Roving Japan

Day 44 Photoset

Before the tourism industry started promoting the olives, Shodoshima was famous for the movie 24 Eyes. It’s a story about an elementary school teacher who worked at a local school around the time of WW2. The movie was famous enough to warrant a bronze statue at the ferry terminal when we arrived. Since the movie is so famous, we wanted to go see the movie set’s replica village and the original school house.

It was fun to see an old Japanese school house. I’m not sure what I expected, but maybe I was a little surprised to see that it basically looked like a western school. We had fun looking at the classrooms, playing with the old toys and looking at the study materials. Risa even played a song on the organ.

After seeing the original building, we went to the replica village. It was neat, but neither of us had seen the movie, so it wasn’t quite the same as say, seeing the clock tower set from Back To the Future. However, one of the main buildings in the village was playing the movie on a loop, so we poked our heads in and watched for a while.

We explored a bit, ate some lunch, and then left to head back to the main town where we could finally take a look at those soy sauce factories.

After seeing these factories, all I can say is “Worst. Job. Ever.” Soy sauce production was incredibly labor intensive. Guys were smashing, mixing, and moving buckets of stuff all day. They spent all day, in a hot, humid and smelly building with tons of half naked dudes.

Although it might have been a crappy job, it was still pretty cool to learn about. They used an amazing array of wooden tools. Each factory had to have a whole section devoted to producing the wood containers and buckets. Surprisingly, it seemed to be very similar to making beer, as a big part of the processes is proper fermentation and temp/humidity management.

We toured a couple different factories before going back to the port to head back to Takamatsu. One night in the city, then we are planning a day trip to Naoshima.

Day 43 Photoset

This morning we found one of the more interesting onsens we’ve seen so far. How about taking a hot bath in a sail boat on the roof?

Then we explored the islands famous “Angel Road”, which is a little sand path that is only accessible at low tide. It was nice for a couple pictures.

However we spent most of our day in the Olive Garden area on Shodoshima. This rest area has a large olive grove, a large windmill, an herb garden and a gift shop full of various olive related merchandise.

The olive gifts were interesting. Olive chocolate, olive cookies, olive soap, olive cream etc… There were a couple bottles of olive oil, although no actual olives. The main draw seems to have been the olive chocolate. We tried some, and it basically tasted like white chocolate that had been dyed green with food coloring.

The lack of actual olives and olive related food on the island is telling. The real reason for Shodoshima’s olive groves dates back to the early 1900’s when the Japanese government got tired of importing olive oil for the fishing industry. They put out a mandate for 3 different prefectures to attempt to grow olives. Shodoshima was the only successful location. So Shodoshima’s olives aren’t for eating, they are for making oil to be used in the fish packing industry.

Shodoshima’s historical specialties are actually somen noodles and soy sauce!

On our way to the olive grove, we wandered into a somen noodle factory where the employees were busy making noodles. This place was a blast because the noodle making process is really quite beautiful and the finished hanging noodles are really cool to look at.

We talked to the owners wife a bit, and she said that they have been in business for 30 years and they think that they are just now getting the hang of it. Also we found out that Shodoshima island has been making somen noodles for 400 years! Take THAT olives!

When we were about the leave, the owner surprised both of us by asking if we wanted to try stretching out the noodles! We nervously accepted the invitation, excited to give it a try, but scared that we might mess up and break something.

The process is kind of hard to explain, but basically you use two chopsticks to stretch out the noodles, and then hang them on a big wooden apparatus to dry. It was really fun!

Later in the day, we wandered through the town of Umaki (I think). This area is known for all the soy sauce factories. We got here kind of late, so nothing was open. Tomorrow we will see more of the soy sauce.

Tonight we are camping in our sketchiest location yet. We were going to try to camp in a real campground, but the guy wanted $26! So instead, we are camping between some bushes behind a gym. There are a bunch of people playing volleyball, so it’s a little loud right now, but the sign says that they close around 10, so it should get quiet.

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.