Roving Japan

Day 41 Photoset

I made good on my promise and jumped in the cold stream this morning. As I suspected, it was freaking cold. But the best part about jumping in a cold stream is that when you get out, you feel warm really fast since the air temperature is way warmer than the water.

We went for a quick hike up the river after I was done playing in the water. The views were great and well worth the trip. The water is a cool blue color that I haven’t seen before. If I remember correctly, the mountain streams in Oregon are more green.

Our plan for the day was to have fun up in the mountain, then drive to an old copper mine that is supposed to be one of the best sights in Shikoku. So when we were done with the mountain stream, we packed up and started driving through the mountains to the city of Saijo.

The drive was great. I really like the Shikoku mountains since there isn’t much logging almost all the views are of pristine forested mountain tops. The roads are a little scary since they are all single lane with two-way traffic, but Japanese cars are small, and if there was a car going to other direction, it wasn’t too hard to squeeze around each other.

It took a couple of hours, but we eventually made it out of the mountains and into Saijo. A quick bite to eat and we were heading back into the mountains to find the copper mine.

Looking at the guide book, we probably should have known better. The mine area actually has 3 zones. The first zone is called “Mine-topia”. I should have been able to guess that this is just a massive tourist trap designed to sell omiyage (souvenirs). They do offer a 30min train ride that passes by little “what-it-might-have-been-like” scenes with miners made of wax in authentic poses. We considered going on the ride, but it was $12/person so we decided to skip ahead to Zone 2 which is free and has actual ruins of the old copper mine.

The ruins were interesting, but there was so little left standing, it was kind of hard to picture what the place used to look like. They had some little displays, and a small museum with old photos of the mine. We were especially surprised to see that at one time this mine was a booming village of 3,000 people and EVERYONE worked in the mine. We saw photos of little kids as young as 10 carrying supplies in and out of the mine, and images of men and women working in the mine and in the village. This mine produced 30% of Japans copper between the 1600’s and 1900’s.

We left the mine around 3:30 so we could get back to Takamatsu by 6 to return the car. The drive was easy in the mountain, but when we hit the city we were caught in stop and go traffic that was going to make our arrival time in Takamatsu more like 9pm instead of 6. So, with that in mind, we jumped on the freeway, which is actually NOT free. All freeways in Japan are toll roads. You get a card when you get on, and you pay when you get off. The speed limit is vague… We saw a sign for 80kph, but I was going 115kph and getting passed like I was standing still. Regardless, we made it back to Takamatsu in time, and all I can say is that cars are amazing. Our 3 day road trip would have taken us 2 weeks or more by foot!

We are going to Naoshima island tomorrow, then Shodoshima after that. My foot is almost healed, although we seemed to visit a lot of places with stairs during the last 3 days. I really want my foot to be 100% by the time we hit Kyoto!