Hi, it's been a while. Hope everyone is doing great! A friend asked if I was having fun in Japan. Well, I've been partying my way through southwestern Japan these last two weeks. Not much to write about here but yes, I'm having FUN!!

I've gone southwest passing Kobe, Okayama, Hiroshima on the way to Fukuoka on Kyushu. After three days in Fukuoka I left for Kannawa Onsen, a quiet hot spring village where all you can do is take hot spring baths and eat. That's pretty much what I've been doing since. I needed to slow down! There are more than twenty baths around the village and I do what all tourists do; have several baths a day in different places. Some places have outdoor baths (rotenburo), I love this! It's between five and ten degrees here and it's pretty fantastic to put your body in a hot spring, your head in the cool crisp mountain air and just enjoy while looking at the mountains or the birds jumping around in the trees! Yesterday I went to a rotenburo with muddy water, steam baths, hot spring waterfalls and several indoor pools. The interesting thing was that the outdoor part was mixed gender. Strange, because these Japanese baths never allow you to wear anything! But the place sounded great and I figured that the super-shy Japanese would have found some way of handling this that would preserve everyone's dignity. Turns out this was half true. The women could walk into the muddy waters of the rotenburo through a covered passage from their bath section, never needing to show anything below shoulder level. Ok, so did they do the same for us guys? Nope! We had to walk quite far though the open air to even get to the rotenburo, and then to get into it had to walk around about most of it on a kind of raised path! I felt like I was on a catwalk, but the only thing I was wearing was my tine onsen towel! I just found the whole thing hilarious. Even more so because behind the bath area was a high bridge with a perfect view to the baths.

Next week I am going to slow down even more. I have felt a growing need for quiet contemplation. Probably haven't acted like it! I'm going to a Zen Buddhist temple and am going to stay there for six days. They take on a few guests, who participate in chanting, meditation and the daily life at the temple. This was a spur of the moment idea that came up when I was reading a woman's story from her time at an ashram in India. It just hit me that "Man, THIS is what you should do". I haven't thought about it any more than that, just went looking online, found a similar place near here, applied and that was that. It'll be what it'll be, and at the very least it'll be a new experience for me! My friend Håkan pinned me down as usual, something like "So, you party and have fun for two weeks and then you go to a temple to seek forgiveness?"

I'll be away from all communications from tomorrow Sunday until Saturday the 20th. After that will write about my week at the Zen temple here!