Kominatotetsudo

Another long and unpronounceable name, it must be another trip to Chiba! This time, prepared like a pro, and much more at ease with navigating in japanese and with *shudders* japanese maps, it was with high expectations that I set out for Chiba once again.

For a long-standing, maritime culture like Japan, they make the most horrendous maps I've ever seen. I refused to believe, though, that they lack logic all together, and so after many months of study, have finally found a key to japanese mapping!

For large-scale maps, I guess they feel internationally pressured to use such denominators as North and South, and distance scales. For smaller, local maps, however, we enter into the reign of the japanese mapping fantasy. The maps must include the train line, the station, and all intersections with traffic lights. All other streets, too modest to have their own traffic lights, will be added at the artists inclination.

'Up' is almost directly South, here

But what really sends you off (literally) into the woods, is the orientation of said half-filled out maps. The train line will go horizontally across the map, regardless of where North is. The top of the map is, in fact, the direction you are facing while you are looking at the map! This seems dull, but it has the huge implication that the exact same map on the opposite side of the street will have the 'top' on the bottom of the map, all the writing now facing the new 'top'.

With all this in mind, I only got lost about 50% of the time, instead of all the time!

I left Oppama early, to get on a bus in Yokohama, which whisks you up the coast to where Haneda airport is, then down into a tunnel,

and in just 30 minutes, up you pop on the shores of Chiba peninsula! I took the bus to Goi station, where the Kominatotetsudoline train was waiting for me! This is another of those "seen on television" must, and so I gladly joined the motley crew of day trippers, cameras out and on the ready.

The line starts out though the rather small city of Goi, and then out into large flat rice paddy land, with just the hint of hills in the distance. The stations are of the old spaghetti western kind, clapboard wood painted while, with flowers along the quay, and a lazy cat on the bench outside the station.

Not far from the first station was a very nice temple, in its little cedar grove, with beautifully carved dragons and cranes above the main entrance.

Then quickly back to the station, and on the the next stop on the line. You'll have to excuse the lack of names here, but although I have the names written in kanji on my map, I haven't a clue how to pronounce any of them....

This station was actually close to a small town, but rather than go there, I took a small local road straight across the rice paddies, heading for the hills. The rice has been cut, but it looks like they might be trying for a second cutting this year, as the stumps have been left to grow.

The small clusters of houses out of town, on the edge of the hills were what were truly worth the walk. They are the houses of the farmers tending the rice fields and vegetable crops, and all have that old, lived-in beauty that you only get in farm houses.

Beyond the rice fields, the road wound around through a small wood, to a very small shrine in a bamboo and cedar grove. It looking so abandoned, I decided to put a coin in the little box, and ring the bell, wishing for general good luck.

Just minutes after, I saw this very big and beautiful snake. That is, admitedly, not everyone's definition of luck, but why not?

Many more animals were also out and about, with the largest butterfly I've seen a long time.

As well as hordes of dragonflies, crayfish in all the ponds and streams, as well as a frog or two, and even some kind of grasshopper thing.

Kannonzaki

Autumn has come at last!

Finished the hot swealtering days, and into some good proper autumn weather! Turns out there is nothing better than a monstrous typhoon to get the weather sorted out, and we now have a mix of showers and sunny spells, rather than ongoing 85% humidity. And a wonderful cool breeze, which has luckily decreased in intensity since Wednesday when the typhoon came over us and was actually blowing people off their feet.

Geology at work in Kannonzaki

Kannonzaki is right at the south-eastern end of Uraga peninsula, and it must have been quite impressive on Wednesday! There was plastic and styrofoam bits more than 10 meters above sea level, and the forests are littered with broken branches and fallen trees.

Today, the weather was overcast, with the most beautiful lighting out over Tokyo bay and onto Chiba peninsula on the other side. The sea was an interesting mix of crystal clear water on crystal clear sand, and, a bit further on, meters and meters of seaweed and plastic trash both on the beach and in the water.

The fish, at least, seemed happy, as they were jumping out of the water all over the place, and I even saw several schools of what look remarquably like fugu.

I am told they are extremely rare (because of overfishing), and, as I saw these right outside a fishing village, they are most likely not.

It has been such a swift turn of weather, that many of the plants have gone from green summer foliage to dead, so I'm not sure whether there will be much autumn colours viewing this year.

September hiking

Such a long time since I've done anything interesting! This is because it is hot. Very hot. And humid. Very humid. One might even say very very humid.

Today was no exception, starting off at 7am around 26°C and 70% humidity. But it does not look like it is planning any fall weather soon, so I set off for a small hike anyway. I took the train to Kanazawa-bunko and then walked to the zoo, to do my favorite walk to Kamakura. It was fun to see all the mushrooms coming up all over the forest, and it was quite a relief to see the ginko trees have not yet started losing their fruit.

The main temple in Kamakura was also relatively empty, but that just gave me more space to stand and take in the relaxing sight of a huge lotus pond. The flowers have finished already, and most of the seed pods are already drooping to release the seeds, but it was still very beautiful. And the very very old weeping willows lining the ponds just make it that much more serene. The oodles of monstous carp made it somewhat less so, but they are part of the japanese culture, too.

I then decided to take the Yokosuka line in Kamakura to the Higashi-zushi station, which means East-Zushi, and that's just where it is. From that station, it is an easy climb to the Oppama-Jimmuji path, and I came home along that. By easy climb, I mean the path climbed easily. The combination of heat and humidity made the walk ever so tiring, and the sweat running down my face made it rather difficult to look up into the trees to look for birds and cicadas. But that meant I had my eyes down when I startled the most amazing skink. It was quite small, but amazingly fast and agile, with a shiny brown body with cream stripes, which turned into a violent blue on the tail.

My photo, where you can just make out a bit of blue tail.

A photo off the internet, done either with a very fast camera, or of a dead animal.

There were surprisingly few people out, and the forest was absolutely beautiful. Also absolutely beautiful was the sky, with huge rolling white cumulus, on a crystal-clear background, without so much as a humidity haze in the distance.

This doesn't mean Fuji-san was obvious, though. It reminds me of the Castle in the Sky, which is just an odd cloud, before you look at it again, and it suddenly turns out to be the castle, which now seems to have always been there. The main problem with Fuji-san is that it does not appear to be in contact with the ground. There are the hills you are walking through, the hills in the distance, the sky above the hills with its collection of puffy cumulus. Then look higher still, and you shall see Fuji-san, proud as a peacock, seemingly floating on a sea of clouds. With a tantalizing patch of clear sky below it, in which the bottom of Fuji-san cannot be seen.

If you can't see Fuji-san, you're looking too low!

However, when you do tear your eyes away from it, the view across the whole West coast of Tokyo Bay and onto the shore of Chiba prefecture on the other side was truely worth the long walk. I was not the only one to be enjoying the sight, in fact, as there were several people painting on top of the lookout tower.

After this, what I needed was an ice cream, to cool down a bit, and then a nice cool shower. I don't think I have ever sweated so much in so little time. Can't wait till it starts getting cooler! And more dry would be nice, too, but that will probably have to wait till the end of the typhoon season.

Ogi-machi

After a very chic breakfast at the hotel restaurant, we set off for a small visit of the other sites of Gifu prefecture. These included some marvelous little local markets, and a nice natural source footbath.

Then for lunch, we decided to go to another main point of Gifu life: ayu fishing. Now ayu are mainly plant feeders, and so the main fishing method is to tie a live ayu to the fising wire and attach hooks all around it. You then throw the live ayu in the water, where it (hopefully) swims into another ayu's territory and gets attacked, thereby snaring the other ayu on one of the hooks attached around it.

Ayu grilled in salt over coal

Seeing the enormous number of ayu eaten every day in this region alone, it is obvious from the start that traditional ayu fishing cannot be the only way of catching them. And indeed, it isn't. The most used way of catching ayu is a huge bamboo fish trap contraption, in which the river water is diverted and falls quite fast onto a bamboo mesh, stopping the fish from going through, and, I assume, stunning them enough that they cannot jup back into the stream above.

What neither I nor any of the japanese had expected to find while visiting a temporarily closed ayu trap, was the huge giant salamander, quite dead, that had washed up on the bamboo slats. Having only ever seen it in aquariums, it was sad to see the first wild one so totally dead, which kind of punt a damper on the party for a while (it is a "natural monument" in Japan, although everyone agreed the translation was rather odd).

We did eventually find an open ayu farm, but had only ayu from their stock, as the fishing was not good at this time, it having been raining too much. More rain is what we got just as we were finishing lunch, but that, if anything, just made the countryside even more beautiful, filling the valleys with spirals of cloud.

And the rain was really just a shower, so everything had nicely dried up by the time we reached the small village of Ogi, near Shirakawa. This is a UNESCO world heritage site, and well worth the protection. The village is entirely made up of old traditional wooden houses, for the most part with thatch rooves, and what is even more excuisite, is that the village is still inhabitted, and people live and farm there.

It being a high-mountain village, it does look quite similar to the old villages one finds in the Alps, but those hardly ever have japanese ornamental gardens.

And here (an unthinkable thought in the Alps), there is not a geranium in sight. I did not see a single one in the whole village.

And, of course, the thatch is made of rice stalks...

We stayed till closing time, then made our way back through the mountains at dusk, and out into the kansai plains on the other side. An amazing visit.