Illumination!

chrissy in tokyo:

passed out in front of the tv after a big ass chrissy meal:

Suicide Forest Vacation

It wasn't like i just woke up one day and said, hmm, i'd like to go to the suicide forest! this is the whole story . . . well, most of it anyway.

i haven't written any fiction in ages. one day, the story, my story, set in part in the suicide forest of Japan, Aokigahara Jukai, just poured out. it took me a couple of days with a few revisions and there it was! i don't expect it to go anywhere, i just felt like writing. i had a few trusted people read it to give me notes, and my sister suggested that i go visit the actual forest. dad said we could go there as part of our annual father-daughter onsen trip but as dad didn't want to leave mom on her own after the incident, we invited her along. then my sister said she was coming to japan as well so we planned the trip so she could join us. and cuz we needed a car, my uncle came too. And that's the way the trip came to be.

we first drove out to hottarakashi onsen not too far from kawaguchi lake. the boys went for the hot springs while the girls did what they do best: ate, shopped, and chatted.

hoshigaki, or dried persimmons, one of my all-time favorite foods:

a deep fried soft boiled egg (wrap your head around that one!)

ah, family adventures:

the onsens here were pretty good but the food was awful:

going into the ice cave:

there was a bit of a back up getting through as the tunnel got very low and very small:

riyoko helps dad with never-ending iphone questions:

ice cream tastes good year around:

going for a walk to see if we can find any dead people:

nope, just us:

backtracked to see the wind caves:

its so cold down there that they've preserved these weird ass canisters filled with nuts and silk worms and whatnot:

riyoko finds herself a weapon:

mabou gets all the stamps:

it was very pretty out there:

found a hole in the fence so decided to look for more dead people:

we had way too much fun for people looking for dead folks:

though our hunt was a bust, we did find the strings and ropes that people tied to the trees to find their way out in case they changed their mind:

hot pot of noodles hit the spot after a day of trudging through the forest:

yum!