To get to Yori one can use local train. After two hours of travel one lands in a very different world.

Yori is nothing like Tokyo. There is much more space in here, people live in villas and move around with cars without worrying about parking space.

Even though one can find box shaped cars like this one here.

Using electric pan Masami's mom is preparing beef fried with vegetables. It is being served with soy sauce and rice. For a drink we will have beer which is as popular here as in Europe.

Yori train station. Local infrastructure and nature reminds me of Kowary, small town in Poland.

Every place should have something to remember it by. I really enjoyed walking down the street right behind this crossing.

Here it is...

Salted fish and Japanese pickle called tsukemono is sold here.

Preparation of this interesting appetizer is quiet different from what we (Polish people) know about pickling. Japanese don't use vinegar or sugar.

How to make tsukemono:
Take a large pot, put some boiled water in, add a bit of salt and rice bran. Use this pickle for marinating cucumbers, zucchini, eggplant or carrots. Leave it for couple of days.

Other ingredients like soy sauce, sake or miso are also used. Pickles stay firm unlike ones made European way and the taste is very different. Better or worse - a matter of liking.

A tea house.

Traditional soft drink called ramune, on sale for decades. The bottle stands out with it's characteristic neck - in a closed bottle glass marble blocks the hole by the pressure of the carbon dioxide.

To open the bottle, push the marble inward. During drinking it stops at two glass nodes placed on the neck inside the bottle.

It takes a little ptactice to master the skill.

The name comes from "lemonade". Ramune... lemonade... same, isn't it?
Oddly enough a lot of words widely used in Japanese originate from English.
Here's the example:

• spoon - supu-n;
• fork - fo-ku;
• table - taberu;
• knife - naifu;
• toilet - toire.

Even though original Japanese words describing the same objects do exist as well, English words are widely used, especially among young people for whom all that comes from the West is kakkui (cool).

Japanese use katakana alphabet to write down these words.

Japanese is a syllabic language. In hiragana as well as in katakana except for "n" consonants alone are not present.

Lack of well-marked line between some of the consonants widely used in English could be another difficulty.
For instance - pictured hairdresser's isn't a "salon" but "saron". The group of ra, re, ru, ri, ro could be as well read as la, le, lu, li, lo.

A coffee stop at the roadside bar.

Kitchen gardens look just like ones in Poland.

Right behind them a bamboo forest spreads. Not everyone realizes bamboo actually is a kind of grass. Not just grass - the tallest kind in the world (it reaches up to five meters high).

Going further that way one will find a textile industry museum...

...and a heritage park.

This attic reminds me of the scene of the movie Ringu (also it's American version - The Ring) showing an attic room without any way to go up or down without tall ladder. Little girl has grown up there spending whole days all alone.

There is a shinto temple behind the heritage park. Large bowl with running water in front lets pilgrims kill the thirst and wash their hands before going in.

For a symbolic price one can buy a fortune flyer. After finding out about one's future, one can wrap it around a special stand.

Walking around Yori I have found a cemetery.

The house of I. family. Because it was build in a large distance from Tokyo its price is probably around the same as the price of a studio in the city.

In the journal from Thailand (yet to come) I'm going to show something about Thai building quality, where aesthetics are usually on second place. On the other side the house on the picture looks like it has been built by robots. It is difficult to spot any flaws.