Fujino means "Wisteria Field"

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Contents Nota Bene: Why Green Gables?: (Apologies, Excuses, and Disclaimers) Fujino at a Glance (A Quick Overview) Lay of the Land (You Can Get There from Here) The Tibet of Kanagawa (Away from Civilization) Life in a Northern Town (Everyday Necessaries) Beyond the Basics (Dining, Hot Springs, etc.) Of Historical Note (Out of the Past) Art Resort Fujino (Into the Future) Links: Art, Artists, and Friends The Signpost (Splash Page)

Green Gables is an unofficial guide to the township of Fujino, in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Fujino is a representative Our Town of "post-bubble" Japan, with its roughly even mix of old families and new arrivals, most of the latter from the next-door capital of Tokyo. As a result, residents demonstrate elements of both Japanese rural conservatism and progressive activism in their concerns and approaches to social issues. While adopting a plan to reinvent itself as an "art resort," the town remains marginal to the Tokyo megapolis and to date has avoided the worst of the tourist crowds. The expression many people use to describe the town is anaba—a hideaway. My apologies, but until I get a lot more free time, none of the Japanese pages will be up. For more information about the structure of this site, please see the Composition and Navigation hints below.

Composition and Photos: The site is composed of a number of basic text pages, most of which include multiple thumbnail photos which lead to independent pages with one or more larger photos, and comments. A few of the text pages have quite a few thumbnails on them, which may slow down loading somewhat. The thumbnails themselves range in size from 4k to 8k, and the larger photos are mostly in the 20-30k size, with a few a bit larger. Regarding Navigation: I have designed the site with a definite progression in mind. As a result, the "previous" and "next page" buttons, as well as the arrows at top and bottom of screen take you forward and back to the places I think you should go. As the site has evolved, however, a few rough spots have appeared in places where I made links to the same photo page from two different text pages. In practice, what this means is that the only sure way to return to the place immediately preceding wherever you are at any given moment is to use your browser's built-in BACK button. Maybe I should've added the Maine farmer's observation: "You can't get there from here."

Green Gables: A Contemplative Guide to Fujino Township
by Norman Havens nhavens@gol.com
Updated: June 12, 2004

URL: http://www2.gol.com/users/nhavens/htmlfile/site-e.html