A big part of my original dream with One Life Japan was to get people interested in - and help them learn how to - explore and learn about a place, as opposed to simply being a passive tourist.

I'm the first to admit that, for the most part, where we are now - four years on - is not really where we wanted to be on the educational spectrum. We've become more of a tour biz than the educational social venture we envisioned.

While we have had many clients who came specifically to learn about life in the countryside and the issues faced by a small Japanese village - in a country where rural areas have been changing dramatically over the past half-century - the majority of foreign guests are here, understandably, to take nice bike rides through beautiful mountain village scenery.

Almost everyone who contacts us says some version of: "We want to get off the beaten path," or "We didn't want just a boring package tour," or "We want to experience the 'real' Japan."

And that is exactly what I want to give them.

Inevitably, though, for some (not all) of the trips, visiting a place with few tourists seems to make people believe that they are no longer a tourist. Clients often find it difficult to switch out of "tour" mode and into "interact" mode. They get too comfortable simply following me and letting me do all the talking - instead of exploring on their own, asking questions, asking for directions, or just noticing things without being told "look there."

To help shift that mindset, we often give simple tasks or games to break people out of their shell. These are designed to push them to approach locals or to notice seasonal or local features that make the place unique. When people actually use these tools, they have a lot of fun. (note: This was in 2011 - now, in 2025, we have an app for this)

These two photo collages today were photos I took the day before that fateful trip two weeks ago. While the clients never made it that far due to my crash, these images were supposed to aid them as they spent an hour or two exploring my less-than-2km neighborhood, marking on the map the location of as many of these scenes as possible.

If they were paying attention to their surroundings - and actively getting out of their comfort zones by taking smaller side paths or even asking a farmer if she recognized any of the scenes - the hamlet becomes a completely different experience. They should have been able to find them all.