Sakurajima

A (mercifully) short one-day update today.

Today brought a visit to Sakurajima, across the strait from the city of Kagoshima - something I've really been looking forward to. I wasn't disappointed, that's for sure.

Some background information. "Sakurajima" means "cherry blossom island". I'm not sure on the cherry blossom part, but it did used to be an island. I say 'did', because it is an active volcano, and in 1914 it erupted so violently and erupted so much lava that it joined itself to the mainland. It's still active, frequently scattering surrounding areas (including Kagoshima) with ash, and providing enough of a threat that all surrounding areas have evacuation plans and drills. It doesn't stop people living on the 'island', however. The children just were hard hats when they go to school.

Anyway, I should probably post some photos...



This is the view from the ferris wheel in Kagoshima. That's a ferris wheel in front of an active volcano, which probably isn't a great idea, but I rode it anyway. You can see how close the city of Kagoshima is to the volcano.



Taken from the ferry on the way across the strait at about midday.



The view I had from the east of the mountain, from the point I sat and ate my lunch. It seemed to be sporadically throwing up steam and a little ash, but not in huge quantities. The active vent on Minami-dake (the southern peak, since there are actually 3 or 4 included within 'Sakurajima') is basically visible from here.



Close-up of the active vent on Minami-dake.



This 'torii' gate (entrance to a Shinto shrine) was 3m high. It was buried during the enormous 1914 eruption, but the top was left sticking out.



View from a lava field trail near the visitor centre. The volcano seemed to become more active at about this time, and began spewing quite a lot of ash as well as steam. Note the ash falling on the flank of the mountain (it looks like dark rain bands).



Another shot taken a few minutes later, showing the growth of the eruption column.



Shot from the ferry on the way back to Kagoshima, showing the extent of the eruption column and ash cloud drifting away from the mountain.

Bear in mind that Sakurajima does this sort of thing ALL THE TIME and this is by no means 'dangerous' unless you are way too close to the summit. The biggest danger you'll face at the moment is that you'll get falling ash in your hair.

Anyway, tomorrow brings with it the excitement of another bus journey to Kumamoto. From there I go to the Aso-san area, one of the world's largest (wait for it) active volcanic calderas, where I have a campsite booked for 2 nights. I just hope the weather holds now!

Until next time!

James

Nagasaki & Unzen

Here I am on my last evening in Nagasaki, so I feel I should update this (as well as working out how to upload from this new camera - long story).

After catching the highway bus down here from Fukuoka and then replacing my broken camera (like I said, long story), I could finally get around to seeing some of the sights in Nagasaki.

The city obviously has huge significance in modern history, being the site of the second atomic bombing (which effectively ended WW2), and so that's what I was mainly here to see. As with Hiroshima, I'll just post a few photos and let you decide what to think.


The Peace Memorial Park, with Peace Fountain (shaped like angel wings, apparently) leading to the Peace Statue.


The Peace Statue. As I understand it, the 'sturdy physique' represents Humanity's strength. The closed eyes represent prayers for those lost in war. The hand pointing upwards is pointing towards the thread of nuclear war, the hand outstretched points towards peace. The crossed leg represents meditation, and the other leg is poised for action. I may be wrong here, so I'd look it up yourself, but there's a lot of (maybe slightly tenuous) ideas packed into that statue.


The black pillar at the hypocenter the bomb exploded directly overhead this point).


A clock in the museum, stopped at exactly 11:02am by the bomb's detonation. I don't think you were meant to take photos of this, but no-one saw me so I think I got away with it.


One-legged torii gate to a Shinto shrine. The other half was destroyed, but this half remains standing and has been left since then.

The next day brought a substantial journey to visit the site of another disaster, albeit a more natural one. The Unzen area is home to a number of volcanoes, most notably Fugen-dake, and Mt. Heisei Shinzan (literally 'new mountain') which formed during Fugen-dake's eruption between 1990 and 1996.

Better photos can be found online, but this was the view of Mt. Heisei Shinzan from the GEMADUS DOME volcano museum/memorial hall in Shimabara town. It is a memorial hall because a pyroclastic flow from here in 1991 killed 44 people in Shimabara (less than the 15,000 it killed in 1792, however).


Note the jagged peak - this is the new lava dome.


Images of the growth of Heisei Shinzan's lava dome.

After obtaining a lot of information from the fascinating (and very 'Japanese' - something that you really have to see for yourself to understand) museum, the next day brought a trip to the town of Unzen, on the other side of Fugen-dake, with the hope of a closer look at the new mountain.

Unzen is a hot spring resort, and is full of geothermal features (vents, mud-pots, etc). Each area is referred to as a 'Jigoku' ('Hell') and has a different name, usually related to a tale that supposedly occurred there, or a feature of the vent (such as it making a screeching noise). I can't remember the names of, well, any of them, but here are 2 photos anyway.





After walking around the various Jigoku, I worked on getting as close to Heisei Shizan as I could given my limited time. Being a beautiful day with barely a cloud in sight, I should get a wonderful view of the lava dome at the summit.

The first step was to catch a minibus up the 'Nita Pass', followed by a cable-car to a point near the summit of Myoken-dake, nearby.


View down the cable-car from the station near the top of Myoken-dake.

From here it was a short walk to the peak of Myoken-dake, and a longer walk (which I didn't have anywhere near enough time for) to the peak of Fugen-dake, which commands excellent views of Heisei Shinzan.

Sadly, as I approached, the weather closed in. A lot.

Regardless, I got occasional fleeting glimpses of the peak, and from points on the way up, as well as at the very peak of Myoken-dake, there were some good views.


The side of Heisei Shinzan, showing path of lahar (volcanic mudflow) and pyroclastic flow. The lumpy rock on the right side of the mountain is the bottom edge of the new dome, but all above it is shrouded in cloud.


The paths of the pyroclastic flows that hit Shimabara are clearly visible here (along with Shimabara at the bottom). Note the concrete barriers erected leading up to the town - these are part of the new defences aimed at controlling the flow of lahars and preventing them from destroying more property.


The shrine near the summit of Myoken-dake, shrouded in cloud.


The view out to Tachibana Bay, showing an even larger volcano. You probably can't see it, so let me point it out (badly)...


The whole edge of the bay forms a roughly circular shape. The huge caldera (crater) here collapsed and was flooded to form the bay.

Anyway, tomorrow I leave Nagasaki and head to Kagoshima for a view of...another active volcano. Mt. Sakurajima is just across the strait from the city, and still occasionally showers the city with ash (to which the residents respond with umbrellas). Hopefully I'll have another update, and more photos, soon.

James

More Hiroshima, Miyajima, and onwards

After posting my last entry, I was watching some baseball on TV (the Japanese love their baseball) when I found out there was going to be a game in Hiroshima the following day. This I had to go to.

Hiroshima's baseball team are called the Hiroshima Toyo Carp (teams in Japan are owned by corporations like Toyo and are actually fairly footloose, sometimes moving cities altogether). If ever there was a name fitting for a team, this is it. The Carp are TERRIBLE - apparently, they haven't won a championship since 1991 and they're the only team to have not placed in the top 3 at any point since the start of this century. However, they are regarded as having a very loyal and very lively fan base, which makes them ideal to see, especially playing at home.

Cue a short walk to the stadium the following day. I obtain an excellent seat on the morning of the game day for a very reasonable price, so I assume the stadium will be empty. I buy a Carp shirt, too, since I may as well get in with the home supporters and root for this team. Also it makes a nice souvenir.

At about 1pm I make my way to the stadium for a 2pm start. The stadium is busier than I expected.

The situation is similar to baseball in the US, with vendors prowling the aisles selling cans of soft drinks and beer, hot dogs, popcorn...the usual suspects. I was amazed to see a couple with draft beer rigs on their backs, though - how they ran up and down the aisles with kegs on their backs is beyond me! As with baseball elsewhere, despite the presence of alcohol, no-one got violent. Yes, it's just football.

Hiroshima Toyo Carp vs Nagoya Chunichi Dragons


1st inning, Carp batting. Note the team's manager with the ridiculous papier mache giant head, complete with clapping hands sticking out of the side, and a changeable scroll reading "APPLAUSE" and "THANK YOU" in his mouth. He appeared there at the start of each Carp inning to lead the clapping, and everyone loved it.


The Carp's utterly bizarre mascot, 'Slyly'. I have no idea what he's meant to be, but he's great.


At the beginning of the Carp's 7th inning, absolutely everyone got one or two of these balloons. All at once, everyone let them go, which was pretty spectacular. There were balloons flying around the stadium for a minute or so, whistling as they went.

The Carp are terrible. The Dragons are apparently very good. The Dragons pulled into an early lead, getting one run in the 2nd inning. Everyone knew what was going to happen.

Except, they were wrong. The Carp stumbled along until the 4th inning, during which they absolutely destroyed the Dragons by earning 3 runs in quick succession. From then on it was all over.

Final score was 3-1 to the Carp. Talk about unexpected.


Yes, the Carp actually won.

As a celebration I went back to Okonomi-mura (a 3-storey building composed entirely of small okonomiyaki restaurants) that night for another Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki (or 'hiroshima-yaki', naturally), which is made with either soba (thin) or udon (thick) noodles as opposed to just being the usual batter mix. Delicious.


I took one awful photo of the cook making my okonomiyaki (mine is one of the ones with the thin soba noodles).

The following day, my last in the Hiroshima area, I took a boat to the island of Miyajima, which is home to one of the classic tourist brochure views in Japan. Sadly, the weather could have been a lot better, but anyway...

Before you reach the classic attraction here, the first thing you notice are the deer. There are deer everywhere, roaming the streets and attempting to get food from everyone.


Deer in Miyajima, obviously.

A 5 minute walk from the boat terminal lies the main attraction - the 'floating' Torii gate serving as an entrance to the town's main shrine (Itsukushima-jinga) from the sea.


'Floating' Torii, with deer and a stone lantern.


From a different angle, with more lanterns.


Itsukushima-jinga shrine, with 5-storey pagoda in the background.

Obviously the rain was a little bit of a problem but it was still spectacular. Even the hordes of German tourists couldn't stop it being impressive.

That was yesterday. This morning, leaving Hiroshima, I caught a highway bus down to Fukuoka/Hakata (2 cities have sort of merged and people refer to it by both names), the gateway city to Kyushu - the southernmost of Japan's 4 main islands. I'm here for one day, and then I plan to do a circuit of the island, taking in (in this order):
- Nagasaki
- Kagoshima and Sakurajima (an active volcano)
- Aso-san (a cluster of volcanoes, one of which is active)

Yeah, the next week or so is going to be very relevant to my university course and should, I hope, be very interesting. Aso-san in particular is said to be really quite spectacular and should yield some good photos me to post here.

So, that's my rough plan. How well I manage to follow it remains to be seen, but it seems managable, and a few opportunities to camp (weather permitting) should let me save some cash, too.

Anyway, until next time. Take it easy,

James

Hiroshima

I had one day left in Osaka after posting my last entry, so I took a day trip out to Himeji to see which is widely regarded as Japan's finest castle, not least because it is an original wooden building as opposed to a concrete reconstruction.

Unfortunately, it rained. It rained absolutely all day, in fact, and I got SOAKED. Even a trusty umbrella (I am now a firm believer and can see why all Japanese people carry them) can't keep you dry from rain like that.

Anyway, here are some pictures. Photos inside aren't very interesting so I've just put up a couple of shots of the castle and the hill it sits on.







Of some interest as well was the world's longest suspension bridge, which I passed on the train. I didn't get a photo, because it didn't look anything special, but it's there. Look it up on a map or something - it's a couple of kilometres west of Kobe.

After finding myself a little short of accomodation options in both Osaka, where I was previously staying, and Kyoto, which I wanted to go back to for the sakura, I made a snap decision to leave Kansai behind and head for the south.

One 6 hour bus later, I am in Hiroshima.

First call is probably 'the symbol of Hiroshima' - the A-Bomb Dome (Genbaku Domu) - but first some more Engrish I spotted on a cup in my hotel room. Bizarre.


I'm so relived (sic) it's been washed...

Anyway, the Dome was originally the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. That was until an atomic bomb exploded nearly directly above it on 6th August 1945. The only reason it survived is because it had so many windows, and much of the shockwave blew through it, rather than into solid walls. This is it now.


During the day.


At night, when floodlit.

The next day brought a trip to the Peace Memorial Park and attached Memorial Museum. I won't go on about whether the bombing was right or wrong - you can make up your own mind - so I'll just show pictures.


The Memorial Cenotaph and Peace Flame, with A-Bomb Dome in the background.


Children's Memorial, based on the story of Sasaki Sadako (find out about the story for yourself).


Model of Hiroshima before the bomb (in the Peace Memorial Museum).


Model of Hiroshima almost immediately after the bomb.

While at the A-Bomb Dome on the second day (I passed it to get to the park) I was lucky enough to meet one of the survivors of the bombing, now working as a volunteer guide. He took me to a few sights I might have missed otherwise - the hypocenter (the spot directly above which the bomb detonated) and a small cemetary displaying signs of the explosion.


Building now at the hypocenter (more in a minute).


Gravestones in the cemetery near the hypocenter, showing shadows. The shadows all around the base show that the bomb must have exploded almost directly overhead.

As for the building at the hypocenter, my guide told me a story. Apparently there was originally a hospital standing at this spot. The chief doctor was out of Hiroshima on that day, performing surgery in the countryside, and so he was safe when the bomb was dropped. Similarly, the doctor's son was spared, as he was evacuated to the countryside along with his classmates. Obviously when the bomb went off, the hospital was levelled (save for a single section of wall directly underneath the point of explosion), and everyone inside was killed immediately.

And now? The hospital was rebuilt in exactly the same spot, with the same name. It was run by the same doctor, and when he retired, his son took over and is currently in charge.

Anyway, after a fascinating but quite depressing day, I took yesterday to visit a few places, the highlight of which was the Hiroshima Meteorological Museum. This was, coincidentally, a building that was around before 1945 and survived the bomb.

As well as displays on weather forecasting, etc, the museum has old instruments, and weather charts and sketches from 6th August 1945.


The original sketches of the mushroom cloud.

It also featured 2 hands-on exhibits - a typhoon model, which pumped some kind of smoke into a small room (in which you were standing) and then proceeded to provide rotation and low pressure in the centre, creating a miniature model of a typhoon right in front of (and around) you, and, much to my delight, a wind tunnel in which you could experience winds of about 20m/s (getting towards enough to rip panels from houses).

I will probably never live down the photo I decided to take, but it's too funny not to post.


Wind speed of 20m/s+.

Since I was the only person in the museum I partook of this hilarity about 5 times. It was great.

Moving on, today I took a ride to the Mazda museum, and had an (English!) guided tour of both the museum and a section of the production line. I actually got to see them assembling real cars on a moving line - the new Mazda 2, RX-8 (I want one), MX-5 and something else I can't remember.

There was also a great exhibit on the Mazda Rotary Engine, with lots of moving models, etc, along with explanations of the entire RX-8 production process (including an amazing display of an RX-8 broken down into every single component part (screws and all), labelled and laid out across the floor and walls. I didn't get any photos since they don't like you taking cameras in (for security, I guess) so you'll just have to take my word for how great this was.

Tomorrow I will most likely take a day trip to Miyajima to see the famous 'floating Torii gate', assuming the high tide is right (if it isn't, the Torii is surrounded by mud and not water). But that's something for the next blog, anyway.

Until next time...
James

Sakura

Well, I am back in Osaka, and back on 'mainland' Japan. Despite frankly not really liking Osaka very much, I was met with a pleasant (although not entirely unexpected) suprise.



It's a nice day here so I took a trip back to Osaka-jo castle, the first thing I visited when I arrived in Japan, which is basically surrounded on 3 sides by cherry trees. Naturally, half of Osaka was there too.





Sakura (cherry blossom) season is a special one in Japan, and for about 2 weeks everybody revels in the opportunity for 'hanami' (blossom viewing), with parties aplenty. Every inch of space around Osaka-jo and in Osaka-jo-koen (the surrounding park) was taken up with picnics and BBQs, families and people of all ages out to enjoy this annual event. It's effectively a huge 2 week festival, complete with festival food stalls and copious amounts of beer and sake.





I have one more day in Osaka tomorrow, so I may go to Tennoji-koen for a hopefully slightly quieter (I guess Sunday is the busiest day) look at the sakura there. After that, I think I may move back to Kyoto for a couple of days to revisit a few places there while the sakura is still in the Kansai area, which should provide some spectacular photos. Beyond that, who knows (maybe Nara, finally).

Anyway, I need to do exciting things like sort through the mass of clothing I need to wash. Just one of the slightly less glamorous parts of travel, but neccessary...

More to come soon!
James



EDIT: I completely forgot to mention my last night in Naha, Okinawa. I went back to this great little microbrewery on Kokusai-dori (the absolutely crazy 'international street') called Helios, and the bartender, who I had previously become quite friendly with, mentioned that it was his birthday. It was also his co-worker's first day working in Helios, and it was my last day in Okinawa. These three events combined meant that the three of us went out to this great little bar/restaurant that only a local would know about.

There was a 'moat' of hot water in front of the counter (which seated all of about 6 people) into which you put your feet (without shoes and socks, obviously). This was a strange but quite relaxing feeling - sitting in a bar/restaurant with your feet in warm water is not something you do every day. The three of us had a great time there, as did the chef, who seemed to delight in bringing out samples of various foods to test the nerve (and stomach) of this foreigner. Trying them all, they weren't too bad - until he brought out salted fish intestines, which were probably the worst thing I have ever eaten in my life, not because they were fish intestines but rather because it was unbelievably salty. I need to bring a jar of it home if I can find it, because my companions found my reaction absolutely hilarious (and rightly so, too), and I'd love to share the experience...

All in all, not a bad night. It's not often you get invited to a birthday party in a foreign country, and it was definately a great example of Japanese hospitality, providing some real lasting memories...and lasting tastes, too...