entry nº 40 // 20180818

kicking around with shoko + naoki for the day, driving around checking out some local spots. first, a bangin’ swimming spot in mistuse, maybe 20 minutes or so from here, driving? beautiful little clearest river flowing through rocky ravines. of course we didn’t really know it was a swimming spot, so it’s not like we were prepared w/ bathing suits or towels or anything, and w/ there being other humans around, it wasn’t exactly like a strip-down-to-yr-skivvies-and-hop-in kind of situation, so we made do w/ getting in about knee-deep, feeling the incredible cool fresh water, daydreaming man, just wait till we get back here w/ our trunks on. 

naoki crashed on our couch last night (IKEA™), and the next day we all decided to take a little hike up to the top of the local KAYAMA, which none of us had ever been to before (me, obviously). online, it looked like there was a killer ocean view from the top, but when we got up there (brief walk from the parking lot, basically) all we could find at first was some kind of cell-tower-service-building-looking place, not much doing here, 火山 sign stuck there on the chain link fence, thoughts of “i guess this is it?” running through our minds. but then we pressed on a little further, down along a road on the other side of that building, signs of humans ahead, couple vans parked on the road, bunch of gear spread out alongside, and holy shit! it’s… a paraglider launch platform? various paraglider launches underway. i remembered seeing some weird wooden-deck-looking thing in the photos online, kind of dimly wondering what it was, not quite salient enough to actually think about it… anyway. we hung out up there, killer ocean view indeed!, watching some young women take off from the paraglider platform, shouts of delight mixed with some light fear, sun gladly beaming down from overhead. it was cool.