When my contract with the company came to an end, I knew I wasn’t going to go straight home to Canada from Kumagaya. I decided to take a few weeks and do a little of the traveling through Japan that I had longed to do. Being a mountain man at heart, I sat down with a rail map and sketched a bit of a loop through the Japanese Alps. I would drift by Mt. Fuji, head on up to Matsumoto for a dip in some hot springs, and then I would be off to the one place I had wanted to go since I arrived in Japan: Nagano, home to the 1998 Winter Olympic Games. What can I say? I’m a little Olympic-crazy. Once I had my fill of Mt. Fuji and the hot springs, I arrived in Nagano eager to see the Olympic sites.

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What you are about to see is a photograph of one of the greatest mysteries of our time. Like Bigfoot, aliens, and the Loch Ness Monster, it’s a little blurry and out of focus, but that comes with photographing a subject such as this. For you see, what you about to view is one of the very few photographs of the elusive and secretive Rulers of the Universe.

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I love being back in Entwistle. There were times back in Japan when I would scream at being surrounded by so much concrete and steel. But, back in Entwistle, I find it is so easy to just go for a walk, take three steps, and suddenly find myself back in the middle of the forest. The fresh air, the greenery, I love it. I did a lot of walking in Japan, but it all tended to be through the city streets. It drove me nuts quite a few times. But now, I try to go walking down through the woods as often as I can.

Continue reading The Purple Rose (or, My Own Worst Critic) →