This is Sparta! Uhm… Ok. It isn’t. But it is Saitama! I am a Tokyo kind of gal, so I rarely ever travel outside the city borders, but I have a friend who lives in Saitama, and we met up at her place. OUTSIDE THE CITY! In the next PREFECTURE! Wawa-wi-wooo! (Adventurous!) I guess I should mention that this place is only like 50 min away from Shinjuku. (Still adventurous!) But look! They have fields of stuff growing right next to their apartment! And we saw bats! Over the river! (I was very excited about this, mind you!)

I saw plants growing in the wild for the first time in several months, and even the air felt crisper and cleaner than in Tokyo.

More plants!

A house! In the middle of a rice field! My first thought was that it would be awesome to live like this, in the middle of nature, but then it got darker and a lot of bugs came creeping out from everywhere, and I thought it must be quite the hassle to try to keep the bugs and bats out of your house in the middle of the rice patty at night. To finish up our evening walk, we went to a bamboo forest near by. Lovely!