[Newsletter] Toxic mountain village with Japan's last wolf

▶︎ Watch the new video → https://youtu.be/95VDbw2wma0

The prefecture of Nara, Japan is very mountainous and there aren't many people. The actual city of Nara is a big tourist draw of a city, of course, as are its surrounding cities and towns. And visitors shouldn't miss them; they're great.

But the southern half of Nara Prefecture doesn't have any train lines, and hardly even any buses. But there are a few.

I took one of these buses deep into the mountains, to an obscure village called Higashi-Yoshino. Specifically, I visited the tiny community of Ogawa, which has some surprising history lurking in its misty, murky hills.

You might know the word "Yoshino" from the mountain area famous for its cherry blossom views every spring. That community is to the west of where I was (Higashi-Yoshino means "east Yoshino").

The Ogawa community doesn't have the same cherry blossom claim to fame. But they have some others that I got to know.

There used to be an animal called the Japanese wolf. The last generally-accepted specimen was caught in this valley in 1905, but after that it appears to have become extinct. In town now, there's a monument to the wolf, and the town mascot character is an adorable little wolf called Hiyoshi-chan.

Finding that monument and learning about the wolf was my main goal. But as usual, I got sidetracked by much else in Ogawa and its old rickety wooden buildings along the "main street".

I learned of the Tenchūgumi, a group from the 1860s that wanted to keep Japan closed to foreigners. They fought for their cause and died in battles in this area, around the beautiful Takami River that runs through town.

I explored the back streets (not there are that many) of Ogawa and found myself on some narrow, twisted little overgrown paths with no other people around. (So it goes in a village with only 200 residents.)

I saw a few remarkable shops and restaurants, all closed. And, amazingly, I found one that was open that I went in.

And I had a big (and stupid!) bus mishap that led to more exploration, and that turned out to be a good thing. Mostly.

As you'll see in the video, this entire mountain valley had "hazardous" air quality forecast for the day I went. I certainly didn't plan it this way; this was the only day I could go, and a terrifying dark spot of awful air just showed up on my weather app for the area. Terrible timing, but I had to go.

I was rather worried on the hour-long bus ride there. I'll let you see what happened in the video, but here's a report from afterwards: I got back home that night, and never had any breathing or coughing issues or anything.

I don't know if I dodged a bullet, or if I'm a man of steel with the lung capacity of a brontosaurus, or if the air wasn't actually that bad, or what. But, unlike the wolf, I survived my trip to Ogawa.

Whew.

▶ TRAVEL LOVERS, PARTNERS, AND MASTERS: Watch the extended 43-minute ad-free version, including exploring many more streets and paths in town, marking further bonus items off my checklist, and the whole long tragic tale of how I got left behind by my bus and had to breathe the valley air even more → https://patreon.com/posts/141488918

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Everywhere is worth exploring!

–Jeremy