Traveling in Japan when You Live in a Remote Area
So you want to go to Japan. Japan's a small country that's packed with beautiful places to visit and things to see. Then you get placed in a remote area. Everyone you meet tells you how lucky you are, how much traveling you will get to do in Japan! They send you tons of things they find on the internet of unique cafes and cool sights in Tokyo, Osaka or maybe in Hokkaido. "You will travel so much!" they say. "Japan has the best transportation system in the world! How lucky!" Then you realize that this doesn't apply to every part of Japan, especially not if you end up on Shikoku. Shikoku is the smallest of the 4 main islands and it's generally ignored by most of the country. We don't have Shinkansen on the island and the trains that exist here are infrequent and slow....if they exist at all. It's mountainous and most cities are pretty small. My city of around 35,000 is one of the biggest in my Prefecture. The capital of Kochi city has a p...