entry nº 48 // 20190407

[part 2 of 2]

in which i present some scenes from the island itself (“the island” being noko island). a couple notable details: 

• suzume-bachi – apparently these wasps can like, kill you? manabe-kun pointed out to me the signs along the woods on the side of the road saying to be watch out for these bad boys. fuck, bees? seriously? it kind of freaked me out, them being killer wasps and all. it’s like, what can i possibly even do to defend myself against that kind of thing? and i mean, isn’t it already enough, what w/ everything else there is out there in the world? 

• found a sign indicating a pizza place in an extremely unexpected spot along the road through the woods there, and went in, but somehow ended up at a little ceramics studio? super rustic, dirt floors, a handful of people there working on various projects. an old gentleman there kindly showed us around and explained to us how things worked, and was also really kind of going for a hard sell on getting us to become members and start using the studio? but of course in our heads, me + manabe-kun are like, listen man we just rowed here, i just don’t think it’s going to be reasonable for us to commit to any sort of monthly arrangement at this time! but we listened politely and eventually headed on our way. never really figured out where the pizza place was, though? 

• saw some sort of scooter gang ride by at one point, all on really old boxy vespas or some other similar kind of scooter? that was cool. seems like the type of thing worth getting into if you live on noko island. 4/5 stars, would definitely recommend. 

• found a little plastic basketball somewhere on the walk up to the top of the island, and like any upstanding coupla citizens would do, proceeded to kick that thing along the road all the way up to the top and then back down. one particularly close call even required one or the other of us to stick their hand in a storm drain to get the thing out. once you’ve invested enough idle summer hours in kicking a found object along the road with you, well, you’re not just gonna let it get away from you that easily. we even brought it up to the top of the observation tower and chucked it off the top, expecting some kind of… well, i don’t know what we were expecting, but suffice to say it was anticlimactic, or maybe perfect.