chore(demo): cleanup old demo data, rename GPX files, update trip.md

- Remove japan-korea-2026 demo folder entirely - Remove italy-2025 and italy-2026-demo dailies and stories (replaced in later tasks) - Rename 4 long GPX filenames to short slugs (day-1 through day-4) - Update trip.md title to 'Tuscany 2026' - Add dailies/dailies.md index page - Recreate empty dailies and 04.stories directories
2026-06-20 21:14:57 +02:00
parent c403ea9593
commit 42ed59a6b3
68 changed files with 217913 additions and 613 deletions
@@ -1,28 +0,0 @@
---
-title: The Val d'Orcia at Dawn
-date: '2025-09-05'
-location_name: Val d'Orcia
-location_country: Italy
-lat: 43.078
-lng: 11.676
-hero_image: hero.jpg
-hero_alt: Cypress-lined dirt road at first light, Tuscany
-published: true
---
-We left camp before the heat arrived. At six in the morning the Val d'Orcia belongs entirely to the light — long shadows, pale gold, not a car on the white roads. The kind of silence that has texture.
-
-[snap-gallery images="hero.jpg,photo.jpg" captions="First light on the valley floor,The hills fold endlessly east" alts="Wide valley at dawn with golden light,Rolling green hills under morning sky" /]
-
-We stopped twice before nine. Once for a puncture, once because the view demanded it.
-
-[chapter-break image="hero.jpg" title="The Hour Before Heat" alt="Hazy hillside shimmering in early morning warmth" /]
-
-By ten the temperature had shifted. The colours changed too — softer, more diffuse, the sky turning white at the edges. We dropped into the lower valley and the road surface changed from gravel to packed earth, then back again.
-
-[snap-gallery images="photo.jpg,hero.jpg" captions="The texture of Tuscan gravel — coarser than it looks,The road ahead disappears into the heat" alts="Close-up of pale gravel surface,Road vanishing into bright haze" /]
-
-[pull-quote]
-The best hours of a cycling day are the ones nobody sees. Four in the morning to ten. Then it belongs to the sun.
-[/pull-quote]
-
-We made Pienza by noon. It was already thirty degrees and the ice cream queue was six deep.
@@ -1,54 +0,0 @@
---
-title: The Long Climb to Montalcino
-date: '2025-09-06'
-location_name: Montalcino
-location_country: Italy
-lat: 43.058
-lng: 11.489
-hero_image: hero.jpg
-hero_alt: Hairpin road climbing through olive groves towards a hilltop town
-published: true
---
-The profile showed fourteen kilometres at an average of six percent. In practice it was steeper at the bottom and gentler at the top, which is the worst possible arrangement. We started climbing at two in the afternoon, which was also the worst possible decision.
-
-[scrolly-section image="hero.jpg" alt="Empty road rising steeply through olive groves" caption="SP55 — 14km, 840m elevation gain"]
-The first kilometre is the most honest. You find out immediately whether your legs have anything to say.
-
---
-
-By the halfway point the olive groves had given way to scrub oak and the road had narrowed to a single lane. No cars had passed in forty minutes. The silence was absolute except for breathing.
-
---
-
-Then, at the last bend before the top, the town appeared. Just the outline of it — a tower, a wall, rooftops. It was enough.
-[/scrolly-section]
-
-[chapter-break image="photo.jpg" title="Montalcino" number="II" alt="Medieval town gate with stone archway" /]
-
-[pull-quote image="photo.jpg" alt="Rows of Brunello vines descending from hilltop town"]
-From the top you could see the whole valley we had spent two days riding through. It looked completely flat from up here.
-[/pull-quote]
-
-We found a bar in the main piazza. The owner brought two glasses of water without being asked. Then two more. Then a small plate of bread and oil that nobody ordered. We sat there for an hour.
-
-[scrolly-section image="photo.jpg" alt="Shaded medieval piazza with stone buildings" caption="Piazza del Popolo, Montalcino"]
-The piazza at five in the afternoon is a different place from the piazza at noon. People have returned from wherever they go during the heat.
-
---
-
-A wine shop with barrels in the window and a handwritten list on a chalkboard. We looked at it for a long time and bought nothing. The prices were very reasonable and this felt suspicious.
-
---
-
-A cat on a warm stone wall, watching traffic that did not exist. It had clearly been watching this traffic for years.
-
---
-
-The fortress walls turn amber just before sunset. You could photograph this from a hundred different angles and it would look the same in all of them: very good.
-
---
-
-The descent back to the valley takes twenty minutes. The climb took two and a half hours. This ratio never stops feeling wrong.
-[/scrolly-section]
-
-We found the agriturismo by following a handwritten sign nailed to a cypress tree. It was exactly what it promised to be.
@@ -1,32 +0,0 @@
---
-title: One Evening in Siena
-date: '2025-09-05'
-location_name: Siena
-location_country: Italy
-lat: 43.318
-lng: 11.330
-hero_image: hero.jpg
-hero_alt: The Piazza del Campo at dusk, terracotta rooftops fading to blue
-published: true
---
-[pull-quote]
-Siena is not a city that tries to impress you. It has been here for a thousand years and intends to be here for a thousand more. You fit around it.
-[/pull-quote]
-
-We rolled in at half past six, legs finished, panniers heavier than they started. The Campo appeared without warning at the end of a narrow street and we both stopped pedalling at exactly the same moment.
-
-[scrolly-section image="hero.jpg" alt="Piazza del Campo seen from the upper rim, sloping shell-shaped square"]
-The square fills from the edges inward as evening comes. First the locals — people who have been here before and know which bench faces west. Then the tourists, then the pigeons, then the shadows.
-
---
-
-A busker with a cello at the top of the slope. A couple arguing quietly in a language I couldn't place. Three children running in a circle for reasons nobody questioned. The ordinary business of a city at the end of a summer day.
-[/scrolly-section]
-
-[snap-gallery images="hero.jpg,photo.jpg" captions="The Campo at the moment the light goes warm,A doorway on Via di Città — every doorway in Siena looks like this" alts="Wide shot of Campo at golden hour,Ornate stone doorway with iron lantern" /]
-
-We found a place to eat down three flights of stairs in a basement that appeared to have no ventilation and no menu. It was perfect. The relief of sitting down after eight hours on a bike is a specific physical sensation that is difficult to describe to anyone who has not experienced it.
-
-[pull-quote image="photo.jpg" alt="Sunset view over Siena rooftops from high vantage point"]
-Cycling makes you earn every place you arrive at. Siena earned.
-[/pull-quote]
@@ -1,13 +0,0 @@
---
-title: "Rolling through Val d'Orcia"
-template: entry
-date: '2025-09-05 08:00'
-lat: 43.078
-lng: 11.676
-location_city: Pienza
-location_country: Italy
-weather_temp_c: 24
-weather_desc: Sunny
-published: true
---
-Cypress trees lining dirt roads, heat already rising. The Val d'Orcia is everything they say it is.
@@ -1,13 +0,0 @@
---
-title: "Siena at dusk"
-template: entry
-date: '2025-09-05 19:00'
-lat: 43.318
-lng: 11.335
-location_city: Siena
-location_country: Italy
-weather_temp_c: 21
-weather_desc: Clear
-published: true
---
-Rolled in just before sunset. The Piazza del Campo was still warm from the day's heat.
@@ -1,13 +0,0 @@
---
-title: "Towers of San Gimignano"
-template: entry
-date: '2025-09-06 12:00'
-lat: 43.546
-lng: 11.321
-location_city: 'San Gimignano'
-location_country: Italy
-weather_temp_c: 26
-weather_desc: Hot and sunny
-published: true
---
-Ate lunch in the shadow of the medieval towers. Legs tired, gelato mandatory.
@@ -1,13 +0,0 @@
---
-title: "Into Florence"
-template: entry
-date: '2025-09-06 18:00'
-lat: 43.767
-lng: 11.253
-location_city: Florence
-location_country: Italy
-weather_temp_c: 28
-weather_desc: Warm
-published: true
---
-City traffic after days of gravel roads. Dodged trams and found the hotel.
@@ -1,13 +0,0 @@
---
-title: "Tyrrhenian coast"
-template: entry
-date: '2025-09-08 09:00'
-lat: 43.553
-lng: 10.313
-location_city: Livorno
-location_country: Italy
-weather_temp_c: 23
-weather_desc: Sea breeze
-published: true
---
-The sea appeared suddenly between two hills. Eight days of riding ends here.
@@ -1,28 +0,0 @@
---
-title: The Val d'Orcia at Dawn
-date: '2025-09-05'
-location_name: Val d'Orcia
-location_country: Italy
-lat: 43.078
-lng: 11.676
-hero_image: hero.jpg
-hero_alt: Cypress-lined dirt road at first light, Tuscany
-published: true
---
-We left camp before the heat arrived. At six in the morning the Val d'Orcia belongs entirely to the light — long shadows, pale gold, not a car on the white roads. The kind of silence that has texture.
-
-[snap-gallery images="hero.jpg,photo.jpg" captions="First light on the valley floor,The hills fold endlessly east" alts="Wide valley at dawn with golden light,Rolling green hills under morning sky" /]
-
-We stopped twice before nine. Once for a puncture, once because the view demanded it.
-
-[chapter-break image="hero.jpg" title="The Hour Before Heat" alt="Hazy hillside shimmering in early morning warmth" /]
-
-By ten the temperature had shifted. The colours changed too — softer, more diffuse, the sky turning white at the edges. We dropped into the lower valley and the road surface changed from gravel to packed earth, then back again.
-
-[snap-gallery images="photo.jpg,hero.jpg" captions="The texture of Tuscan gravel — coarser than it looks,The road ahead disappears into the heat" alts="Close-up of pale gravel surface,Road vanishing into bright haze" /]
-
-[pull-quote]
-The best hours of a cycling day are the ones nobody sees. Four in the morning to ten. Then it belongs to the sun.
-[/pull-quote]
-
-We made Pienza by noon. It was already thirty degrees and the ice cream queue was six deep.
@@ -1,54 +0,0 @@
---
-title: The Long Climb to Montalcino
-date: '2025-09-06'
-location_name: Montalcino
-location_country: Italy
-lat: 43.058
-lng: 11.489
-hero_image: hero.jpg
-hero_alt: Hairpin road climbing through olive groves towards a hilltop town
-published: true
---
-The profile showed fourteen kilometres at an average of six percent. In practice it was steeper at the bottom and gentler at the top, which is the worst possible arrangement. We started climbing at two in the afternoon, which was also the worst possible decision.
-
-[scrolly-section image="hero.jpg" alt="Empty road rising steeply through olive groves" caption="SP55 — 14km, 840m elevation gain"]
-The first kilometre is the most honest. You find out immediately whether your legs have anything to say.
-
---
-
-By the halfway point the olive groves had given way to scrub oak and the road had narrowed to a single lane. No cars had passed in forty minutes. The silence was absolute except for breathing.
-
---
-
-Then, at the last bend before the top, the town appeared. Just the outline of it — a tower, a wall, rooftops. It was enough.
-[/scrolly-section]
-
-[chapter-break image="photo.jpg" title="Montalcino" number="II" alt="Medieval town gate with stone archway" /]
-
-[pull-quote image="photo.jpg" alt="Rows of Brunello vines descending from hilltop town"]
-From the top you could see the whole valley we had spent two days riding through. It looked completely flat from up here.
-[/pull-quote]
-
-We found a bar in the main piazza. The owner brought two glasses of water without being asked. Then two more. Then a small plate of bread and oil that nobody ordered. We sat there for an hour.
-
-[scrolly-section image="photo.jpg" alt="Shaded medieval piazza with stone buildings" caption="Piazza del Popolo, Montalcino"]
-The piazza at five in the afternoon is a different place from the piazza at noon. People have returned from wherever they go during the heat.
-
---
-
-A wine shop with barrels in the window and a handwritten list on a chalkboard. We looked at it for a long time and bought nothing. The prices were very reasonable and this felt suspicious.
-
---
-
-A cat on a warm stone wall, watching traffic that did not exist. It had clearly been watching this traffic for years.
-
---
-
-The fortress walls turn amber just before sunset. You could photograph this from a hundred different angles and it would look the same in all of them: very good.
-
---
-
-The descent back to the valley takes twenty minutes. The climb took two and a half hours. This ratio never stops feeling wrong.
-[/scrolly-section]
-
-We found the agriturismo by following a handwritten sign nailed to a cypress tree. It was exactly what it promised to be.
@@ -1,32 +0,0 @@
---
-title: One Evening in Siena
-date: '2025-09-05'
-location_name: Siena
-location_country: Italy
-lat: 43.318
-lng: 11.330
-hero_image: hero.jpg
-hero_alt: The Piazza del Campo at dusk, terracotta rooftops fading to blue
-published: true
---
-[pull-quote]
-Siena is not a city that tries to impress you. It has been here for a thousand years and intends to be here for a thousand more. You fit around it.
-[/pull-quote]
-
-We rolled in at half past six, legs finished, panniers heavier than they started. The Campo appeared without warning at the end of a narrow street and we both stopped pedalling at exactly the same moment.
-
-[scrolly-section image="hero.jpg" alt="Piazza del Campo seen from the upper rim, sloping shell-shaped square"]
-The square fills from the edges inward as evening comes. First the locals — people who have been here before and know which bench faces west. Then the tourists, then the pigeons, then the shadows.
-
---
-
-A busker with a cello at the top of the slope. A couple arguing quietly in a language I couldn't place. Three children running in a circle for reasons nobody questioned. The ordinary business of a city at the end of a summer day.
-[/scrolly-section]
-
-[snap-gallery images="hero.jpg,photo.jpg" captions="The Campo at the moment the light goes warm,A doorway on Via di Città — every doorway in Siena looks like this" alts="Wide shot of Campo at golden hour,Ornate stone doorway with iron lantern" /]
-
-We found a place to eat down three flights of stairs in a basement that appeared to have no ventilation and no menu. It was perfect. The relief of sitting down after eight hours on a bike is a specific physical sensation that is difficult to describe to anyone who has not experienced it.
-
-[pull-quote image="photo.jpg" alt="Sunset view over Siena rooftops from high vantage point"]
-Cycling makes you earn every place you arrive at. Siena earned.
-[/pull-quote]
@@ -1,13 +0,0 @@
---
-title: "Rolling through Val d'Orcia"
-template: entry
-date: '2025-09-05 08:00'
-lat: 43.078
-lng: 11.676
-location_city: Pienza
-location_country: Italy
-weather_temp_c: 24
-weather_desc: Sunny
-published: true
---
-Cypress trees lining dirt roads, heat already rising. The Val d'Orcia is everything they say it is.
@@ -1,13 +0,0 @@
---
-title: "Siena at dusk"
-template: entry
-date: '2025-09-05 19:00'
-lat: 43.318
-lng: 11.335
-location_city: Siena
-location_country: Italy
-weather_temp_c: 21
-weather_desc: Clear
-published: true
---
-Rolled in just before sunset. The Piazza del Campo was still warm from the day's heat.
@@ -1,13 +0,0 @@
---
-title: "Towers of San Gimignano"
-template: entry
-date: '2025-09-06 12:00'
-lat: 43.546
-lng: 11.321
-location_city: 'San Gimignano'
-location_country: Italy
-weather_temp_c: 26
-weather_desc: Hot and sunny
-published: true
---
-Ate lunch in the shadow of the medieval towers. Legs tired, gelato mandatory.
@@ -1,13 +0,0 @@
---
-title: "Into Florence"
-template: entry
-date: '2025-09-06 18:00'
-lat: 43.767
-lng: 11.253
-location_city: Florence
-location_country: Italy
-weather_temp_c: 28
-weather_desc: Warm
-published: true
---
-City traffic after days of gravel roads. Dodged trams and found the hotel.
@@ -1,13 +0,0 @@
---
-title: "Tyrrhenian coast"
-template: entry
-date: '2025-09-08 09:00'
-lat: 43.553
-lng: 10.313
-location_city: Livorno
-location_country: Italy
-weather_temp_c: 23
-weather_desc: Sea breeze
-published: true
---
-The sea appeared suddenly between two hills. Eight days of riding ends here.
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+---
+title: Journal
+template: dailies
+---
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 ---
-title: 'Italy 2026 (Demo)'
+title: 'Tuscany 2026'
 template: trip
 date: '2026-09-01'
 date_start: '2026-09-01'
@@ -1,43 +0,0 @@
---
-title: The Thousand Gates
-date: 2026-03-28
-end_date: 2026-03-29
-location_name: Kyoto
-location_country: Japan
-lat: 34.967
-lng: 135.773
-hero_image: hero.jpg
-hero_alt: A vermillion torii gate at dawn, half-lit by morning sun
-published: true
---
-We left the ryokan before sunrise. Kyoto in March has a particular quality of light — not yet warm, but already golden at the edges. The streets were empty except for a few cyclists and one very confused vending machine that kept flashing its lights at nothing.
-
-[chapter-break image="photo.jpg" title="Fushimi Inari" number="I" alt="Rows of vermillion torii gates stretching into darkness" /]
-
-The path up through Fushimi Inari begins the moment you pass the main shrine. There is no dramatic threshold — just a gate, then another gate, then several thousand more. Each was donated by a business or family. You can read their names on the back of each post, small kanji pressed into the lacquered red.
-
-[scrolly-section image="photo.jpg" alt="Tunnel of torii gates seen from below" caption="Senbon Torii — the Thousand Gates"]
-The first gate smells of fresh lacquer. Someone has recently repainted it, and the colour is almost aggressive in its redness.
-
---
-
-By the tenth gate the smell is gone and the city has disappeared. Pine trees close in on both sides. The only sounds are other footsteps and the occasional crow.
-
---
-
-By the hundredth gate you stop counting. The path becomes the thing itself — not a means to a destination but a place to be.
-
---
-
-Near the summit there is a small shrine with fox statues wearing tiny red bibs. An old woman is arranging fresh flowers in front of them, moving with the unhurried certainty of someone who has done this ten thousand times.
-[/scrolly-section]
-
-[pull-quote image="photo.jpg" alt="View over Kyoto from the hilltop"]
-The gates never seemed to end — and somewhere around gate five hundred, I stopped wanting them to.
-[/pull-quote]
-
-By the time we descended, the city had woken up. Taxis, schoolchildren, a delivery truck arguing with a narrow alley. We found a coffee shop down a side street that did not appear to expect visitors and sat there for an hour watching nothing in particular happen.
-
-[snap-gallery images="hero.jpg,photo.jpg" captions="Morning light on the main shrine,Fox statues at the upper shrine" alts="Sunlit shrine building,Stone fox statues with red bibs" /]
-
-That evening we had ramen in a place with eight seats and a chef who appeared to be operating entirely by memory. There was no menu. You sat down and food appeared. It was the best meal of the trip.
@@ -1,23 +0,0 @@
---
-title: 'Wheels Down at Narita'
-date: '2026-03-25 15:40'
-template: entry
-published: true
-hero_image: ''
-lat: '35.7720'
-lng: '140.3929'
-location_city: 'Tokyo'
-location_country: 'Japan'
-weather_temp_c: 16
-weather_desc: 'Sunny'
---
-
-Eleven hours of flight time, two mediocre films, and one surprisingly good noodle dish from the trolley. Then the descent through scattered cloud, the first glimpse of grey-green patchwork below, and that particular feeling when the wheels finally touch down on a continent you have never stood on before.
-
-Narita is large and orderly and very, very calm. Immigration moved faster than any airport I have ever been through. The officer looked at my passport, looked at me, stamped it once, and handed it back without a word. That was it. Entry to Japan.
-
-The Narita Express runs direct to Shinjuku. I found a window seat and spent 90 minutes watching the city materialise from the outside in — rice fields giving way to low housing, then arterial roads, then the sudden verticality of central Tokyo rising up all at once as if someone just switched a setting.
-
-The hotel is small but perfect. A room roughly the width of my arms outstretched, a window looking onto a grey concrete wall, and a bed that feels like sleeping on a cloud. I went out for ramen at a place around the corner where you order from a vending machine and sit at a counter alone with a small wooden partition between you and the next person. Nobody spoke. It was the best meal I have had in months.
-
-Tomorrow: Ueno. The forecast says the cherry blossoms may finally be open.
@@ -1,23 +0,0 @@
---
-title: 'Sakura in Ueno Park'
-date: '2026-03-26 10:00'
-template: entry
-published: true
-hero_image: ''
-lat: '35.7155'
-lng: '139.7753'
-location_city: 'Tokyo'
-location_country: 'Japan'
-weather_temp_c: 14
-weather_desc: 'Partly cloudy'
---
-
-I arrived at Ueno Park at ten in the morning thinking I would beat the crowds. I was wrong. Several thousand people had the same idea, and the same Instagram instinct. But here is the thing about cherry blossom season in Japan — the crowds are almost part of it. Families with picnic sheets. Couples with matching outfits. Office workers in suits sitting on blue tarps eating convenience-store onigiri. Everyone doing the same thing: looking up at the same trees.
-
-The blossoms were at maybe seventy percent. Enough to understand what the fuss is about.
-
-I walked the park from one end to the other and then sat under a particularly generous tree for about an hour just watching people react to something beautiful. There is a Japanese word for it — *hanami* — which translates roughly as "flower viewing" and is more or less an entire cultural practice. You do not rush past the blossoms. You sit with them.
-
-Later I found the Tokyo National Museum at the top of the park. Three floors of Japanese history, almost entirely in Japanese, which I cannot read, but context is its own language. A display case of Edo-period swords. Painted screens showing mountains I now recognise. A reconstructed tea house in the garden, closed for the season but visible through the glass.
-
-Dinner: tonkatsu on a side street off Ueno-Okachimachi station. The woman who runs the counter has been there for at least thirty years by the look of it. She refilled my miso soup without being asked, twice.
@@ -1,27 +0,0 @@
---
-title: 'Summit Clouds and Snow'
-date: '2026-03-27 07:15'
-template: entry
-published: true
-hero_image: ''
-lat: '35.5095'
-lng: '138.7646'
-location_city: 'Kawaguchiko'
-location_country: 'Japan'
-weather_temp_c: 1
-weather_desc: 'Snow'
---
-
-Nobody told me it would snow.
-
-I took the early bus from Shinjuku at 6:45am because the forecast for the Fuji Five Lakes region said "clear morning, clouds by noon." That is the window you want — Fuji is notorious for hiding inside its own weather system, and most visitors spend an entire day staring at a blank white sky where a mountain ought to be.
-
-I got the mountain. For about forty minutes.
-
-By the time the bus pulled into Kawaguchiko, the first flakes were already coming down. Light at first — the decorative kind that you hold your hand out for. Then, steadily, not decorative at all. I walked down to the lake with my bag under my jacket and stood at the water's edge while the snow thickened and Fuji turned from a sharply defined white cone into a suggestion, and then into nothing.
-
-The lake surface was perfectly still. The snow fell straight down. There were no other tourists on the path, or if there were I could not see them. It was one of those moments of completely accidental solitude that you cannot plan for and would not trade.
-
-I sat on a wooden bench on the lakefront for longer than made any meteorological sense. The snow kept falling. A single cormorant sat on a rock offshore and did not move the entire time I was there.
-
-Caught the bus back to Shinjuku in the afternoon. The mountain never reappeared. I do not mind even slightly.
@@ -1,23 +0,0 @@
---
-title: 'A Thousand Torii Gates'
-date: '2026-03-28 11:30'
-template: entry
-published: true
-hero_image: ''
-lat: '34.9671'
-lng: '135.7727'
-location_city: 'Kyoto'
-location_country: 'Japan'
-weather_temp_c: 18
-weather_desc: 'Sunny'
---
-
-The Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto takes two hours and twelve minutes. You travel at 285km/h. At one point Fuji appears out the right-hand window, clear and enormous and completely snow-covered, and the entire carriage rotates slightly to look at it. The mountain is visible for about four minutes. Then it is gone.
-
-Kyoto is everything Tokyo is not: low, slow, wooden. The streets around Fushimi Inari were already warm with tourists at 11am but the shrine itself is large enough to absorb them. You walk under a tunnel of orange torii gates — thousands of them, each donated by a business and engraved with the donor's name — up a hillside through cedar forest, and the further you climb the more the crowd thins out.
-
-I walked for two hours. Most visitors turn back at the first lookout. I kept going, past smaller shrines and stone fox statues and mossy steps worn down by a century of feet. Near the top the path was almost empty. The air smelled of pine and incense.
-
-The city below spread out in all directions. Very few tall buildings — there are strict height regulations to preserve the sightlines. The Kamo River was a thin silver line running south. Distant mountains still wearing snow.
-
-Dinner at a kaiseki restaurant in Gion, the old entertainment district. Eight small courses, each plated like a small still life. I ate slowly and said nothing and it was the right approach.
@@ -1,21 +0,0 @@
---
-title: 'The Deer of Nara'
-date: '2026-03-29 14:00'
-template: entry
-published: true
-hero_image: ''
-lat: '34.6851'
-lng: '135.8048'
-location_city: 'Nara'
-location_country: 'Japan'
-weather_temp_c: 17
-weather_desc: 'Partly cloudy'
---
-
-The deer at Nara are not afraid of you. This is the first thing you notice — not just that they tolerate humans, but that they regard you with a kind of benign indifference that borders on contempt. They walk into traffic. They push their noses into your pockets. They bow, which sounds enchanting and is, in practice, a manoeuvre to knock crackers out of your hand faster.
-
-I bought a small bundle of *shika senbei* — deer crackers — from a vendor at the park entrance. They were gone in about forty-five seconds to a small gang of deer who appeared from nowhere and surrounded me in a tight semicircle. One bit my sleeve. Another headbutted a woman walking past who was not even involved.
-
-Todai-ji temple is at the far end of the park and contains the largest bronze Buddha in Japan. The building is immense — apparently it was rebuilt at two-thirds the original size in the 18th century and is still the largest wooden structure in the world. The Buddha sits in the dim interior looking calm about this. There is a wooden pillar near the back with a hole cut through its base the same width as one of the Buddha's nostrils. Schoolchildren queue to crawl through it. Wisdom awaits on the other side.
-
-The train back to Kyoto takes 45 minutes through flat agricultural land. The deer do not follow you.
@@ -1,25 +0,0 @@
---
-title: 'Dotonbori After Dark'
-date: '2026-03-30 18:00'
-template: entry
-published: true
-hero_image: ''
-lat: '34.6687'
-lng: '135.5017'
-location_city: 'Osaka'
-location_country: 'Japan'
-weather_temp_c: 19
-weather_desc: 'Cloudy'
---
-
-Osaka is louder than Kyoto and prouder of it. Kyoto has temples and restraint. Osaka has neon and takoyaki and a sign the size of a building advertising a restaurant with a mechanical crab on the front. Both are correct.
-
-I arrived from Kyoto mid-afternoon, dropped my bag, and went directly to Dotonbori to get my bearings before the evening crowd descended. The canal runs through the entertainment district, and on both sides there are restaurants stacked six floors high with illuminated signs competing for your attention so aggressively that after ten minutes you start to tune out the sensory overload and just walk.
-
-At six in the evening the neon started properly. The famous running man billboard. The Glico sign. Streets full of people eating while walking — takoyaki (octopus balls, better than they sound), skewered meats, cones of spicy shrimp. Osaka has a word for its own food philosophy: *kuidaore*, which means "eat until you drop."
-
-I took it as guidance.
-
-Three hours of eating across four separate establishments. Kushikatsu — battered and deep-fried everything — at a counter in an alley so narrow that diners on opposite sides can shake hands across the table. Soft-serve matcha ice cream on the street. Okonomiyaki from a woman who pressed the pancake flat with a heavy iron tool and would not let me touch anything.
-
-The canal was dark and the lights were reflected in it and for a while I just stood on the bridge watching people eat.
@@ -1,23 +0,0 @@
---
-title: 'Last Morning in Arashiyama'
-date: '2026-03-31 07:30'
-template: entry
-published: true
-hero_image: 'bamboo.jpg'
-lat: '35.0094'
-lng: '135.6728'
-location_city: 'Kyoto'
-location_country: 'Japan'
-weather_temp_c: 13
-weather_desc: 'Partly cloudy'
---
-
-The alarm went off at 6am and I almost ignored it. Then I remembered why I had set it: Arashiyama before the crowds arrive.
-
-By 7am the bamboo grove was quiet. Not silent — bamboo is never silent, the stalks creak and the leaves hiss against each other in any breeze at all — but quiet in the sense of no one else being there. An hour later there would be tour groups and selfie sticks and the particular difficulty of appreciating something beautiful while surrounded by people also trying to appreciate it. At 7am there was just the grove and the green light filtering down through the canopy and a single cat sitting very still on a stone wall watching me with professional indifference.
-
-I walked the main path twice. The stalks are taller than I expected, 15 or 20 metres, and they grow so densely that the sky mostly disappears. The colour is extraordinary: not one green but twenty, each stalk a slightly different shade depending on age and light, the whole thing shifting as the breeze moves through it.
-
-The Oi River was flat and grey in the morning light, a single cormorant fishing from a low rock. Across the water the hills were still wrapped in low cloud. I sat on a bench and ate a convenience store onigiri and watched the mist burn off slowly.
-
-Flight to Seoul at 2pm. Packing takes twenty minutes when you never properly unpack.
@@ -1,23 +0,0 @@
---
-title: 'Seoul Calling'
-date: '2026-04-01 09:00'
-template: entry
-published: true
-hero_image: ''
-lat: '37.5635'
-lng: '126.9851'
-location_city: 'Seoul'
-location_country: 'South Korea'
-weather_temp_c: 10
-weather_desc: 'Rain'
---
-
-The flight from Osaka to Seoul takes one hour and forty minutes. Shorter than some commutes I have had. At Incheon I changed SIM cards, changed currency, changed alphabet, and walked out into a grey April morning with rain coming in off the Yellow Sea.
-
-Korea hits differently than Japan. Japan felt deliberate and enclosed, every surface managed, every system timed to the second. Seoul feels faster and more argumentative, as if things are still being decided. The streets around Myeongdong were already busy at 9am: coffee shops the size of ballrooms, street vendors selling *hotteok* (sweet pancakes) from portable griddles, and the particular energy of a city that moves at one speed regardless of the weather.
-
-My guesthouse is in Mapo-gu, a neighbourhood that turns out to be significantly cooler than anywhere the guidebooks sent me. Independent coffee roasters. Record shops. A gallery in a converted printing house showing black-and-white photography of the Han River in the 1970s.
-
-I spent the afternoon walking the Han River itself — a massive green ribbon running through the city with dedicated cycling paths, outdoor fitness equipment, and Koreans doing every possible outdoor activity despite the rain. A group of older men playing badminton with very serious expressions. Two people kayaking. A family of five sharing a communal barbecue under an umbrella.
-
-Dinner: Korean fried chicken at a place that opened at 5pm and was full by 5:05. Beer so cold it was almost painful. Outside, the rain kept up steadily. I stayed longer than I meant to.
@@ -1,23 +0,0 @@
---
-title: 'Gyeongbokgung and Beyond'
-date: '2026-04-02 11:00'
-template: entry
-published: true
-hero_image: 'palace-gate.jpg'
-lat: '37.5796'
-lng: '126.9770'
-location_city: 'Seoul'
-location_country: 'South Korea'
-weather_temp_c: 12
-weather_desc: 'Sunny'
---
-
-Sunday in Seoul and the whole city seemed to have the same idea: Gyeongbokgung Palace, the largest of the five grand palaces built during the Joseon dynasty, restored after the Japanese colonial period and now open and enormous and full of people doing what people do when confronted with a large photogenic space — walking through it slowly with their phones held in front of them.
-
-I did the same thing. The main gate, Gwanghwamun, is so large that the guards performing the changing ceremony looked like toys underneath it. The throne hall beyond has curved roofs that sweep upward at the corners in a way that seems to defy the weight of the tiles. Behind everything, Bugaksan mountain rises up, still snow-capped, framing the whole compound like a backdrop.
-
-I stayed for two hours then walked north to Bukchon Hanok Village: a hillside neighbourhood of traditional Korean houses, narrow lanes, and — given it was a Sunday — approximately four hundred other tourists also walking those narrow lanes. Worth it regardless. The geometry of the rooftops against the Seoul skyline is exactly as good as every photograph suggests.
-
-Afternoon: the National Folk Museum inside the palace grounds, a covered market near Insadong for dinner supplies, then back to Mapo on the subway reading a novel and failing to remember which stop was mine.
-
-Three days left in Korea. I am already sad about the food.