Trip to Yufuin

I went to the small town of Yufuin with Emi today and tried out a new cafe.
After a climb up a rocky road we found a nice new building.


There was a spacious porch and we enjoyed our meal outside. Very nice.
We had a delicous woodfired pizza made from local ingredients, like fresh cheese, basil, tomatoes and flour.


There was a great, expansive view from the cafe, even though it was a little cloudy.
After the cafe we went into town. Here's one of the side streets in the town of Yufuin.

The bicycle trip next week

On August 25th and 26th I went on a nice 2-day bike ride. It was hot hot hot and I sweated like I was in a Sauna all day. My bike shorts had ridden up during the day and my leg got burned beyond the previous tan I had. Here is the result:


It looks like Neopolitan Ice Cream! But instead of chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla, the flavors are dirt, skin flake, and sweat! Yummy!

It was a nice sense of accomplishment to get to the highest part of my trip, at a mountain pass named Makinoto:

Seeing as I climbed up from Beppu, which is at sea level, it was quite a climb. I think it was about 7 hours slowly going up.

Something that drove me towards creating my own page was this site, made by a friend of mine. It covers his 200-day bicycle trip through most of asia and Europe. Check it out and leave a supportive comment!

Recently in the past months, I have found myself restless and full of ideas. I wanna do this, I wanna do that...it's all been percolating in my head and I hope to spill things out, as it were, on this page.

Aozora (ow-zoe-rah) means 'Blue Sky' in Japanese. I think a blue sky is a good metaphor for...something good. Plus it sounds neat.

I would really appreciate any comments or feedback about anything posted here. Happy viewing!