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All fall down

Tyhpoons are very common in Japan but apparently last year there were more than usual and several very strong ones. The results can be seen quite clearly during any drive into the mountains and even in some areas on the edge of Tsuyama. In some places the ubiquitous pine trees, bamboo and other plants that cover the mountain and hill sides have been completely flattened. Once the trees were gone, the heavy rains soon caused landslides to add to the mess.  This wasn't restricted to just the north of Okayama prefecture, we saw similar sights all along the way on the journey by bus south through Honshu and across Shikoku towards Matsuyama.

   

Typically after a typhoon work would begin to clear up the fallen trees, replacing them where feasible with new saplings and shoring up the hillsides that overlook roads to prevent more dangerous landslide situations. This is now 6 months on from the worst of the typhoons and most of the trees are still there were they fell... there are just too many to deal with across too large an area. I heard that the wood from fallen trees isn't suitable for (or at least can't be sold for) timber to be used by the building trade so I wonder what will happen to all that wood once the trees have finally been cleared.

In a funny sort of coincidence Chi-chan was born on the day of one of the biggest typhoons last year and on the day when my wife was born there was also a typhoon... spooky.

Chinese Food

We reserved a room at a nice Chinese restaurant tonight and had a family night out. Chinese food tends to taste different in almost every country I've tried it in. Some of the food that I had in the Chinese areas of Toronto rates amongst my favourite but Chinese food cooked to suit Japanese taste preferences can be pretty good too. We had a real mixture of dishes tonight, deep fried chicken, noodles, fried rice, fried dumplings, deep fried dumplings, sweet and sour fish (something cod-like) a few other things I forget plus this steamed fish.

I must admit to still prefering the chinese food in the UK with it's stronger flavour. I guess my tastebuds have taken too much of a beating over the past 30 odd years to really appreciate more subtle seasoning.

WTF is that?

There I was sitting comfortably watching tv when I heard a buzzing sound behind my head. I looked around and almost jumped to the ceiling when I saw this wasp. I have seen a few previously flying around in the garden and watched a pretty scary documentary about even larger (and more aggressive) Japanese wasps last year on the discovery channel but never planned to get this close to one.

I left the task of removing it to my  wife while I supervised from a safe distance. I did summon up enough courage to take a single picture but I didn't have enough to sit and play about with composition and focus... this was strictly a point and click moment.

Firestarter

So it's a warm dark night, you've just polished off a 500ml can of beer... what do you do next? Open up a 150 yen (roughly 75p) bag of fireworks and fill the garden with showers of sparks and smoke.

Fireworks (Hanabi) in Japan are available all year round and are treated more as toys than the almost military grade munitions that are sold around November 5th in the UK. Hanabi in comparisson to the fireworks I'm used to playing with are 'lightweight' but still a lot of fun. The fun comes from the intricate patterns of sparks and colours rather than noise... these particular ones made no more sound than a gentle hiss. There are larger and more expensive hanabi around but I'm told that I wont find anything that could possibly disturb the neighbours.

Chi-chan's older cousin wasn't too sure what to make of them at first as this was the first time he'd seen anything like this up close. Towards the end of the packet he seemed to have decided he liked them though.

Daigozakura

Today we went to see one of (if not the) largest cherry trees in Japan, unfortunately so it seemed did everyone else. I had first seen this tree in the opening title sequence of NHK's Musashi drama 2 years ago and after my wife had told me then that it was fairly close to her family's original hometown of Katsuyama (an hour from Tsuyama) I have always wanted to pay it a visit.

The journey started well but as we turned of the main road onto a narrow country road up the mountain things started to look a little dodgy. Traffic quickly ground to a halt and we found ourselves in a bumper to bumper queue of cars that snaked its way up the mountain. It was a hot day and the pollen count in that area seemed astronomical if the sneezing from our car and the others nearby was anything to go by. The traffic would be stationary for about 10 or 15 minutes then would move a few metres before stopping again. In this way we spent around an hour and a half to reach our destination. Chi-chan was overdue for a feed and our own lunchtime came and went... but there wasn't a lot we could do about it other than roll down the windows and wait it out.

My first impression on seeing the tree was 'are we in the right place?' as although I recognised the tree the surrounding scenery was nothing like that shown on Musashi. They must have used a lot of CGI to make the tree appear to be in a wide open, flat pasture near a river... in reality it is on a small mound on the side of a hill.

The tree itself though was very impressive, it is over 1000 years old and around 18m tall. Many of the branches are now supported by wooden crutches to prevent them from breaking under their own weight and one side of the main trunk seemed to have been patched in some way perhaps to cover a large crack. The tree was just past it's full blossom and of course it was the blossom (and a newspaper article a few days ago) that had attracted so many people to come and see it.

On the way back to the car park we passed an old couple making Konyakku a thick jelly like food made from potato starch. They had already mixed a large batch
of thick grey/brown paste when we arrived and were setting about rolling big hand fulls of it into balls which they were boiling in a large cauldron of water over a wood fire. They were going to be selling them to passersby later but at the time we were there they had none ready.

 

Minimal Bush

I can think of very few words to accompany this picture without detracting from it's comedy value. As an example of the Japanese use of English for company or product names this shop has to be my personal Number One, beating the "Casual Sausage" pizza sold by a Tsuyama Pizza delivery company and the "Curious Smell" restaurant I passed on a train in Osaka. When I saw the sign for this shop in Tsuyama near the Prefectural office I couldn't help laughing out loud. I was still sniggering to myself on the way down the street when I thought I should have taken a photo. I doubled back and took this.

"Minimal Bush" just what kind of establishment comes to mind when you hear that name? Sadly, I can report that it appeared to sell nothing more exciting than fancy cookware and household goods... although I guess the reference could have been to some rather bizarre dress code that the shop assistants have to adhere to, I wouldn't have liked to ask.

A long walk

Today while Maki took our son took our son to see a skin specialist in Okayama I was left to entertain myself. I embarked on an almost 5 hour walk around Tsuyama setting out around 11.30 am. First I headed south for around thirty minutes stopping for lunch at a restaurant near Tsuyama station called Tomato and Onion. Next I turned around and walked north for about an hour paying a visit to a famous garden called Shora Koen. I had heard that there were also some very nice cherry trees there but by today the blossom had almost finished. After walking around the garden I decided to go slightly further out of town to see some burial mounds (Kofun) that I had seen signposted on a previous visit. So I headed west for around another hours walk. On reaching the mounds I found that the path leading up to them was closed but after having walked about 3km to see them I decided to press on and walked a further 2km west to a Shinto shrine called Sakura Jinjya. I had seen the shrine signposted from the centre of town so knew it was a tourist attraction and from the name I assumed that there would be many cherry trees there and although there were some I was a little disappointed when I arrived. I later found out that 'Sakura Jinjya' had a slightly different meaning than 'cherry blossom shrine'. Instead it referred to a historical visit by a previous emperor and his troops to the temple during which one of the emperor's vassals carved a poem into the trunk of a cherry tree.

A 5km return walk home left me pretty exhausted wishing for a similar foot bath to the one I had used only a day before in Matsuyama, I really needed it today. I got back around 4.30pm just after Maki had returned from Okayama. The doctor has given Chi-chan some more effective moisturiser than the ones we have had from the NHS  and some medicated cream to help clear up his eczema. His skin has started to look better already, even after only a few hours since first using his new creams so that's a good end to a busy day.

Photos

I'll only be putting a few photos up on my blog and Flickr while I'm in Japan. When I return to the UK I'll have a busy time uploading and annotating all the rest of my photos onto Flickr.

Matsuyama

We arrived in Matsuyama around 3PM. After checking into our Hotel we called Katsuko-san and Kei-san the mother and son who I stayed with in Matsuyama 5 years ago. They were already close by so we met shortly after in the hotel lobby and sat and chatted for a while. It was great to see them again and they seemed very taken with Chi-chan. We decided to go out for dinner and took a couple of taxis to a restuarant we had eaten at before as the guests of Professor Ido the then English Professor of Matsuyama University and local organiser of the homestay programme. This time Katsuko-san and Kei-san treated Maki and I to dinner and we had a tasty meal. I learned during our conversation that Kei is now well on his way to finishing a doctorate in Spanish History and has been taking spanish lessons. He said that because of that his english had become very bad but we didn't seem to have any problems. After our meal we took the tram back to the hotel, chatted awhile longer and made plans to meet again the next day.

In the morning after breakfast we had a couple of hours before the time we had planned to meet Katsuko and Kei. We took the tram to Dogo onsen (as featured in the novel Botchan) and after taking the obligatory photos of the onsen building I made straight for the gift shops to buy some Botchandango, they're pretty easy to find and it was amusing to see this "Jumbo Dango" a slightly larger version of a Botchandango. I ended up buying a box of normal size ones and one of their larger relatives. It's difficult to tell from the photo below but the Jumbo dango is about 9 or 10 inches long.

Before leaving Dogo we had just enough time to take off our shoes and plunge our feet into a fountain/foot bath fed from the volcanic spring. It was very soothing and our feet felt great all morning.

We met the others back at the hotel and then went to the castle by tram and a short walk. As the castle is on top of a large hill it is reached by ropeway (cable car) or a rather precarious looking chair lift. The chair lift was out of the question carrying a baby so we took the ropeway to the top. Unfortunately the main roof of the castle is under repair until next year which limited the photo opportunities a shame as Matsuyama castle is pretty impressive. Being further south the cherry blossom in Shikoku had almost finished blossoming, at the castle though there was still enough around to make a good display.

After leaving the castle we said goodbye to Katsuko and Kei then headed for the bus station for our return to Tsuyama.

A Room with a view

Our journey to Matsuyama from Tsuyama via Okayama was long but remarkably easy. We stayed at the Matsuyama JAL City Hotel, a relatively new hotel (about 2 years old) and we had booked a room under one of their special packages which included free tram rides for a day and entrance to Matsuyama castle.

The hotel room was spacious and included two double beds and a large good quality cot for the baby. The mini-bar was well stocked but as always we stocked up on evening supplies from the nearest conveinience store (wherever you go in a Japanese city you'll never be too far from at least one).

The most impressive feature of our ninth floor room however was the view from the window. As we had booked the castle tour package our room was on the side of the hotel facing the castle offering a great viewpoint both in the day and at night. I checked the view from the other side of the hotel and I think we made the right choice.

One last point of interest was the toilet. I have seen more complicated ones offering a wider ranges of functions and controls but this type of toilet seat has to be the gadget lovers toilet seat of choice. It had an electrically warmed seat, deodouriser, spray and bidet. I'm not sure what the difference between the spray and bidet was but the english instructions on the controls said that the water pressure could be adjusted 'to suit your pleasure'...