Each place on Tsuchida Station Sign Post has a story behind it for me or for my Ryoko, or for both of us.

Ergo: Noto in Ishikawa prefecture is home to great sensei Hongo Ichiro who taught my darling so many things at Nihon University as well as organized trips with her to Siberia and Indonesia to meet with other arborists and study trees.

We visited his home in a converted several hundred year old fish processing building (where we visited the early morning auction, purchased some fish and indeed processed there on site – as you might expect, there’s a diary post about it) right on the port on peninsula jutting out into the cold north Sea of Japan at what feels like the edge of the World.

You’ll also notice Pokhara, Nepal which was a whole other journey for me to Ayurveda Health home – truly a transformative experience as ann”in-patient” doing panchakarna, and later with brother Bob up to the Annapurna circuit Village of Ghandruk. (I have some extensive posts about this time in my “healing journey“ series which kind of stalled out, will get to it one of these days, in the meantime here’s a few random photos which made my heart leap)

Here’s Providence where I spent a very icy winter around some colleges/universities I could only dream about attending, doing a lot of writing and other dodgy activities, forays to the Berkshires and generally being an amusing but sorta ummm *unwelcome* “hippie on the couch“.

Learned so much about the difference between the west and the east of the USA. And yes, George Washington slept everywhere and Roger Williams really like statues.

Sign is pointing/measuring to the corner of Planet Street and Benefit Street – second choice was Skip & Willas soul food / Worth noting like pretty much everywhere in Providence, there’s an Edgar Allan Poe story here, whether it’s true or not… well who cares (Screen capture in Google Street view)

Several more in process… including Dubai, Olympia x2, Khabarovsk, Misasa onsen,…

Note the two directional sign pointing to Olympia, Greece and Olympia, Washington simultaneously. I felt very clever doing so ? though my intended diligent accuracy in the compass azimuth will be thwarted.