Last summer, Chris Buckland, 50, bicycled 2,100 km on a journey from Tokyo to Himeji, in Hyogo Prefecture. For Buckland, a collector of ukiyo-e prints, it was the fulfillment of a dream to travel the old Tokaido route from Tokyo to Kyoto, immortalized in the classic ukiyo-e illustrations of the Edo Period artist Hiroshige.
"My friends had been telling me to make the journey before I got too old," says Buckland, "With my son working as an Assistant Language Teacher near Himeji, it was a good time to come."
It was Chris Buckland's 11th visit to Japan in 15 years. His first was in 1987, the inaugural year of the Japan Exchange and Teaching program. Buckland was one of 19 JETs from New Zealand among the 850 participants that first year. His son, Mark, 26, is considered to be the first second-generation JET.