Old Boathouse, photography by Michael Seewald, master photographer

Old boathouse,
Noto-Hanto Peninsula,
Central Honshu, Japan

Un-sponsored image by Michael Seewald, all rights reserved.

"Unlike America, where you can find a motel along the highway every once and awhile, Japan had them spread far and few between. The few we did find off the beaten path gave us the strange impression they did not want us. Every time I approached an inn keeper of a traditional Japanese hotel, know as a ryokan, he would take one look at me and immediately swing both arms in front of his body and face, making a giant X symbol, as if in a protection maneuver to keep a vampire away, and saying in the best English he could muster ‘no beds’ and then point towards the nearest city and say ‘tourist hotel’. It was so strange and happened every time. Could every ryokan be full? I thought, after awhile, they might be prejudiced!?

At the end of the trip, when we finally stayed at one, it finally dawned on me they literally meant ‘no beds’, as you sleep on futons, and they assumed, wrongly, westerners would want a ‘real bed’. "
MS

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Go back to 2003 - "Gardens of Japan".