University professor Dr. A. Kusumi who took me to Niigata from Hirosaki city in Aomori Prefecture

Again I went to Aomori city and back, 1060 kilometers, this time in 12 vehicles which includes two trucks. The highlight of the trip was to meet A. Kusumi, a professor who teaches environmental research at a university in Nagoya. I met him at the entrance of the Tohoku Expressway near Hirosaki. His car was packed with his belongings and at first he told me there was no room for me to sit. But after rearranging his gear I was able to squeeze my feet into a small space on the floor and sit in the front passenger seat. Dr. Kusumi was on his way home to Nagoya and said he would take the expressway all the way. I rejoiced knowing this would take me all the way home because the route passes through Niigata!

Dr. Kusumi became very tired after passing Sendai and stopped frequently at parking areas to rest. My home is about half way to his destination and I suggested that he spend the night as my guest. He accepted, took me home and met the rest of my family. I was so glad to return a favor to this kind man for taking me 550 kilometers back home for free and even buying me dinner along the way. Dr. Kusumi lived in Israel and studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for 3 years. (Click on his photo to have a closer look at his sweatshirt.) You can bet we had quite a few interesting discussions. 🙂

This trip took me over the 89,000 kilometer mark since I’ve been keeping stats from August 2003. I think I can surpass the 90,000 kilometer mark before the end of the year by making another trip. I’m planning one that will take me to Tokyo, Shizuoka and the Kyoto / Osaka / Kobe area, and this will bring me well over 90,000 kilometers.

November 29, 2009: While hitchhiking to town I noticed a lady walking toward me from a distance with what appeared to be her car parked by the side of the road behind her. I correctly assumed she was going to offer me a ride. She had another lady friend with her who was the driver. They seemed a bit overly impressed to meet me which caused me to become suspicious.

I asked them, “Do you want to sell me something?”

“No!”

“Are you folks into some kind of religion?”

“No!”

They asked me if I had eaten lunch yet and invited me to a restaurant to talk. I accepted the invitation because I wasn’t in any hurry and knew it would give me an opportunity to share my faith with them.

In the restaurant I offered to give them two Activated magazines. As soon as I pulled them out of my briefcase, they turned them down. The only kind of Japanese who refuses to accept literature from me are people into some type of religion, and sure enough, these two ladies turned out to be Nichiren Buddhist people, and their intent was to try to convert me!

Most Buddhists are very tolerant of other religions, and they have no problem toward Christians in general. The Nichiren sect is the notifiable exception. They will flatly tell you to forsake Jesus Christ and pray to their idol using their chant instead. Every time they chanted that horrible chant to me, I started to pray the “Our Father” prayer and told them that prayer works for me. To their credit, they did listen when I told them why Jesus died on the cross, and for what reason, to save all of mankind from sin.

Normally when a Japanese person invites me to a restaurant or coffee bar, they will pick up my tab. I fully expected this to happen but to my embarrassment I walked halfway out of the restaurant and was told I hadn’t paid my bill yet! Next time I’ll be more wary when a person seems overly interested in talking to me even though we just met. Either they want to convert you or sell you on some network marketing type of product. 🙂

A man who took me to Murakami City in Niigata Prefecture

October 30, 2009: I needed to be in Odate City in Akita Prefecture on November 1st for an appointment at 9:00 AM. Odate is the birthplace of Hachiko, the faithful dog that would come to meet his master at Shibuya Station in Tokyo when he arrived returning from work. Hachiko continued to do this every evening — even after his master died — for a period of 10 years!

Rather than stay in a hotel in Odate, I opted to stay in Aomori city with friends. Taking the 7:10 train from Aomori would get me in time for my appointment.

The first ride was a truck driver carrying a power shovel. I think this is the very first time I rode in a truck with such a heavy load. In the photo just in front of the truck you can see the two pieces of language I was carrying.

Hosaka Takayuki

I made it as far as Akita City that day in 4 vehicles.

Sachiyo who took me to Akita City

The next morning Hosaka Takayuki took me to just outside of Akita City from where I caught a ride with Sachiyo, (22) whose car was loaded with lugguge. She said that she was moving from Akita back to her home town in Aomori. She saw the Akita sign that I was holding, past me once, and then turned around and offered me a ride. This kind lady even went 60 kilometers out of her way to take me to my specific destination in Akita!

Sachiyo was my audience for the next three hours while I shared stories from the Bible with her. Most Japanese know about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and they know about the great worldwide flood and Noah’s ark, but they don’t understand the significance of these historical events. It’s always a joy for me to share God’s good Word with the dear Japanese people. In Sachiyo’s case she was already inclined to believe in the existence of the Great Creator and so she readily prayed with me to accept Jesus Christ as her Savior after we reached our destination.

November 2: Fedora Linux version 12 is due to come out on November 18, but I couldn’t wait to try it out and installed the yet beta version.

Improvements from Fedora 11 that I’ve noticed:

• The default video driver recognized my dual monitor setup and automatically gave me the correct screen resolution and spanning monitors.
• Gnome seems to run faster. Terminal now comes up instantaneously.
• Many of the applications appear to load faster.
• Pulse audio now works as it should without quirks. In Fedora 10-11 I could not use other audio applications when Firefox was accessing a flash media file.
• Mplayer plays my MP3 files without the irksome shuddering sound it used to have during the first couple seconds when playing the file. This was a problem in Fedora 10 and 11 but now seems fixed.
• Bluefish HTML editor doesn’t crash anymore when I do a spell check as it used to do in Fedora 10 and 11
• The new version of Dansguardian Internet content filter now runs. I couldn’t get the latest version to work in Fedora 11. Dansguardian has improved with options to weed out unwanted pop-ups and advertisements. Using the Fedora Linux – Firefox – Dansguardian combination gives me the safest browsing imaginable! Eat your heart out, Windows 7!

The downsides of upgrading to Fedora 12 beta:

• In the beginning Firefox crashed a couple of times. It seems to be stable now after a week.
• I can’t yet install the Nvidia video driver. But this only means I can’t run applications that take a lot of video power such as Google Earth. Video files play perfectly fine.
• Wine doesn’t run anymore. I have to wait for a Wine upgrade to fix a conflict with Pulse audio.

All of the above are fixed now after Fedora 12 came out with the final release, and also thanks to the good advice on Fedora Forum. I found a fix for Wine by installing the 64 bit version with the command:

yum install wine.i686 -y

My friend Daniel sent me this photo of him with Gary Sinise, the actor who played Lt. Dan in the film “Forest Gump”! He seems to be a really nice guy to pose for a photo with one of his fans. I learned that Gary was born in Blue Island Illinois which is only 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) from where I was raised in Hegewisch, a neighborhood of Chicago.

Gary Sinise with my friend Daniel

Asari Toru who drove me a distance of 200 kilometers

October 25: I’m in Aomori city and on the way back home to Niigata. Rather than go back the way I came along National Route #7, I decided to try the Tohoku expressway that runs through Sendai.

The first driver was on his way back home to Akita City after attending a Rugby match in Aomori. He offered to take me to Route 7 in Akita city. Because he would be taking the expressway a major part of the way, I knew I would make good time, but I also knew getting to Akita even as early as 1 PM would still leave me hitchhiking in the dark by the time I got to Tsuruoka in Yamagata with 150 kilometers left to go. I hoped rather that I would be able to continue on the Tohoku expressway, but I knew that the Hanawa Service Area where I needed to get off at was past the driver’s exit. Amazingly the driver missed his exit and ended up taking me to the Hanawa Service area anyway!

It was a 3-hour wait at Hanawa before I caught the second ride. It’s not easy on me physically to stand for three hours waiting for rides, but I knew if I could catch a good one, it would be worth the wait. A 30-year-old man, Toru, took me all the way to Miyagi Prefecture just before Sendai. He drove at a good clip which gained me some time. Toru listened intently while I shared with him the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. I told him if he even only knows, understands and believes in the first 6 chapters of the book of Genesis, he’ll be smarter than most of the professors of Tokyo University, the top school in Japan! And I’m not kidding when I say that.

After that, a sweet older couple from Morioka who were on the way to Yokohama took me to Adatara which is just before the Ban’estsu expressway junction that leads home. Morioka is a conservative town deep in the country, but because their daughter married a man from the U.K. and is living there now, they both felt an affinity toward foreigners.

Though I still ended up hitchhiking in the dark at the Adatara Service area, going the remaining 150 kilometers home meant just one good ride rather than several on Route 7. A chiropractor from Fukushima picked me up after a 40-minute wait and took me all the way home.

The red line shows route 7

The good Lord blessed my efforts and a man driving a truck, Mr. Kawamoto, picked me up after only a few minutes and took me all the way to the door of my destination! At first Mr. Kawamoto said he would take me to Hirosaki, about 3/4 of the way to Aomori City, but then he said if I wasn’t in a hurry, he would take me to Aomori city after a brief stop over for some business in Hirosaki. I agreed to that.

Mr. Kawamoto is a very talkative man. He asked me many questions about America, where I traveled in Japan, and how I learned to speak Japanese. I gave him an Activated Magazine.

Mr. Kawamoto who took me 200 kilometers from Akita City to Aomori City.

Route 49 by Lake Inawashiro, Fukushima Prefecture

October 14, 2009: Today I went to Sendai via the same route I took on my adventure to Aomori via Fukushima on Sept. 17, 2009. I thought it would be a piece of cake considering that Sendai is only 290 kilometers or a bit less than half the distance to Aomori. This time, however, I got stuck at Aizuwakamatsu City in Fukushima for nearly a couple of hours both going to Sendai and on the way back home. In spite of that, the wonderful people I met along the way made it all worthwhile.

After walking 30 minutes from home to the main road, a young man, Hiroshi Tazawa picked me up and took me to the next town 10 kilometers further. Hiroshi encouraged me to take a bus or train, but I told him I only had about 3500 yen in my pocket (about $40 US), not nearly enough for even a one-way trip! He responded, “Isn’t it a bit reckless to travel with so little money?”

“No, not at all” I answered. “I’m a professional hitchhiker. I have more than enough money for this trip.” Nevertheless, Hiroshi felt sorry for me and gave me 1000 yen out of his pocket.

I left home at noon but only made it as far as Lake Inawashiro by 6 PM. This is only 90 kilometers from home, not even half the distance to Sendai. It was already dark. After 45 minutes wait in the parking area, two businessmen pulled up and asked what I was doing. I gave the driver my business card and explained I was going to Sendai. They took me as far as Sendai station and from there I took a short train the rest of the way.

One of the men said he would never have picked me up had he been alone for security reasons. I told him that over half of the rides I get are from men traveling alone, 15% of the rides are from women, and some of them are young mothers with small children in the back seat! The man was absolutely dumbfounded to hear that! Ironically on the return trip, 3 different women picked me up, and one was a mother with two young children in the back!

Eiji Tsukita who took me to Sendai on Sept. 17 and back to Fukushima on Oct. 16.

The most exciting part of this trip was meeting again Mr. Eiji Tsukita, the same man who took me to Sendai on Sept. 17! I was waiting for a ride at Sendai Minami interchange when he came. The first time he took me from Aizuwakamatsu to the Sugo parking area just before Sendai, and this time we met at Sendai Minami on the way back! Eiji rejoiced to see me because he said that only 4 hours after he dropped me off at Sugo, he got a job offer and is now employed again! Eiji’s father said that good fortune blessed him because he was kind to me. I immediately gave the credit to God and said it was because of Jesus. Eiji told me he never picked up a hitchhiker before but when he first saw me on Sept. 17th, he went past me and then turned around feeling something in his heart that he needed to help me. I told him this was no accident, it was God speaking to him.

Eiji said over and over it was a miracle to meet up with me again. I agreed for I told him I left the area briefly to ask someone how far away the Sugo parking area is. I thought to walk there if no more than 3 kilometers distance, but when a taxi driver told me Sugo was 10 kilometers away, I turned back and waited again at the expressway entrance. Just a couple of minutes later Eiji pulled up. He took me to Koriyama city from where I hitchhiked the rest of the way home on route 49. Eiji said that he would even take me all the way home if he had time. He read the Activated Magazine I gave him the first time. I gave him my extra copy of a Japanese New Testament after I signed and dated it.

Mother with her two children who went out of her way to take me home.

Northern Honshu, Japan

October 11, 2009: I was in Mutsu City in the Shimokita peninsula in Aomori prefecture of northern Japan. As you can see on the map, the top of the red line was my starting point and the end of the line is Noheji city which was my destination. I started out 11:30AM and had to be at Noheji city by 2PM in order to catch a train to Hirosaki City in order to be there by 4:30 at the latest so I could catch a ride with a friend back to Niigata. My friend said he couldn’t wait for me very long, and I certainly didn’t want to inconvenience him. There is a train line running from Mutsu City but it didn’t leave till after 2PM which meant I would miss the train from Noheji if I took it. My only recourse was to hitchhike along the country road that runs along the eastern coast of the Rikuoka Bay.

After walking a good 20 minutes to get to a traffic light going in the right direction, I waited about 20 more minutes for my first ride. Mr. Takatsuka took me 6 kilometers to the main road that runs to Noheji. After that a married couple took me 3 more kilometers down to the next train station. From there a young man driving a pickup truck with a fancy padded interior said he was going to Yokohama. I rejoiced thinking he meant the Yokohama near Tokyo, but it was a different Yokohama, only halfway to Noheji which is about 30 minutes further. The time was 12:45 PM. If I could catch the next ride within 10 minutes after getting off at Yokohama, I would make it.

I caught the ride only a couple of minutes after leaving the young man. They were two young ladies with a 5-year-old boy. The driver was the mother of the boy and the passenger is the driver’s friend. They were going to Misawa city and would pass through Noheji. I asked them what they thought about US President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize but they had no strong opinion. Somehow our conversation got into the deeper things of life. We talked about the stories of the Book of Genesis, why they are true and easier to believe than the delusions of Darwin, and eventually talked about the condition of Mankind and why we need a spiritual savior, Jesus Christ.

Dr. Mercola shared this with me. Please see it before you consider taking another vaccination.

A mother and daughter who went out of the way to take me to my destination.

Oct. 3, 2009: It rained hard during the evening and early morning, but by 9 AM the rain subsided. I needed to go to Kanazawa city in Ishikawa Prefecture for business the next day and opted to hitchhike rather than taking the bus in spite of the possibility of more rain later. I’m sure glad I did because the weather cleared up completely by noon and I met 6 interesting people whom I would not have met otherwise.

Perhaps the most interesting person to talk to was a nuclear physicist who said he worked in a laboratory in New York for two years. He was traveling with his wife to Nagano which meant I rode with them for a good 30 minutes as far as the Yoneyama service area on the Hokuriku expressway. Our conversation for the first few minutes was all in Japanese, but he started speaking English when I pointed out how Darwinian teaching has influenced at least two main branches of science, namely Geology and Biology which claims Evolution as its cornerstone.

I pointed out to the scientist how geology is based on false assumptions of the age of the earth and uses circular reasoning. The geologist says his rock is so many millions of years old because the paleontologist says the fossil found in the rock is so many millions of years old, and the paleontologist says his fossil is so many millions of years old because the geologist says the rock the fossil was taken from is so many millions of years old! This is not science! If an honest thinking person ponders the matter, he or she will see that evolution is based on certain assumptions, such as the old of the earth forming millions of years ago. The scientist only laughed when I told him according to the Bible the earth was created a mere 6000 years ago. I told him I’m not surprised he would laugh because he was raised under the false paradigm of Darwinism. Darwin himself didn’t dream up all his teachings but borrowed much of them from others such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), Charles Lyell (1797-1875), and Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913).

Two young ladies on the way to a live concert. They took me to Toyama city from Kanazawa.

I’ve been reading an excellent book by Ian T. Taylor entitled, “In the minds of men — Darwin and the New World Order.” I gained so much valuable knowledge from this book that exposes Darwinism, and I highly encourage everybody to read it.

From Yoneyama, a man going to Obama City took me all the way to a bus stop near Kanazawa, a good two hours further up the road. I asked him if the economy of his city is better since Barack Obama became President. He said, “Not much.” The man’s accent was so thick I could only understand about half of what he said. Later I learned the language of Obama city is heavily influenced by Kyoto which is near proximity. The man was friendly and bought me lunch.

The last people to pick me up where two ladies, Mrs. Tokuda and her daughter. They saw me hitchhiking in front of Nonoichi train station and offered to take me to the exact destination I needed to go (about 6 more kilometers) if only I would come with them to the doctor’s office and wait while they had a check-up. I agreed because I wasn’t in a hurry and I knew this would give me an opportunity to share the Message of Jesus Christ with them. The mother said her parents sent her to a Christian kindergarten and so has some knowledge of the Bible.

Yoko Kosaka

Sept. 22, 2009: This is a continuation of my previous post. The return to Niigata from Aomori took me via Misawa city, the location of a large USAF base close to where I visited a friend to help him with his Windows Vista PC problems. Yoko Kosaka took me on the first leg of my journey.

The next day it only took 4 cars to take me the 550 kilometers back home. I had to wait for just a little over two hours at the Adatara Service area on the Tohoku Expressway to catch the last ride. One of the reasons I had to wait so long at Adatara was because the preponderance of the traffic, over 95% of it, was heading toward Tokyo. I nearly accepted a ride from a young couple going to Tokyo, but the thought of aborting the last leg of only two hours traveling to hitchhike yet another 300 kilometers or a possible 6 more hours the next day was just so tiring, and I was tired enough already. Though it was already dark after 7 PM, I knew I was looking at only a couple more hours travel by catching a car going toward Niigata and it would be only a matter of time before I caught that ride. There were at least couple dozen cars with Niigata license plates that drove past me, but the drivers either ignored me or shook their heads no.

This season in Japan is during a special 5-day holiday which runs from Saturday to Wednesday. It was Tuesday evening and there was much traffic, so much that even the Ban’etsu expressway was jammed at certain points! A little after 7 PM an elderly couple with their 8-year-old grandson saw my Niigata sign and stopped for me. They were going exactly toward my town, and took me to a point only 5 minutes walk from the house!

The Tohoku area of Northern Honshu, Japan. The red light shows my usual route to Aomori City, and the blue line shows the route I took on this trip.

The good Lord blessed my vision and faith by providing a sweet couple who took me all the way to Aizuwakamatsu in Fukushima the very first ride! They didn’t want to take the Ban’etsu Expressway but rather took route 49 instead. It’s a beautifully scenic route that runs through a pass in the mountains along the Agano river, one of the longest and cleanest rivers in Japan. I was so thankful to get this ride because I knew I would be arriving at Aizuwakatsu around 11 AM, which means I would be making good time.

After only a couple of minutes wait at the expressway entrance in Aizuwakamatsu, a man took me to a parking area on the Tohoku expressway that was just before Sendai, the largest city in the Tohoku region of Japan.

Mr. and Mrs. Abe who took me to Aomori City from just before Morioka

The last car was Mr. and Mrs. Abe with their lovely Border Collie named Hokuto. The Abes were on their way to Hokkaido, the north island, and would be spending the night in Aomori city. They took me to Aomori station from where I took a train two stations further. The total transportation cost of the 500-kilometer trip was 190 yen or about US $2.10. I arrived at my destination around 6:30 PM. 🙂

Somebody sent this to me long ago. I think it’s too good to forget. 🙂

If you can start the day without caffeine or pep pills,
If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,
If you can eat the same food everyday and be grateful for it,
If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you time,
If you can overlook when people take things out on you when, through no fault of yours, something goes wrong,
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
If you can face the world without lies and deceit,
If you can conquer tension without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,
If you can do all these things …….

Congratulations! You have risen to the level of the family dog.

I clicked on a link to access a certain article when all of a sudden a window popped up saying that my hard disk was undergoing an online scan for viruses and trojans. It reported that my private data is under attack and my PC is infected with security threats. I was advised to download and install “Total Security” to remove the threats.

Notice the interface of the PC screen in the image is that of Microsoft Windows? I’m not running Windows on my PC! I’m running Fedora Linux with the Gnome desktop environment.

The scan reported C drive and D drive infected, but Linux has no concept of drive letters as in Windows. My Linux system doesn’t have a C drive or D drive. Neither do I have any folders named “My Documents” and “Shared Documents.” This proves without a doubt that such unsolicited online PC scans that report problems are really scams to try to rip us off!

An 85 year old man who picked me up.

Sept. 4, 2009: After waiting about 15 minutes for a ride to get to a friend’s house on the other side of town, an elderly gentleman offered me a ride. I didn’t want to ask him his age for he looked quite up in years. Instead, I asked what he does. The man said he has been retired for 30 years from working as a railroad engine repairman from age 55. This makes him 85 years old! I think to date this is the most elderly person to offer me a ride. The man seemed very healthy, drove his small car very well, and had a sharp mind. He wasn’t going to any particular destination and so offered to take me to the very door of my friend’s house. I asked him what the secret of his good health is and he replied, “Don’t sit at home! Get out and get into some active work involved in helping others!” This was such an encouragement to me because now that I’m 59, I’ve often wondered how long I can continue my adventures throughout Japan by hitchhiking. Could it be that through the exercise I get by hitchhiking I will prolong my years on earth? 🙂