Roving Japan

Note: Sorry for being so far behind on the updates. It takes a long time for each one, and we don’t always have the time to write/select photos/upload. I’m trying to catch up!

Day 42 Photoset

This morning we went to Ritsurin park before catching the ferry to Shodoshima island.

Ritsurin is a cool park, made even more interesting by our volunteer guide who led us around explaining all the little details we would have otherwise missed. He explained that much of Ritsurin is about interpretation and imagination. The trees, rocks, and landscaping are designed to trigger your imagination. “This tree growing on the rock is a representation of a crane spreading its wings on a turtles back.” … For the record, I didn’t quite see that one. But I did manage to see a few of the animals in the rocks.

The park is divided into two half, which I will call the good side, and the “meh” side. The good side is the old park. It was designed and built back when the feudal lords used to visit here. All the tress have been groomed with a 50-year foresight by the gardeners. The landscaping is designed intelligently to evoke emotion and a sense of place. It’s actually pretty cool.

Rockin’ Kobayashi’s Green T-Shirts!

The “meh” half is more recent, and you can tell. Its basically a more modern layout with trees planted in little groves and open space of grass. Its nice, but it doesn’t have any of the dedication that the old garden had.

One of the unique highlights from the garden was the Coi fish. There was a pond where we could actually PET the coi fish when they came to eat the food pellets we dropped in the water. It was neat, although a bit gross when you think about it. Petting a fish? By the way, coi fish are very pretty in small numbers and in the right environment. But get about 100 of them in one place, swimming over themselves trying to eat a few pellets of food? Disgusting.

One more interesting feature of the park was the waterfall. It was fake. Back in the day, some poor guys were forced to carry buckets of water halfway up the hill side and dump them so the lord could enjoy tea in the garden with the sound of a pleasant waterfall in the distance. Today there is a pump that supplies the water, but it’s only turned on during the day.

When we were finished at the park, we left to catch our ferry to Shodoshima island.

Shodoshima was first brought to my attention by my uncle who saw a special about it on the travel channel. The island is unique in Japan because it is the only place in the county that grows olives. Since we are pretty close, Risa and I figured we would go see what it’s all about.

Once on the island we followed google maps to a “campground” that no longer exists. There is a field full of chopped up trees, that looks like it was a campground at one time, but no longer. Since it was after dark when we arrived, we set up the tent anyway. I hope no one minds.

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!