Again a rich collection of travel anecdotes from rural Japan!

With the same relaxed attitude, they took care of all labor-intensive tasks that living on the countryside requires: harvesting rice, making traditional sweets, logging trees, pickling vegetables and fruit, taking care of ancestral spirits and shrines, socializing with the neighbors, clearing fields from weeds, organizing the annual festival… I think the words “work hard, play hard” actually fit the rural situation very well.

I was shocked because the earthquake had only briefly been featured on the news in Belgium: I could never have imagined the gravity of the situation until this day. Signs of the earthquake aftermath were visible in a 140-year old samurai house we visited: part of the gate was destructed, and the entire house had even moved a couple of centimeters to the left.

Seeing something in real life is so much different than hearing about it briefly on the radio/TV news. Maybe reading a story also already brings more understanding. I got reminded of this long piece about Hiroshima, certainly left more of an impression than my history class once did.