dperkins

Sustainability Through Open Educational Resources

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0900

A paper of mine, Sustainability Through Open Educational Resources, was published in Between the Keys, a journal produced by the JALT Materials Writers Special Interest Group. Spring 2026, Volume 34.1, pg. 20–27. Download: PDF & ePub.

The Present and Future of Teaching

Japan’s overall population has been declining since 2007 (Rizzi, 2023), but perhaps more surprisingly, the Japanese youth population has fallen every year since 1982 (Nippon.com, 2022). The national government has examined and proposed various strategies to stabilize the numbers, but few positive effects have been achieved. Every year, negative population pressure causes approximately 450 schools around the nation to close their doors (Yamamitsu et al., 2023). Many public and private schools are struggling to fill seats. As schools shrink and merge, teachers are being asked to perform a myriad of duties, both bureaucratic and academic, including teaching classes they haven’t taught recently or at all.

In present-day Japan, teaching at the primary and secondary level is declining in popularity (Sakuma & Shimazaki, 2024; Yamasaki, 2025). In fact, the profession is losing popularity faster than the youth population’s decline. One approach to revitalizing the profession is to expand Open Educational Resource (OER) development into schools. OERs are teaching and learning materials that are either in the Public Domain or Creative Commons licensed. They have been a staple of international university education for many years (Gourley and Lane, 2009) and in more recent years international research has begun on high school deployment (García-Solano et al., 2023; Yassin, 2024). Progress along these lines in Japan could alleviate some teacher overwork while helping build teamwork and confidence among the country’s educators.

It has been remarked that U.S. school reform efforts over the last two centuries have led to surprisingly few major changes to teaching practice (Cuban, 2013). Cuban (2013) claims that one of the “fundamental errors” is the overemphasis on changing “school governments, organization, and curriculum,” and another is the mistaken assumption that policymakers have a “worldview” similar to that of teachers. Although Japan has arguably been more successful in national curriculum reform (Kitamura et al., 2019), continued change is both inevitable and necessary, and the ideas presented here avoid falling into the trap Cuban outlined. Expanded OER use doesn’t depend on distant edicts, and the choice of what materials to use and share can be left to individual teachers and departments.

Sustainability

From the Millennium Development Goals of 2000 to the Sustainable Development Goals of 2015, governments have been looking for ways to improve the quality and availability of global education (Kumar et al., 2016). Although some have criticized the SDGs as self-contradictory, in that Goal #8 targets continued economic growth, which is unsustainable given limited world resources (Hickel, 2019), most of the remaining goals refer to “sustainable development” as that which is designed “to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (United Nations Secretary General, 1987), echoing wording from the National Environmental Policy Act (1970) written nearly two decades prior.

The purpose of SDG #4 is to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2018). That goal might sound broad and distant to individual educators, but strong communities have the capability to make measurable progress toward it. As Japan struggles with population decline and teacher shortages, sustainability is clearly a matter of both global and domestic significance. Sustainable education consists of policies and practices that boost education quality, are long-lasting, don’t depend on continued funding, are flexible for current use and future change, and can be exported to other schools and districts (Hargreaves & Fink, 2006). It is advanced through distributed leadership, when schools and teachers are offered greater power over how their schools function (Hargreaves & Fink, 2003, 2006). Government-led education reform efforts rarely succeed (Munby, 2020), and research emphasizes the potential of teachers themselves to lead the way to better education (Harris & Jones, 2019). Thus, one step towards sustainable education is to advance teacher agency.

Open Educational Resources

As mentioned, OERs are materials relating to teaching and learning. These include regular classroom materials—handouts, slideshows, websites, booklets, etc.—that the authors have decided to share with everyone. Creating an OER is simple—the author need only add a license to the document (Weichler, 2020).

Flexibility is a key idea surrounding OERs. Because they are free to use and remix, educators typically customize things according to their own needs. For some elective courses, instead of a textbook, the teacher might create their own information packets and slideshows. For other courses, the teacher might mostly use a MEXT-approved textbook and have separate files for projects and presentations. In the aftermath of COVID-19, most schools started (or continued) using some kind of online learning platform, such as Google Suite for Education or Microsoft 365 for Education. As such, many teachers today have at least basic experience sharing and collaborating in online document creation. For those who do not, collaborative editing using Google Docs or Microsoft Office is easy to learn (Javed, 2024; Mihaila, 2023).

When creating OERs, the author must consider three main points. First, open and accessible formats are necessary. Many teachers like to use Apple computers, but Keynote files are hard to open on Windows. As such, Apple users, and anyone using proprietary file formats, may need to convert their files to more accessible formats (e.g., converting the Keynote file to a PowerPoint file or uploading it to Google Slides). Also, when sharing a PDF, the author needs to also share the source file, so that future teachers can make their own modifications. Second, personal information cannot be included in OERs. Because OERs are designed to be shared online and publicly, students’ names and pictures must be avoided, and school-specific information should be kept to a minimum. Finally, it is necessary to avoid non-free material, so content creators take care with downloaded pictures, long copyrighted passages, music, and video. The above considerations apply to any kind of public-facing materials development, so experienced authors are already prepared to create OER. For less experienced authors, a simple starting point would be to adapt previously-created OER work and share the results.

OER development began in the 1990s, and the term itself was formalized in 2002 (Bliss & Smith, 2017). Yet, adoption within Japan has been slow (Shigeta et al., 2017), and much of the domestic focus has been on massive open online courses (Open Education Japan, 2022). One way to estimate engagement in a topic is using Google Trends¹, which shows search term popularity by country over the last five years. Two December 2025 queries, one for “OER” and the other for “open educational resources” ranked Japan in 40th and 60th place, clearly showing the relative lack of engagement in the topic at present. OER textbooks are unseen at the high school level, partly due to the burdensome national certification process (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, n.d.). Although primary textbook certification takes years, supplementary textbooks and materials are less restricted, and teachers—particularly those at private schools that offer flexibility surrounding the course syllabus—can quickly create and integrate them into courses.

Benefits of OERs

One major benefit of OERs is the ability to share with other teachers and schools. Many teachers in Japan today work under one-year contracts and leave their schools in less than five years (Green, 2019). Because OERs are free to everyone, teachers can take OERs with them when they find future work at other schools. Also, they can share materials at conferences or post them online. This gives individual teachers greater stability in their own classrooms and incentive to collaborate.

A second benefit is that actively using OERs decreases the teacher’s and school’s dependency on publishing companies. Many high quality supplementary OERs can be used standalone; they might go well with a specific textbook, but they don’t depend on that particular textbook. Consequently, when textbooks go out of print or new versions are released, teachers feel no rush to recreate supplementary materials, because their OERs are still be perfectly usable.

OERs are one important element of the greater effort to build Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). Research in education has solidly established the importance of a shared vision for school change (Aldridge & McLure, 2024; Hallinger, 2011). When teachers agree on what kind of school they want to create, they’re more likely to succeed, and one way to accomplish this is through PLCs. These communities play a key role in sustainable education (Hargreaves & Fink, 2006) because they involve teachers working together both within and between schools to reflect on, share, and collaboratively develop methodology, materials, and ideals that help them all provide a better education to their students (Stoll et al., 2006). Research has shown that subject departments in schools can raise student achievement through professional community development (Gates & Watkins, 2010; Lomos et al., 2011), and because OER production is visible and tangible, OER growth can act as a focal point for some PLC work. Successful use of OERs by PLCs has been reported in various locations; for example, teachers in Mexico found that sourcing quality OERs was less time-consuming than expected (García-Solano et al., 2023), and students in Egypt have reported clear benefits of OERs as supplementary materials to support their primary non-OER textbooks (Yassin, 2024). These were small studies in non-Japanese environments, but nevertheless they show the possibility and benefits of greater OER use in the broader educational community.

Discussion

Many schools in Japan are struggling to both recruit students and retain teachers. The former issue is one that will unavoidably remain a serious concern for many decades, but the latter challenge can be more effectively addressed. There are many ways to boost teaching popularity, such as improving working conditions and raising salaries. These two approaches should not be understated in importance but are outside the scope of this paper. Of significance here is the potential that OERs hold to provide useful and reliable educational resources to teachers in what is, for many, a fluid and precarious professional environment. On the one hand, OER use in Japan at the primary and secondary level is currently minimal, and from that one might conclude that OERs are somehow unsuitable for these environments. On the other hand, it can also be argued that with a change in perspective, and increased teamwork within departments and across schools, progress can be made. Teachers and schools that are looking for inspiration from successes achieved abroad are well-situated to enact rapid change by collaborating to build better quality materials to help themselves and their students. In the words of Creative Commons (n.d.), “When we share, everyone wins”.

Footnotes

https://trends.google.com

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About

Douglas Perkins is an English teacher at Keio Shonan Fujisawa Junior & Senior High School. He has taught at several schools in Akita, Tokyo, and Kanagawa for almost two decades. He is passionate about the development of high quality free educational materials. He makes and shares many of his own classroom materials and is an active contributor to Wikimedia Commons and similar sites.

Diving in Ishigaki

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0900

For some reason the highest mountain in Okinawa is not on the main island, but rather far to the southwest on the less-visited island of Ishigaki, a summit by the name of Mt. Omoto. The mountain itself is not famous — people usually don't go to Ishikawa for hiking — but you can if you care to.

The last time I visited this place was in late 2019. Certainly things have changed in the last six years. If you read the newspaper, they'll tell you that things are changing faster than ever in the modern world. But that's not what it feels like down here. The things that make this place nice to visit — friendly people, scuba diving, nature, Okinawan food — feel similar to my previous visit.

For three days I went scuba diving. The dive boats leave from the port on Ishigaki, and there are dive sites around all of the nearby islands — Taketomi, Iriomote, Kohama, Kuroshima, Aragusu, and Ishigaki itself. Scuba diving is a magical thing, difficult to describe in words. It's a lot quieter under water, for one. And then the colors are all kinds of exciting — blue tends to dominate, especially at depth, but brilliantly colored coral and fish are all around as well. One neat thing about Ishigaki is the small things to find, and if you're with a knowledgeable dive buddy or dive master, they'll point to something, you come over and stare at it for two minutes, and finally you will see a little shrimp smaller than your pinky nail, or translucent tubes that look like tiny smiley faces, or who knows what it might be. Sometimes you'll stare for two minutes and can't figure it out, and they'll tell you when you're back on the boat. Anyway, there's some nice diving down here.

Mt. Omoto was next on the list. A quick bus ride and a 1-hour walk brought me to the top of the mountain. The summit is covered with shrubs, so there aren't any panoramic viewpoints, but it's still an enjoyable way to spend a morning. After the hike, rather than wait two hours for the return bus, I took a 10 kilometer stroll through the hills, past the pineapple farms and sugarcane fields, back to downtown Ishigaki. The next day, my last full day on the island, I went to a different one. Taketomi is a 20-minute ferry ride, and walking down the beaches and up the dusty roads is a scenic way to spend time... And that's it, a week down here. Scuba diving, hiking, scenery, books, sure thing. Happy holidays!

There must be something precious here, that no textbook can teach you. That's the islanders' treasure. —BEGIN (2002)

Riding in North Kansai

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0900

As autumn comes to a close, the time for a motorcycle ride is now, before colder weather makes it impossible. The last place on my list, the Sixteen Motorcycle Roads, is the Mikata Rainbow Line, which goes around the Mikata Five Lakes (Mikata Goko) in western Fukui. It's possible to do this as a day trip from Kyoto, but because Mt. Ibuki is in the vicinity, and Mt. Ibuki is on the list of 100 Famous Japanese Mountains, I opt instead for a twenty-four hour rental.

On Saturday morning I take the train to Kyoto and rent the bike. Then I ride to Mt. Ibuki, but just as the weather forecast predicts, Mt. Ibuki is hiding in a downpour. Well, I expected the rain and have the right gear, so I carefully ride to the parking lot, walk the final twenty minutes to the summit, and have a mug of hot chocolate. The sun peaks through a gap in the clouds for half a minute and decides not to linger. Neither do I. So I ride on, down the mountain and then northwest for two hours to a hotel for the night.

The next morning, the weather has taken a sunny turn, and at eight o'clock I head for the Mikata Rainbow Line. It's a few minutes from the hotel, and because the tourist facilities don't open until nine, the road is empty. At this early hour the only people around are locals and riders like myself, and it's an enjoyable ride up and down the hill and curves around the lakes. Then I head south, following Route 367 for a few hours. The road stays in a river valley, and by mid-morning there are hundreds of cars and motorcycles out enjoying the fine autumn weather. This scenic highway is a welcome change from Saturday's expressway riding. The final hour of the morning is a quick jaunt east, across Lake Biwa, and then a bit of lakeside driving south, down to the rental shop. Then I hop the train and head home.

Canada

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0900

This summer was a good time to visit Canada. I initially thought about going to the U.S., but what with Trump's anti-foreigner policies and the immigration police locking people up all the time, Canada had a greater appeal. Why not visit the Canadian Rockies? Never been there before. Betsy and Dex said we should go to the Bugaboos, so we did. Great.

On the first day we drove to the Conrad Kain Trailhead and hiked up to the Conrad Kain Hut. The road was rough, but the rental SUV handled it fine, and the hike was short but steep, so we took our time... We had several ideas for the next day. In the end, we decided to hike up and over the pass to Cobalt Lake. This was a good idea, but what we had not counted upon is the fact that while there are many rocks, cairns are scarce, and the trail is mostly non-existent. But we were confident, and experience was on our side, so we climbed up the scree slopes, boulder hopped through the rock fields, walked down the glacier, and eventually found our way to Cobalt Lake. The route was sketchy and fun... On the third day, consistent with day before, we found that the Cobalt Lake Trail doesn't exist in places, but with the assistance of GPS and offline cellphone maps, we meandered out of the mountains and back to civilization... A spectacular three-day hike, provided you have the skills and strength.

The next day my parents wandered west and I drove up to Glacier National Park — the Canadian one — for several days and then headed up the Icefields Parkway to Jasper, where David joined me up. Jasper, Banff, and the Parkway connecting them are rightly famous.

The hiking and camping were excellent. The mountains were majestic, the glaciers were gigantic, the waterfalls were wonderful. In the words of Stompin' Tom Connors, In Canada, where adventure ever falls — in Canada, we get to see them all.

Taiwan

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0900

Taiwan is close to Japan, relatively inexpensive, and not particularly cold in the winter, which makes it an ideal destination for winter break. Although I had visited Taipei in 2019 for Julie & Max's wedding, that was a weekend trip with little time to see the country and the countryside. This vacation, there were more than enough days to visit Tainan and Kaohsiung in the south, and then Taipei and the surrounding area in the north.

The food and drink were excellent everywhere, with "drink" referring to coffee, although tea lovers say that the tea is spectacular too. Food is interesting because spending more money doesn't make the taste improve. Google Maps and the night markets provided plenty of inexpensive eateries with exciting entrées.

East of Taipei in a town called Jiufen, the A-Mei Teahouse, said to be the inspiration for Spirited Away, was quite amazing. The crowds arrive around 11AM, and if you get there early, before many shops open, have a serene stroll on the narrow sidewalks, all on the side of the mountain with a view of the sea. From that location, it's a jaunt down to Houtong, a coal mining town turned cat-themed village. Following that I went for a walk south and stumbled into the Sandiaoling Tunnel. Of course the signs for the tunnel, including useful information such as where it goes and how long it is, are all written in Chinese, but translation apps are boring, and it was more interesting to go inside and start walking... Apparently, the tunnel leads to a town called Mudan, which is not particularly notable for tourists, but it has a train station so you can get home after the spelunking session has concluded.

It's so easy to travel internationally these days. Google Translate makes ordering food relatively simple — just take a picture of the menu, or even screenshot a menu pic on Google Maps, and walk in ready to order — and OpenStreetMap and Google Maps make navigation a piece of cake. Many buses and trains in Taiwan, as in many countries, have signs with the stops in English, and to pay you swipe the card when boarding and disembarking, so you don't have to calculate fares or learn the numbers. Ideally we would all have time to study the language for a few months or years prior to visiting, because surely talking with the locals would make the journey even more rewarding, but that's easier said than done. Anyway, it was a fun trip.

Hiking Oze

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0900

I started climbing the peaks of Oze last summer and returned this summer for more adventure. Oze is a 4-hour drive from my house, and it's remarkably remote. The last real town is Uonuma, and heading east from Uonuma on Highway 352 brings two hours of hairpin turns and curves that look like malaria germs, naturally with no cell signal. What few people can be found are there for fishing, hiking, and hot springs. Some of the roads and villages are summer-only, and you get the feeling that it's just you up here. I climbed Mt. Naeba (Niigata), Mt. Echigo-Komagatake (Niigata), Mt. Aizu-Komagatake (Fukushima), and Mt. Hiragatake (Niigata), all on Japan's Top 100 Mountains list.

Some years ago, there were a great many free campgrounds in the country. These days you can find a few here and there, but what's more common are places that charge 500-1,000 yen for a night. Search online for 無料キャンプ場 and see what comes up. I prefer to use these basic campgrounds when hiking because your average campground is more likely to be designed for glamping and barbecuing. There's nothing wrong with those activities, but they tend to bring a noisier crowd and higher prices. Also, for some reason they tend to have "check-in by five" policies, which doesn't work well if you arrive after a long hike or drive. On the other hand, some commercial campgrounds have great views and facilities, and the crowds are a non-factor in the off-season. Either way, there's some beautiful nature to be found.

Kyushu Counterclockwise

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0900

There is a ferry from Tokyo to Kyushu, all the most people don't know about it because it's slow and expensive. But it's not expensive, at least relatively speaking, if you already own a car and your other option is to fly to Kyushu and rent a car. So then you might think to yourself, "Why don't I go down there for two weeks and camp and hike? That seems like fun, right?" And you would be right. It is a lot of fun.

One thing to be careful of is the weather. In the age of climate change, all kinds of exciting things can happen. For example, it could be above 100° for seven days in a row. That's the kind of thing that might make one want to stay inside. It's also the kind of thing that might make one want to climb high mountains, because the temperatures are cooler the higher you go. If you were to climb, for example, Mt. Kyo (Saga) and Mt. Unzen (Miyazaki), you could take the ferry and then drive south camp on the coast, and then climb Mt. Kaimon (Kagoshima) and Mt. Karakuni (Miyazaki), the highest peak of Mt. Kirishima.

You might be inclined to summit Mt. Kunimi (Kumamoto), but that's easier said than done because mudslides took out all of the roads leading to all of the trailheads anywhere near the summit, and mudslides may also have taken out of the trails, although we can't find out until the roads get rebuilt. So then you might drive north, because the mountains near Mt. Aso are panoramic and onsen abound.

The highlights of hiking in Kyushu are perhaps Mt. Aso (Kumamoto) and Mt. Kuju (Oita). It's well worth driving on the Aso Panorama Line, and then following the Yamanami Highway — what a spectacular road — all the way into Beppu, so that you can tour the seven Hells, although the prospect of going to see extra hot hot springs on hot summer days might lead some to wonder when proper planning went out the window. But by the time you think about that, after a brief stop at a monkey nature preserve and an aquarium, you'll have moved on, back to the cooler mountains, so that you can summit Mt. Sobo (Miyazaki) and Mt. Shaka (Fukuoka).

And that's it. By that point you will have climbed the highest point in each prefecture in mainland Kyushu, along with the Top 100 Mountains located therein. You will also have ridden two of the Top 16 Motorcycle Roads. If you still have time to spare, you could drive to eastern Yamaguchi and hike Mt. Jakuchi before slowly meandering back east, along the northwestern coast of the prefecture, finally returning to the ferry terminal in Kitakyushu. That all makes for a nice vacation. You should try it sometime.

Camping in Kansai

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0900

You have to be flexible to happily travel during spring break. Roads and restaurants might be closed for the winter, it might be hot or cold or rainy or sunny. On the one hand, I didn't summit three of the peaks on my list. On the other hand, I climbed four others, drove on some beautiful roads up in the mountains, and relaxed at some grand campgrounds.

I made a schedule because it's easier to organize with one. The first day in Kansai I climbed Mt. Kongo, the highest point in Osaka, in the rain. Later the sun came out, and it was a beautiful drive up the Koya Ryujin Skyline to the summit of Mt. Ryujin, the highest point in Wakayama. That was a nice first day.

On the second day, I hiked a trail that didn't deserve to be called one. In reality, it was rock hopping and bushwhacking, and then some ladders to climb where if they didn't exist you would have had no choice but to turn around. A great time, certainly. In fact, it was such a great time that there was not enough left over to reach the summit of Mt. Hakkyo. Ah well, there's another trail head that opens later in April, and it is said that the other trail is less about parkour and more about hiking. Regardless, it was an exciting venture in the woods.

After two days in Nara I headed north with no delay. Mt. Minago, the highest point in Kyoto, was a quick morning walk. Later in the day, I discovered that Mt. Ibuki is currently closed to hiking, so it will also have to wait for another trip. On the long drive home, I stopped by Mt. Chausu, the highest point in Aichi, got a nice view of the Alps, and slowly headed back east.

New Mexico

Wed, 03 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0900

Here are some pictures from a two-week winter trip to New Mexico.

My family got together at George and Cora's house in Los Alamos. We did some snowboarding, shopping in Santa Fe, cooking, and then we played with the cat a lot. Later, Dex & Betsy and Matt & Diana flew home, and I went south in a rental car. The first stop was Guadalupe Mountains National Park, just across the state line into Texas. The hiking was excellent. For the entire trip, the nights were around freezing, and during the sunny days the temperature rose to the 50s, which made for great conditions for being outside. Several days later, I stopped by Carlsbad Caverns, which is a ridiculously large and impressive cave complex. From there it was up to White Sands National Park, with the overnight at Aguirre Springs Campground in the Organ Mountains. The last destination was a brief stop at Three Rivers Petroglyph Site, then a quick sprint up the interstate to Albuquerque, an airport hotel, and a long flight home.

I've been to New Mexico several times, and even to some of the above locations before, but that was a long time ago, and some of the previous visits were short. It's nice to relax and focus on seeing those areas with time to spare, to walk around longer and take in more views. It's a beautiful part of the U.S.

Ireland

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0900

Here are some pictures from a two-week summer trip to Ireland with Marjorie and River.

We started in Dublin for several days, complete with day trips to visit Glendalough, Knowth, and some other sites with somewhat old and very old ruins. After that we headed west to Galway. The Sky Road was a scenic drive. After Galway, we headed south to Doolin. The sites to see there were the Aran Islands — we visited Inishmore, the large island — and the Cliffs of Moher. The views and landscape here, as with elsewhere in the country, were amazing. The coastal cliffs are distinct in color and vegetation from the inland mountains, even though they're only twenty minutes' drive from each other. Following Doolin, we continued south to Killarney. Our rainiest day was a bus tour of the Ring of Kerry, which was designed to be fun regardless of the weather. Finally, we spent two days in Cork.

I didn't know much about Irish history before visiting, so it was exciting to learn about the neolithic people, the history with the Vikings and later the British, and small things like the fact that George Boole was the first mathematics professor at University College Cork or that famous wool sweaters come from the Aran Islands. The food was mostly excellent. Many of the sandwich shops and bakeries we visited served great food, and classics like mussels, fish & chips, and the full breakfast were as good as I'd hoped they'd be. It was a nice time seeing the historical, cultural, and natural sites with friends.

Hiking in North Kanto

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0900

Continuing on the quest to climb Japan's Top 100 Mountains list as well as dodge the heat in Tokyo and Kanagawa, I went up to North Kanto for a week and climbed five peaks: Mt. Nikko-Shirane, Mt. Hotaka, Mt. Tanigawa, Mt. Makihata, and Mt. Hiuchigatake.

This trip spanned from Gunma to Tochigi, then Niigata, and finally Fukushima. The distances as a crow flies for each hike, and even between trail heads and campgrounds, is relatively short, but the mountains are steep and the roads are curvy, so it takes a surprisingly long time to get anywhere... Which is just as well, because what's the rush? There's a lot to be discovered: campgrounds with no cell signal, bears, monkeys, foxes, good views, peace & quiet, cicadas, rain on the tent, wind. That's why I come up here.

Hiking in Shikoku

Fri, 31 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0900

For spring break this year, I took my car on the ferry from Tokyo to Tokushima and went hiking and car camping in Shikoku. Six years ago I did a similar trip by motorcycle, and it was good then, so why not mix it up with a revisit by car? There were bicycles to ride and mountains to climb.

It was my goal to climb Mt. Tsurugi and Mt. Ishizuchi, because they're on Japan's Top 100 Mountains list. Along with those two mountains are Mt. Ryuo and Mt. Miune, which are less famous, and those four mountains are the highest points of each of the four prefectures in Shikoku. Mt. Ryuo isn't even a hike — you can drive to the summit — but the other three mountains were around 10 km jaunts up the hills. Late March weather can be spotty, so there aren't many other hikers around, so it makes for a relaxing time.

Later in the trip I headed west to ride on the Shimanami Kaido, a bicycle path that runs from Imabari in the south to Onomichi in the north, bridging the island chain from Ehime to Hiroshima. I rented a bike in Imabari, and it took about seven hours at a leisurely pace to get to Onomichi. Getting back to my car in the south was complicated: walking, a ferry, more walking, a highway bus, and yet another long walk. The path was also on my list of sixteen motorcycle roads.

If you live in Kanto and have a car, Shikoku is a great spring break location. The ferry is slow but inexpensive, there are many free or cheap campgrounds, and there's a lot to explore. Along with the above-mentioned hikes and rides, I spent a day driving through the Iya Valley, replete with thatch roofs, vine bridges, and mountain valleys with crystal clear streams.

Sabah

Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0900

Here are some pictures from a two-week Christmas vacation trip to Sabah, Malaysia.

A few years ago I was diving in Bali, and a couple on the dive boat recommended Sipadan. So this year, as COVID restrictions were easing around most of the world, I wanted to go somewhere new, so Sipadan it was.

I did three days of diving in Sipadan. Sipadan is a famous diving destination, and I was impressed. We saw all kinds of creatures: jack fish, barracuda, bump head, white tip sharks, turtles, lion fish, cuttlefish, manta rays, sting rays, scorpion fish, frog fish, tuna, mantis shrimps. The schools of bump head were freaky looking, and we had some amazing barracuda cyclones. After Sipadan, I took a day for easy hiking around Semporna.

It's a quick flight up to Sandakan, and from there a short taxi ride to Sepilok and the urangutans. You can watch the urangutans get fed at the rehabilitation center. Next door is a sun bear rehabilitation center, which is also pretty cool. I also did some hiking at the Rainforest Discovery Center.

Next on the trip was the Lower Kinbatangan River. A three-day two-night package with mosquito-laden nature walks and mosquito-free river cruises revealed all manner of wildlife: long tailed macaques, proboscis monkeys, silver leaf monkeys, egrets, baby and adult crocodiles, hornbills, osprey, an orangutan, kingfishers, Pacific swallows, storm storks, Oriental darters, eagles, and more. There's a lot of beautiful nature in this country.

My last two days were in Kota Kinabalu, the state capitol. There is a museum, plus some mosques to see. Malaysia is not famous for its food, but if you look carefully there's tasty stuff to be found. I had some great seafood meals, and there are many good coffee shops to be found. A leisurely stroll through the city was a nice way to end the vacation.

USA

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0900

It was nice to get to the U.S. after three years. At the beginning of COVID-19, international travel was absurdly difficult. After a while things settled down, but until the spring of 2022, the Japanese government's immigration policy required a length quarantine upon return to Japan. It's hard to do that unless you work from home, which I don't, but now the rules are more relaxed so it was time to take a jaunt across the Pacific and see how America is faring.

I went to North Dakota along with George and Cora. Betsy and Dex had a Christmas party despite the seasonal inconsistency. We also went to see the Sound of Music at Frostfire, rode some bikes, and went tubing on the Red Lake River. It worked out well.

After five days in the upper Midwest, I flew to Seattle, and Marjorie and Andrew and I took a road trip down through Corvalis, where we met up with Ross for an afternoon, and then west to the coast from Newport down to Arcata before slowly working our way back to Portland. There was so much cool stuff. I don't know what the best place was, because it was all good, but the two locations I'd wanted to go for decades were Redwood National Park and Crater Lake, and they lived up to the hype.

On Marjorie and Andrew's last day, we drove up to Portland and saw Toby for few hours. Then I went camping and hiking near Mt. Hood for a couple of days. And finally I drove back to Seattle, saw Matt and Diana and Nash for a day, met AJ for lunch, and flew back to Japan.

Ascending Kumotori

Wed, 23 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0900

Mt. Kumotori is one of Japan's famous peaks, and it's a nice overnight excursion from Tokyo. Takeshi said you could climb it in winter. So now, fourteen months after he told me that, I have gone to the top, and it was well worth the effort.

The trail head is at the end of a bus route that departs from Okutama Station. You could theoretically take early morning trains from central Tokyo to make this connection, but it would involve waking up at some obnoxiously early hour. I stayed at a hotel in Mitake, got up at 6:15, and went on my way. I took a leisurely morning and got to the trail head around 9:00, the summit at 12:30, and then got back to the trail head by 3:00. 22 kilometers in 7 hours is a fairly relaxed pace, but I wouldn't want to go faster because if you work up too much of a sweat, you get cold when you stop.

The views were spectacular. Mt. Fuji to the southwest, the Alps to the west, and Tokyo itself off to the east, it was all crystal clear today. There was a little wind but not much. It's February, so it's cold outside, and you definitely need spikes to do this climb in the off season, but if you can find a day like today, go for it.