Shimoda

They sing April in Paris….

But April in Tokyo is actually very very busy, with cruises to prepare, meetings, poster presentations, and various projects to finish 'by tomorrow'! So it was quite lucky that the hotel I had booked many weeks ago, when my calendar was still empty, happened to fall right at the end of one of the busiest weeks!

Trip was planned to be 100% relaxation, with sun, beach, and huge dinners, and it totally lived up to it’s calling.

The small village where my hotel was.

The huge 'crab special' dinner, followed by an equally large breakfast.

Early on Saturday morning I set out on an Odoriko express from Yokohama to Izukyu-Shimoda, at the tip of Izu peninsula, between Sagami and Suruga Bays. Just 2 hours away from Oppama on the express train, you could easily have been on the other side of the world, so different was the countryside.

Although, naturally, a volcanic island, one tends to forget that on Miura peninsula, as most of the outcrops are sedimentary or clay. In Shimoda, it is basalt, and basalt that had clearly been ejected from a volcano rather forcibly, and not given much of a chance to flow and smooth out. And, in fact, the very tall and steep hills surrounding the city are no more than a collection of volcanic plugs: the magma that consolidated in the volcano chimney now standing exposed after the rest of the volcano has eroded away.

As well as being a little geological treasure, Shimoda is also a historical heritage spot, where you can walk down charming, old 19^th-century cobbled streets,

... and admire models of Commodore Perry’s ‘Black Ships’ chugging around the bay.

But what better, on a warm, sunny spring day than to simply sit down in the shade of a sakura tree and watch the hundreds of birds and insects out and about in the blossoms?

March Tansei cruise

By an accumulation of factors (being 'volunteered', mainly), I will have a sampling cruise every month this spring. And despite the great number of JAMSTEC boats, every singly cruise will be aboard Tokyo University's Tansei maru. The one that moves a lot, smells bad, serves fish at every meal....

So to boost morale, Dhugal lent me a magnificient Canon reflex camera. This was, in theory, to photograph any large animals we should catch, while they were still alive, as you lose colours during formalin preservation, and often lose everything while preserving ctenophores.

I did, in fact, photograph one, and one only sample during the cruise, but it was a ctenophore. It happens to be a kind of ctenophore that preserves perfectly in formalin (it even still has yellow tentacles), but one needn't mention that!

But naturally before embarking on the Tansei as a pro jellyfish photographer, I though it wisest to practice a little around home. This proved to be an invaluable excercise, as remembering to turn the camera on, take the lense cover off and focus is a bit of a strain on my poor brain. Adding the flash, which also needs to be turned on, the pilot light waited for, and the camera set to 'flash' mode, was a bit more than I felt at ease with.

Leaving the flash for now, I set out into wildest Oppama to find me some photo subjects! These were not difficult to find, as spring is making its way slowly but surely into the landscape!

And this allowed me to test the camera to full extent: the superb macro lense,

which also has some drawbacks: if the cat is stropping against your legs, he's too close to photograph....

.... and you can't zoom!

Having mastered at least the basics of such a nifty camera, it is with high hopes and much enthousiasm that I set forth aboard the dreaded Tansei maru. It is at this point that things got worse.

The weather, which had been showing definite promisses of spring, decided it might be racing into things a bit too fast, and gifted our week of cruising with dreary, windy and wet February weather.

So windy, in fact, that the sea was too rough for us to safely navigate, and so we spent the whole week either hiding or racing ahead of a gale, towing nets kind of as an afterthought, whenever the captain thought we would have enough time. This produced rather desastrous results, the nets being few and far between, and the animals we did catch so beaten up that it was quite hard to find anything worth keeping, not to mention photographing!

So we fell back upon fishing, I mean, we performed nekton sampling, ...

They did actually catch some nice mackerel, of which they made sushi.

... and looking at the birds! For birds there were! Seagulls, small petrels, and even some albatross!

And believe me, had I tought to pack a change of batteries for the flash, there would be many many more bird photos.

Total Japan _ cityside

The Total Kanagawa, Half Kanto, Teenie Weenie Bit of Japan Experience

_ Part 2 _

As even most Japanese have never heard of the Kominatotetsudo line, it would be unfair to state that it is the exclusive Total Japan Experience. After all, most Japanese history did not take place in the middle of Boso peninsula. Most ancient history did not, in fact, take place in Tokyo either, but... that is where we are heading now!

Tokyo Station

Everyone knows copper is orange-coloured, but copper domes ought to be turquoise, and it just doesn't look right to have them copper-coloured!

Then, scaling down a bit, we have Yokohama.

Then, scaling down quite a bit more, we get Yokosuka,

... and Kamakura.

But at the end of the day, it is still much more fun to tie up your boots for a family stroll up Takatoriyama!