Then it was back on the bullet train and on to Kyushu Island and Kumamoto Prefecture, where Ken currently works for the prefectural tourism division promoting American awareness of Japanese culture.

We spent the next two days in the Aso Caldera, a vast bowl some 80 kilometers across left by the collapse of a prehistoric volcano, out of which protrude five newer peaks, one of them-Nakadake-still active.

Here is a typical dinner, this one served to us at the Grandvrio Hotel, built in the middle of a golf course and with a statue of an elk on the fairway right below our window.

Among the coolest things Ken and I did together was a talk about the Vietnam War to the congregants of Toko-ji Zen Buddhist Temple in Amakusa.