Day 08 - 04/01/1998: Different Location, more Rice Fields: I woke up early in Ritsuko's brother's house which was between Gifu city and Nagoya city. His house was much bigger than Ritsuko's parents and had a lot of electronic gadgetry built in to it. Like the bath tub that let you set the exact temperature and the toilet which had lots of buttons on it and a heated seat.
I went outside to check out the scenery and it was pretty similar to Kobayashi, except we were not in a town, just in the middle of farm land. From the photo above you can see just how narrow the roads are in Japan. It seemed in Honshu that every bit of flat land was utilised, either it was built up or farmed!
Ritsuko's brother's house is in a group of four houses on a pad of raised land in the middle of a rice field. The farmer who owns the rice field developed and sold off the four blocks.1
