Through the study of Butoh, the Japanese "Dance of Darkness," a young traveler faces the fundamental question: am I faking it?

An American teaching High School in Japan discovers that baseball, with all its similarities on the field, holds an entirely different place in the lives of young athletes in Japan.

"Of course, Kerouac never actually crossed the Pacific to see Hokkaido for himself, and if he had, he would have found the sort of place he loved - frontier country, split by open highways and empty rails, with brown bears in the mountains and salmon rushing up the river-mouths," Tim Patterson writes in this colorful guide to Teuri Island, Hokkaido, Japan.

Tim Patterson and Ryan Libre spend a snowbound night in hut buried up to its stovepipe in the mountains of Hokkaido, Japan.