The annual retreat back into wilderness and the embrace of everything natural continues this year with a 5 day travel itinerary to Takasaki in the Gunma Perfecture, hometown of my very good friend Takeshi. Here ample thanks and gratitude must be appropriated to my hosts Takeshi+Kojima whom without them this trip would never have been possible. We travelled far and wide for hours to distant mountains and waterfalls, cabbage farms so huge and wide it was like standing in the middle of the world; quiet, undiscovered villages that could only have appeared in quaint old Japanese films. One night a miraculously timed, passing glance into the starry skies had us catching a beautiful, long tailed shooting star. What are the odds.

Takeshi’s father is a farmer so every trip back to Takasaki is like a dietary detox session; an astonishing variety of homegrown vegetables are eaten and meat consumption drops to a virtual zero.

Kojima attempts a Kodak moment.

The Ito residence.

No, I didn’t digitally enhanced the colours on these flowers; they were of the very same intensity I saw with my own eyes, but Takeshi quickly informs : “Erm..these are actually the flowers of…weeds.” Killjoy.