#6: [18-Jun-18]

#5: [26-May-07]

#4: [27-Nov-05]

#3: [11-Jun-05]

#2: [23-Mar-04]

17-Feb-2002 -- On Sunday, 2/17/02, I navigated to the latitude and longitude confluence location of N35.00000 and E137.00000 (WGS-84). The location is in the small community of Kariya, Japan. The exact location is in the backyard of a small Japanese-style house located at the southeast corner on an intersection. There is a small Coca-Cola vending machine on the sidewalk, very near the exact location of the backyard. I took a picture of my GPS on top of the vending machine to show the location. In high-resolution mode (for my camera), you barely can make out the GPS-displayed location of N34.99991 and E136.99989. This is computed to be within 14.2 meters or 46.4 feet of the confluence.

The owner of the property was in the backyard at the time trimming his trees and burning the trimmings. He became quite curious as to why this gajin was taking pictures of his house. Unfortunately, I do not speak Japanese and he did not speak English. A neighbor of his (Toshiaki-san) came to our rescue and was able to interpret for us.

I explained to the gentleman, via Toshiaki-san, that I was recording the waypoint N35 and E137 for www.confluence.org. I asked him if I might take pictures I took of his house and place them on the Internet for the world to see. He agreed, but was reluctant to allow me to use a photo of him holding my GPS in front of his house. So, to respect his wishes, I have only placed photos of his residence on the web. The photo I took of the owner holding my GPS is not available for distribution. Further, to respect his privacy, I will not use his name. However, I have provided a photo of his mailbox that (I think) spells out his address in Japanese. If his name is on the mailbox, it is not in English. I held myself back from suggesting that the N35 and E137 Latitude and Longitude should be added to his mailbox address.

Getting to this location is quite easy. It is a short walk (0.77 miles or 1.24 kilometers) from the Kariya train station. Having never been there, I tracked as close as I could to the indicated bearing (320 degrees). The plot the GPS recorded shows the zigzags as I went left and right at each intersection. The return trip was much better because I just walked to the train tracks and followed them to the train station. Originally, I had exited the wrong side of the train station, thus my route/track shows I started on the wrong side. There is a gap in the recorded track log data because I went under a walkway and lost reception. Another portion was lost as I forgot that I was trying to record the track and turned the GPS off for a few minutes.

Directions to get to this location from Nagoya Japan are as follows.

From the main Nagoya train station (N35.1688/E136.8801), take one of the "rapid" or "new rapid" trains to Kariya. There are many trains through Kariya every day, but the "rapid" or "new rapid" trains have significantly fewer stops.

The train I took was the 11:20 train on track #2 on the JR Tokaido line. It arrived in Kariya at 12:17 pm. The train's final destination is Hamamatsu. Kariya is the fourth stop along the way when you take one of the "rapid" or "new rapid" trains. Kariya station is approximately 14.3 miles (23 kilometers) from the Nagoya train station. I recorded the Kariya train station south exit location as being N34.9916 and E137.0092. This may or may not be accurate because I was recording this location prior to my next train and also didn't want to stand out in the rain that had just started to fall.

Note: Due to privacy concerns, we've decided to remove or crop the pictures of the owner's mailbox that showed his name and address in Japanese.