First trip to Japan was in mid-80s. Different than the usual tourist, especially these days, our destination was small city of Kurume in Kyushu, about an hour outside of Fukuoka. Flew from SEA to NRT, I think on Thai Airlines, then transferred to a domestic flight to Fukuoka. During transit in NRT, happened to see mid-summer sumo tournament on a large screen TV. Had only heard of sumo, but never actually seen it. I was immediately pulled in and watched it nearly every day thereafter during that trip. Chiyonofuji was strong in those days.

While in Kurume, I was astounded by how different and interesting Japan daily life was. They have a long shopping street there in the middle of town called "Ichiban-gai". Now, it's rather abandoned for the shopping mall style places on the edge of town, but in those days it was the place to shop. It was summer and hot. I was amazed to watch the shop owners sprinkle water on the ground in front of their shops to cool it off and get a cool breeze to come inside. First day we had jet lag and I was hungry for lunch at like 10:00 am. We finally found a place serving yakisoba. Had never heard of it before, but it remains a favorite to this day.

I took about 20 or more rolls of 36-exposure slides of everything I saw. I remember being fascinated to see a road out in the country that suddenly narrowed to fit between a farmer's house and a field on the other side. Obviously, the farm had been there much longer than the road, so the road had to accommodate. Coming from the Western US, that was a novel idea. Of course, took a photo. Back in Seattle, we had friends over to show them slides of our trip. Like a couple of hours worth! After a while, they all started to bow out and say that they had to get going, but I kept saying, "Wait! Let me show you this one more incredible thing first.".