When I first arrived,

Nagahama was the loneliest place I’d ever experienced. The apartment building I had been set up in was a drab cement block, sitting heavily in a narrow alleyway bordered by deep irrigation ditches and other, almost identical, apartment complexes. (My residence was identifiable only by the words - written in Japanese kana - High Life Morii, plastered to the wall facing the street.) When I entered my room (#203), I was jet-lagged and coming down with a bad cold from the fourteen-hour flight. I was feeling pathetically sorry for myself, expecting to find a cramped tatami room full of slugs as my new home.

Turned out, however, that my new home was perfect: four rooms, two balconies, and it was even equipped with a Western-style toilet (none of this tiled-pit-in-the-floor nonsense I’d seen elsewhere). Still, those first few nights in my new city were difficult - no phone, no Internet, and no linguistic ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere (at that point I hadn’t yet met my English-speaking neighbors - in fact, I’ve found that almost all of my neighbors are English-language instructors).

It wasn’t until after I had finally stopped leaking snot and sleeping through the afternoons that I mounted my granny three-speed (it came with the apartment) and took to exploring Nagahama. My apartment is located off a road called Ekimae-dori, which translates as “road in front of station” (every city’s got one), so getting to the train station is easy. Ekimae-dori also leads toward Lake Biwa, Japan’s largest lake, which is just a couple miles from where I live. This area of Nagahama is beautiful and full of all kinds of cultural relics that I can’t begin to understand (any literature explaining them is in Japanese); it’s breathtaking, nonetheless. Just north of the station lays a shopping district known as Kurokabe Square, which gets swarmed by Japanese tourists every weekend. In the square you can find all kinds of antiques and artisan goodies (apparently Nagahama’s famous for their glass-blown sculptures), and there’s a bunch of junky stuff to point and laugh at as well. For instance, these Tanuki figures (pictured below) are EVERYWHERE. It’s difficult to tell by this photo, but from behind it looks as if the Tanuki are sitting on little wooden stumps. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that they’re sportin’ giant scrotums between their legs. Many Japanese families adorn the entryways of their homes with these fellas, and I’ve been told the Tanuki represent prosperity and, uh, fertility.

Straight west of Kurokabe Square is Lake Biwa, which stretches out from a massive park littered with shrines, winding gravel paths, Japanese people reading literature, and teenagers setting off fireworks. Oh, and there’s an enormous castle somewhere in there as well.

More soon!