hear the typical places like "Tokyo", "Kyoto", "Osaka", "Okinawa" or "Sapporo." It would be rare to find someone who has seen the rural villages way up in the mountains and in the river-valleys. Of course, this is where the division between the two Japans lies. The media, the entertainment and the tourism industries all set their sights on the huge megaopolises that is home to the vast majority of Japan's population. TV shows and movies, plus countless anime series, take place in these areas. Therefore, the window into Japan's rural-life is quite small, even to most Japanese people themselves. So please take this opportunity to see the part of Japan that so very few ever get to lay eyes on.
This is Nariwa-cho, a small mountain village that was incorporated into Takahashi City in Okayama Prefecture a few years ago and is now home to Anime-Source.com's very own xenocrisis0153... or "xeno-sensei" now (and much cuteness, as you know if you've been keeping up with the blog).
1. The roadway that splits some of the rice-fields near my apartment building. I pass by this everyday... it is absolutely breathtakingly beautiful to walk through here at night.
2. The Nariwa River, which flows past my apartment complex. It travels the entire length of the village's South border. There is a main roadway on the opposite side that connections Takahashi City to Ibara City, both are communities of 25,000 people about 50kms apart.
3. Seems like something right out of anime... a riverside pathway.
4. I have no idea whatsoever what this is used for. My only assumption is to hang signs or maybe banners during festivals.
5. More of the river. As you can see, the water doesn't come right up to the edge; there's a little bit of ground down there. I was hoping for a riverside that would have a grassy hill, like most anime series seem to have, but I wasn't that lucky. Although, like in most anime, the river looks deep, but it's really only like a foot deep in some places. The deepest it probably gets is maybe like 3 or 4 feet, but those spots are rare. You can probably walk across it with ease.
