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I want to scribble down this thought before I forget it and as there is no new Chichibu post in view for the immediate future, I rather do it right now:
Imagine that you were born as a piece of rock millions of years ago in Southern Chichibu. As you are embedded in a gigantic puzzle with billions of other pieces of rock in the inside of a mountain, you feel safe and you have no idea what is going on in the world. However, chances are big, that you will end up tomorrow in concrete as part of a residential tower in central Tokyo.
The amount of dumper trucks, transporting to Tokyo what has been blasted, excavated and scraped away from the landscape of Chichibu is just amazing. Every time one rides out from Ome over the hill parallel to the Ome - Okutama railway line and enters into greater Nariki, one is overtaken by many dumper trucks and one can see the quarries lining up on the left side of the road to Ikusabata.
This is just crazy, because otherwise Southern Chichibu would be the perfect place. It is like travelling in time, or changing the set of mind by taking special medication. Ome still has the sounds, smells and the general feel of hectic of Tokyo, but once the hills are crossed one feels like entering a different part of the country, many miles away from the big city. The contrast is just mind-boggling. Sure, this is still Japan, but one rides through it very much like through rural Japan of, say, Noto peninsular and not like on the dog & Obasan infested pathways along the Tamagawa.
The impression of the time travel is just distorted by the dumper trucks. So one has to travel some more kilometers along road 53, before one has finally left allTokyoisms behind.
Imagine that you were born as a piece of rock millions of years ago in Southern Chichibu. As you are embedded in a gigantic puzzle with billions of other pieces of rock in the inside of a mountain, you feel safe and you have no idea what is going on in the world. However, chances are big, that you will end up tomorrow in concrete as part of a residential tower in central Tokyo. 
The amount of dumper trucks, transporting to Tokyo what has been blasted, excavated and scraped away from the landscape of Chichibu is just amazing. Every time one rides out from Ome over the hill parallel to the Ome - Okutama railway line and enters into greater Nariki, one is overtaken by many dumper trucks and one can see the quarries lining up on the left side of the road to Ikusabata.
This is just crazy, because otherwise Southern Chichibu would be the perfect place. It is like travelling in time, or changing the set of mind by taking special medication. Ome still has the sounds, smells and the general feel of hectic of Tokyo, but once the hills are crossed one feels like entering a different part of the country, many miles away from the big city. The contrast is just mind-boggling. Sure, this is still Japan, but one rides through it very much like through rural Japan of, say, Noto peninsular and not like on the dog & Obasan infested pathways along the Tamagawa. 
The impression of the time travel is just distorted by the dumper trucks. So one has to travel some more kilometers along road 53, before one has finally left allTokyoisms behind.
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