John Lennox is an Irish mathematician and philosopher of science who is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. He’s also a Bible believing Christian. I really enjoyed and appreciated his debate with famous atheist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion. In that book Dawkins questions whether Jesus actually existed as an historical figure. In this debate he concedes that Jesus did exist.
Route to Osaka from Niigata. Click on map to see an enlargment
On February 22nd, I hitchhiked from Niigata to Osaka, the first all day hitchhiking trip this year. My destination of Osaka is 600 kilometers from home. I wanted to get a good start and arrive early, so I took a train and a highway bus to take me as far as Ozumi Parking area on the Hokuriku Expressway. It was snowing and just above freezing. I wished I could have left the day before when it was bright and sunny.
After only a few minutes wait, a lady stopped and said she could take me as far as Yoneyama SA, a larger parking area on the expressway. She called herself brave for picking up a stranger for the first time.
Truck driver who took me from Yoneyama SA in Niigata to Amagozen in Fukui
The truck that took me to Fukui
At Yoneyama I had to wait 2 hours for the next ride! It continued to snow. In this part of Japan because temperatures do not get below freezing in the daytime, water sprinklers are used to melt the snow. This is fine for cars but people walking through it tend to get their shoes wet and their legs sprayed with water if they don’t watch carefully where they are walking!
After about an hour and a half, a man who I recognized to be a truck driver walked past me, I showed him my Osaka sign but he shook his head and said he’s not going to Osaka, but Himeji in Hyogo ken. From where I stood Himeji is past Osaka but his intended route would not take him through Osaka but further north and then west of it. However I knew he could take me at least 200 plus kilometers on my way before his direction changed. It was only matter if he was willing or not. I asked him if he could take me at least part way but the truck driver walked off into the rest room without replying.
I hoped he would return to where I was standing but he didn’t. About 30 minutes later I spied a truck and walked up to see the license plate. It was the same truck driver I saw and he motioned for me to get in the truck! The driver was very friendly and talkative and so the time went by quickly. He took me to Amagozen Parking Area in Fukui. It was only 2’30 p.m. and the sun was shinning with no snow. I was now in excellent shape!
Mr. Yokoyama who took met o Kanda parking area in Shiga Prefecture.
The wait in Amagozen for the next ride was quite short, only a few minutes. The driver, Mr. Yokoyama is a company president and a fluent English speaker which is quite unusually. It turned out he lived in London for a couple years, and then Helsinki Finland for a couple more. Mr. Yokoyama was on his way home to Gifu, the opposite way from Osaka on the Meishin Expressway, but his route took me Kanda parking area, a point in Shiga ken just before the expressway junction to the Meishin. From there at least half of the traffic would be going my direction to Osaka. At Kanda PA Mr. Yokoyama took me to the cafe and treated me to coffee before departing.
Hydrogen gas truck that took me to Osaka
Immediately after Mr. Yokoyama left, a man walked past me and I showed him my Osaka sigh. He agreed to take me to Suita SA in Osaka, the exact place I needed to go! It was a tanker truck, and the tank was filled with compressed hydrogen gas! “If we have an accident could the tank explode?” I asked the driver. “Yes” he replied. “This company has a strict safety policy. They check if there is any alcohol content in my blood not only before I start, but also when I return the truck to the company.”
From Suita it was just a short bus ride and a 15 minute walk to get to my friend’s place. I arrived at 6:30 p.m. 11.5 hours after leaving home. Not bad. The last time I didn’t arrive till after 11 p.m.!
Mikiko and her daughter Asako. They rescued me from cold and windy Tokumitsu Service area while on my way back home to Niigata
A cyberspace friend introduced me to Greg Szymanski and his Arctic Beacon website. I remember listening to one of his radio shows before.
In order for me to trust what a researcher has to say, I need to know who that person is. I can tell you for sure who Greg Szymanski is not. He is not a Bible believing born again Christian.
Greg, how can you expect me and other Christians, the only people who you say would listen to what you had to say about Vatican, take you seriously when you offer a theory about Who Jesus is while claiming to be an investigative reporter? A reporter is supposed to deal with facts, not theories or opinions.
March 8, 2020 Update: Some time after I posted this article, the link to the audio talk on Greg Szymanski’s website was either moved or deleted. In fact, the entire website has changed to one of a foreign language, Indonesian. Maybe Greg Szymanski changed his mind and turned to the truth of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Word Who became flesh and died for our sins on a Roman wooden cross so we can be redeemed from Satan and have a relationship with our Creator.
Have you ever received an email from anyone offering you millions of dollars if you would only contact them and work out the details of the transaction? I sure have, scores of times! Here’s what came in just today:
Are you alive or dead? The reason for this question is that we received an email from Mr. John Green. He said that you are dead and you have given him Letter of Authorization before you death to claim your funds
Furthermore, we told him that what is holding the transfer of your fund ($27,000,000.00) is the transfer fee of the sum of $280 dollars only and that the funds have been approved for transfer in your favor and we asked him to call back on Monday, so we can confirm from you first. Are you aware of this?
I used to delete emails such as these, but now I report them first before deleting! I learned how to report them from www.fraudaid.com Every time I get an email offering me millions of bucks, I first copy the header information of the suspicious email, click on the forward email button, paste the header information of the suspicious email into the start of the message, and send it to 
.
Today I wrote them the following:
Dear Scam Reports,
This is the 64th scam email that I am forwarding to you. Any progress
catching these guys?
The reply:
James,
Many submitters have been responsible (via reports) for the apprehension and arrest of scammers. Over the years, we’ve amassed over 40 arrests and 4+ extraditions.
You’ve sent 4 which we appreciate. Some submitters that have been with us for a while have submitted hundreds. It’s a numbers game, so keep submitting. This particular scammer is using Verizon from Los Angeles.
We appreciate your assistance.
Yes, there is no word “trinity” found anywhere in the Bible. Instead the word, “Godhead” is used in the King James Version and a few other versions. It’s interesting that the word “Godhead” appears 3 times in the KJV! Significant, don’t you think?
Acts 17:29 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.
Romans 1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
Colossians 2:9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
Godhead is not found in most modern translations. Other words are substituted for Godhead. Examples.
Of the 7 examples, the translators of 4 of them didn’t even want to capitalize the words referring to Godhead.
“Divine Nature” of the NKJV and the NASB is not the same meaning as Godhead! It’s a meaning change. The NKJV people went further than their mission statement. They were supposed to only use modern words to replace archaic ones in the KJV. They weren’t supposed to change the meaning.
Most of these translations also omit “the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost” in 1 John chapter 5.
1 John 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
Instead, Why? Because the translators did not believe that Jesus was God!
Notice the article “the” precedes Father, Word and Holy Ghost? This is to denote they are unique!
the
/T͟Hē/
Adjective
Used to refer to a person, place, or thing that is unique: “the Queen”; “the Mona Lisa”; “the Nile”.
Jesus was THE Christ, not “a christ”. He was The anointed one. Anybody else to claims to be Christ is a liar. There was only ONE CHRIST, and that was Jesus!
This post was inspired by listening to a talk from Pastor Mike Hoggard of http://watchmanvideobroadcast.com/
Following instructions from https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Upgrading_Fedora_using_yum
I used yum to update from Fedora 17 to 18
su -c ‘yum update yum’
su -c ‘yum clean all’
su -c ‘yum –releasever=18 –disableplugin=presto distro-sync’
su -c ‘rpm –rebuilddb’
But afterward my LDXE Desktop was slower to start and displayed an error message:
Error initializing authority: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.TimedOut:
Moreover, the shutdown menu showed only Logout and Cancel. It was missing the first 4 menu items including Shutdown and Reboot.
I fixed it by re-installing Policy kit…
# yum reinstall polkit\* upower
# reboot
…thanks to advice from http://www.mail-archive.com/test@lists.fedoraproject.org/msg20483.html
This may not be an LDXE problem, but a Fedora upgrade via Yum problem.
I just learned now it is indeed a bug when using Yum to update from Fedora 17 to 18. Ref: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?format=multiple&id=841451
I’m very concerned about the attitudes and mindsets of some of my friends who regularly listen to radio talk show host Alex Jones. I used to like Alex Jones, and once greatly admired his courage for crashing the Bohemian Grove during one of its annual get-togethers of the elite. I thought he was great for filming the “Cremation of Care” ceremony. Now I think it all have may been a set-up. He could have been justifiably shot for trespassing at any time! Why was he not afraid of that? I believe he had promises beforehand that he wouldn’t be attacked. I never heard of any litigation brought against him for it. Was there any? Well, that’s my little “conspiracy theory” if you will, but the following is not theory; it’s history and verifiable facts:
Twenty to 40,000 civilians trapped in the city … tanks are being blown to bits, massive broad unguided rocket attacks are being launched massively from the city indiscriminately right now, air and artillery bombardments as well. It is absolutely out of control. It is pandemic ladies and gentlemen. …” — Quoted from Jones’ radio broadcast.
The American patriot and one of my heroes, William Cooper, didn’t like Alex Jones and exposed his Y2K fear mongering tactics on one of his shortwave radio broadcasts. I believe William Cooper was a sincere truth teller who paid the price for his faithful broadcasting of truth with martyrdom. How many times has Alex Jones been persecuted and beat up to the point of being hospitalized? William Cooper was.
The Youtube clip below shows Alex Jones rudely disrupting a peaceful rally led by an American patriot proclaiming the same message Jones himself claims to hold!
“The alter ego of Alex Jones got the better of him today in Austin. Two minutes into an organized rally at the steps of the Austin Police Department, Alex shows up and immediately starts bullhorning over the speech of local patriot, John Bush.” (From http://wideeyecinema.com/?p=7334 )
Please see http://www.christianmediaresearch.com/jones.html for details.
Some of my friends who listen to Alex Jones, and who knew political reality from decades ago, seem to actually believe that Ron Paul, if elected U.S. President, could turn around the negative foreign and domestic policies America has had since close to the beginning of the 20th century and improve the well being of the American people. With all the true information they had 30 years ago, I do think they should know better! No one man can turn around that country, not even with the help of all his friends. The enemy has infiltrated far too deeply. If Paul even came close to winning in a presidential campaign, I would smell a rat. Paul would need massive support of the Mass Media and Elite to be a viable contender for the presidency. And if he won, would he actually fulfill his present vision for the country? If he tried, he would suffer the same fate as JFK did in no time.
An excellent resource I found is Who is Alex Jones?
One of the comments on that page says:
AJ’s duty is to serve his masters by conducting occult magick, in order to create the illusion of truth. By what seems to be endless amounts of bones to uncover, the people have been thrust into a frenzied mentality of let’s see what AJ has for us tonight. As if they are dope feigns looking for their next hit and at the end of the day, what difference has it really meant in the grand scheme of things. They often end right back at ground zero, only to repeat the routine over and over like a rat running on a treadmill.
Alex Jones talks about Al-queda as a creation of the CIA as if it is an actual network of terrorists. It is not. Al-qaeda is a creation of the CIA, but created only as a fantasy only in the minds of the public! Al-queda doesn’t exist!
The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.–Lenin
I think Mr. Jone$ may have ulterior intere$t$. I suppose there is a lot of ca$h to be got by $preading di$information.
Am I a pessimist in my overall worldview? I am very optimistic of the future, but only when the King returns.
More information about who Alex Jones really is: www.truthin7minutes.com/alex-jones-is-patriot-truth-leader-mr-jones-a-fake
Alex Jones
People like Alex Jones and Ron Paul, while claiming to offer an alternative to American corruption, are strangely silent when it comes to the agency that is historically most culpable. While ostensibly defending our Constitution; they say nothing of the organization that has opposed it the longest. “None of these self-styled ‘freedom fighting’ conspiracy theorists expose the real power behind all the conspiracies at work,” writes Seventh-day Adventist layworker, Roland Temple.
“Alex Jones is hiding the biggest part of the NWO. He’s hiding all this and it’s not by accident,” says (non-Adventist) Christian activist, Thomas Richards. “A lot of the things he covers have a direct connection with The Vatican, but he never mentions it.” That’s suspicious, say some, because the Commander of InfoWars.com seems very well informed about everything else that’s going on behind the scenes, almost as if he’s got a back-stage pass.
On January 5th and the 16th, I transformed 2 messed up Windows XP PCs into fast and stable Linux machines. On the first one, I installed Fedora 16, and the second, the latest Linus Mint 14 “Nadia.” In both cases I backed up the friend’s documents to another media, installed Linux, and restored all the documents and Desktop files to the newly created home user partition.
My Fedora 18 KDE desktop screen with cool widgets: An analog clock , a weather widget, slideshow of photos in my Pictures album, world time display, and a calculator.
A local friend’s Windows XP PC became unstable to the point it would not boot up anymore. The Windows XP Logo would appear but a few seconds later the boot process halted with a black screen. Is the problem system file corruption? Of is is hardware failure?
To test for hardware failure, I took a Fedora Linux Live CD, put it in the CD Rom drive, and booted up my friend’s machine with it. It booted fine. I showed my friend there was nothing wrong with the hardware of his PC. Mozilla Firefox worked well. He was able to log into his Facebook account and browse through it without the PC hanging up as it did before. We saw that the Linux file manager was able to read all his documents on the Windows NTFS partition.
I told him, “You have two choices: You can buy a new PC with Windows and I’ll restore your documents to it. Or you can let me install Linux on your PC and I’ll teach you how to use it to view and edit your documents. As you already see, you have no problem in accessing the Internet in Linux. Mozilla Firefox in Linux looks and works just the same as it does in Windows. There may be some of your favorite Windows applications we can run using Wine, and I can show you good and easy to use Linux applications to replace those Windows applications that do not run well well in Wine.”
My friend was desperate to use his PC again because he wanted to use it to print out his New Year cards. “Let’s go for installing Linux for now,” he replied, “If I can’t use it to do all I need to do, I’ll buy a new PC.”
To make a long story short, he is happy with his new Linux system. He can do all he did in Windows, even make business cards using Glabels. He can use the Internet without fear of getting zapped by viruses or accidentally installing malware. His PC is now faster without the need of an antivirus program to slow it down, and he has the option to choose from 30,000 plus applications, including educational teaching aids.
The same is true with the second friend who lives in Kyushu — too far for me to visit at this time. He sent me his broken Window XP PC with all the CDs that came with it including the Windows XP installation CD. But because his son scratched off the Windows Product Key label from the side of the PC case, I could not do a repair of his Windows XP installation. I told him that a reformat of his hard disk and installing Linux in it was the only way to fix it.
It worked! He’s happy with his new Linux Mint 14 system and can do everything he did before so far except using Itunes. Over the phone and sending him files via email, we were able to even install his Canon printer driver! It’s a first for me to help a person convert over to using Linux without my physical presence with the person.
The chart shows the distance travelled by hitch hiking in Japan from 2005 to 2012.
The final trip of the year was to Tokyo on December 26, an unusually cold day with icy streets. It took twice as long as normal to get to the Sakae Parking area on the Hokuriku Expressway, and 3 hours to catch the next ride! I was about to quit when an elementary school teacher from Murakami city came and rescued me.
As you can see, year 2012, was slightly lower than 2010. The distances are in kilometers.
| 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18537 | 11150 | 7487 | 12185 | 19530 | 15795 | 17558 | 15710 |
Dr. Kent Hovind, also known as Dr. Dino, man a who was unjustly put in prison for a sentence of 10 years, is one of my heroes. Once I heard him saying something like, “Jesus can come any minute.” Today I was pleasantly surprised to read on his blog the following:
My long time friend and Pastor, Steve Anderson and THOUSANDS of others (myself included) have come to realize that we “independent, fundamental, temperamental, right wing, radical, chicken eatin’, Bible believing Baptists” have been deceived about the rapture for the last 180 years! For 38 years of my Christian life I was taught and believed in the “pre-trib” rapture idea that was made up by a 15 year Scottish old girl in 1830! I just trusted the “prophecy experts” Quote from kenthovindblog.com/?p=1030
Isn’t this great news for Bible believers who know the truth about the Great Tribulation? We now have a respected name to drop on those who still believe the false doctrine that believers and receivers of Jesus Christ will be taken to Heaven before great tribulation sweeps the earth in the last days. People who hold this doctrine are willfully ignoring God’s Word that promises believers tribulation!
John 16:33 These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
Acts 14:22 Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.
Romans 12:12 Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer;
1 Thessalonians 3:4 For verily, when we were with you, we told you before that we should suffer tribulation; even as it came to pass, and ye know.
Revelation 7:14 And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Well, I’m back again to my beloved Fedora Linux. Fedora 18 Beta was not easy to install but is working fine after a few hours of tweaking. I started with LXDE as my default desktop environment. LXDE is lacking in some graphic configuration settings, but after logging into Gnome 3 I was able to configure things I could not configure in LXDE. A few days later I installed KDE and now consider it the easiest Linux desktop environment to configure as well as the prettiest with the most eye candy.
My KDE Desktop as it looks like on December 21, 2012.
These have been fixed in Fedora 18!
I wasn’t able to install Fedora 18 beta from a DVD, The installation ended in error message of, “Error checking storage configuration.” I had to do a clean install of Fedora 17 and then up upgrade from the command line:
su -c 'yum update yum'
su -c 'yum clean all'
su -c ‘rpm –import https://fedoraproject.org/static/DE7F38BD.txt
su -c 'yum --releasever=18 --disableplugin=presto distro-sync'
Note: If you use RPMFusion, you should also import its key for Fedora 18 before you upgrade or you will end up with an error message.
I switched to the KDE Desktop from Dec. 13 and like it better than ever. I think KDE is the easiest of all the desktop environments to tweak. Apparently Linus Torvalds agrees with me because he too switched to KDE from XFCE.
I never liked XFCE and used LXDE which I recommend for PCs with low resources.
I loved Gnome 2 but the Gnome developers thought they knew better than the users and gave us the hard to use Gnome 3.
Mate Desktop which is supposed to be a replacement for Gnome 2 still seems buggy. If any of you Mate Desktop users recommend it and had success in configuring it to what you like, please tell write your comments about it below. Thank you.
March 28 UPDATE: I’m sorry to say though it’s been weeks since Fedora 18 has been released, I’m still finding issues with it. Sometimes the default audio device is not found during startup. I’ve never had this problem with previous versions before. It occurs randomly. A reboot often fixes this problem. Once I had a yum update problem and it took me days to figure out how to fix it. KDE Desktop now locks up after startup so I am back to LXDE (which I like because it’s fast). So unless you are a geek and like to figure out technical problems, you might give Fedora 18 a pass. The latest Linux Mint (not the Debian spin) seems promising.
The Capitol facing the Washington Monument, an obelisk
“The best place to hide something is out in the open. Nobody ever thinks to look there.” — Robert Anton Wilson
Did you know that “Capitol” was the name of Jupiter’s temple in Rome? Did you know that word “obelisk” literally means “Baal’s Shaft” or Baal’s organ of reproduction. Baal of course is referring to Satan, the Devil.
Did you also know the Vatican in Rome has an obelisk standing in the middle of St. Peter’s Square?
Papal Basilica of Saint Peter facing an obelisk in St. Peters Square in the Vatican, Rome
This Samuel Morse is the same person who invented the telegraph.
“If Papists conquered Rome, why may they not conquer America? Is it so utterly impossible that the next generation should witness the supremacy of Romanism that we can afford to fold our arms in ease? Possessing the balance of power between the two political parties, demanding favorable legislation as the condition of support, and wielding political power in some of our largest cities, Popery is a foe whose giant strength it is folly to underestimate…Under the banner of civil liberty Rome may possibly bind upon us the fetters of spiritual despotism.”
“Tyrants, the more effectually to secure power, have ever professed supreme regard for man’s highest interests.”
“That the Roman Church is nothing less than a conspiracy against liberty, personal and national, civil and religious, we firmly believe. Being the twin sister to despotism, she ever has been, and is now, most bitterly hostile to freedom of conscience, freedom of press…”
“Nor has Romanism shown less hostility to another principle of our national life, the separation of Church and State…Almost every Pope for the last thousand years has pronounced it a ‘damnable heresy.’
This post is just a tiny scratch on the surface in the hope you discover the players in the conspiracy to create the New World Order or one world government talked about in the Book of Revelation, chapter 13.
The answer is NO! Not according to the 1611 King James version of the English Bible!
Genesis 22:2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
The KJV says only to “offer” Isaac as a sacrifice, not to actually do it. Abraham obeyed God and did exactly what He said, He offered Isaac for a burnt offering, for a sacrifice.
Genesis 22:9 And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.
Abraham apparently thought, meaning assumed God meant for him to kill his son also, but that is not exactly what God said. Rather than actually draw a knife on Isaac, He could have told God.
“OK Lord, I offered up Isaac as a sacrifice. Here he is lying tied up on the wood on the altar I made. Now what?”
But according to the New International Version, (NIV), the answer to the question in the title of this article is YES, God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.
Genesis 22:2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” New International Version (NIV)
The NIV is the only translation I found so far that actually says to do it, to sacrifice Isaac. The Good News Bible doesn’t say that, not even the RSV says it.
Think this is splitting hairs? Isn’t there a difference between merely offering something as a sacrifice, and actually sacrificing it? I think there is.
I’m writing this because the NIV has surpassed the KJV as the most popular English Bible though it is full of errors!
In Isaiah 14:12, the NIV omits the name Lucifer and refers to him as “morning star” which is a title the Book of Revelation attributes to Jesus Christ!
| Isaiah 14:12 NIV | Isaiah 14:12 KJV |
|---|---|
| How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! | How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! |
Revelation 22:16 says that Jesus is the morning star!
Revelation 22:16 I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star. -KJV
The NIV advocates striking your body to hurt it.
1 Corinthians 9:27 No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
This is what some cloistered Roman Catholic monks do, and what some Islamic people do. They flagellate themselves thinking this will bring them righteousness. Martin Luther, before God’s Word enlightened him about the Grace and Righteousness of Christ, used to also flagellate himself. But does the Bible really tell believers to do that? The same Scripture in the KJV doesn’t say so!
1 Corinthians 9:27 But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. — KJV
I’m grateful to Pastor Mike Hoggard for pointing out the difference between the KJV and NIV in Genesis 22:2 and 1 Corinthians 9:27, and for teaching the importance of the KJV as the only trustworthy translation of God’s Word in the English language.
Today was cloudy when I started out on my journey to Aomori city, 470 kilometers from home. I wore for the first time this season a warm overcoat. I heard it had been snowing in Aomori, the northernmost prefecture of Honshu.
Mr. Toki who previously picked me up twice.
At 8:05 a.m. after walking 25 minutes on Route 345 from Majime station, the first car of the day stopped for me. It was again Mr. Toki, a cook who picked me up twice previously!. This time I remembered to take his photo. I’ll very likely see him again because he drives to work daily on that road usually the same time in the morning when I hitchhike to Aomori Prefecture.
Lady who took me to Atsumi Onsen
After that I walked about an hour passing through 3 tunnels further up Route 7 to seek a better spot to hitchhike. At Iwasaki a lady stopped for me. She saw my sign that says, “Atsumi Onsen” and was going there. I thought she was in her 20s but she told me she has a 14 year old daughter!
Coast of Iwasaki, Niigata Prefecture on the Sea of Japan. Notice the hole in the rock which was created by erosion from the ocean.
Truck that took me to Odate City, Akita Prefecture
Rainbow Bridge in Aomori City.
During my cycling trip to the summit of Mt. Yahiko in Niigata Prefecture, I stopped at the Yahiko Shrine which was on the way. I didn’t know it before hand, but it was the time of the annual chrysanthemum festival. There were lots of visitors, probably more than usual.
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November 19, 2012: It was a bright sunny day and I didn’t want to spend it indoors in front of a PC screen. Instead I rode my bicycle to a village at the foothills of Mt. Yahiko, about 33 kilometers from home, and walked to the top, the very summit of Yahiko Mountain which is 634 meters above sea level.
It took me 2 hours to ride to Yahiko Village where I spent about a half hour visiting Yahiko Shrine and taking some photographs. After that it took a little over an hour to ride and push my bicycle to the parking lot area near the top. After that I walked 30 minutes further to get to the summit to photograph the view showing the Sea of Japan.
My transportation to Mt. Yahiko
View of Mt. Yahiko an hour bicycle ride from home.
View of Mt. Yahiko approaching Iwamuro Village. The arrow down is pointing to the highest peak and my destination. The peak in the center looks higher only because it’s closer.
View about 3/4 of the way up Mt. Yahiko
Sign says, Mt. Yahiko, elevation 634 meters
Signs on Mt. Yahiko
View of Yahiko Mura, Tsubama and Sanjo cites from near the summit
Visitor at the summit of Mt. Yahiko
Visitor at the summit of Mt. Yahiko
Visitor at the summit of Mt. Yahiko overlooking the Sea of Japan.
Tori Gate at the summit of Mt. Yahiko
Japanese ladies who asked me to take their photo. I first met them only a minute before.
Tori Gate in Tsubame city near Mt. Yahiko. Twenty years ago it was the largest Tori Gate in Japan.
The same Tori Gate facing Mt. Yahiko.
At 3:30 p.m. I left the summit and cycled down the mountain 30 minutes later. It only took me 20 minutes to get to the village below! But home was still 33 kilometers away and now at 4 p.m. it was getting dark. By 4.45 p.m. I got to Tsubame city and photographed the Tori Gate in the photos above. At 6:30 it started to rain but I had an umbrella. I didn’t get home till 8 p.m. with my pants soaked from the rain and thoroughly exhausted. I might have made it back earlier but because I took what I hoped was a shortcut, I got lost. After seeing the Shinkansen train tracks twice after 30 minutes, I realized I rode my bicycle in a circle!