Chugei

Just a small note about Chugei.

Chugei refers to the collection of five villages surrounding Tano (including Tano). Umaji, Kitagawamura, Yasuda, Tano, and Nahari are collectively a little nexus against the big bag blankness that lies between Nahari and Muroto and Yasuda and Aki. There are other cities out there, they just don't matter much. It's a question of sotto vs uchi. That's for another time.

Apparently this little group used to be the logging center of here. I didn't understand it all or even much of it, but there used to be an impressive train track via which the massive logs were carted down the mountains out to the seaside, probably to be made into disposable chopsticks. I jest. That's what the Amazon Rain-forest is for. (google spell-check made me hyphenate "rainforest"...) 

This year was the 100th anniversary of the railroading-logging-five-villages connection and Tano hosted a little festival in honor of all the dead trees. We had a tiny miniature railroad and a little Blue train that could, but it could only go straight. When it hit the end of the track, it simply shifted into reverse and came back. 

We also had a visit from a few of the anime characters who make up our train-line. Each train stop has

a little guy to help you remember which is your stop. Tano's is a blue samurai. Nahari's is a conductor-chick. And Yasuda's is a fellow with a fish on his hat. 

And of course we had a visit from Nakaoka Shintaro from Kitagawamura. He looks quite frightful. 

That's all.

Woo-Hoo!

Or "Power Cords, Shrine-climbing and Ramen". 

I got my power cord in the mail this afternoon (thanks mom!) and upon returning to my humble abode, plugged in the ol' パソコン and started downloading pictures. I must soon buy an external hard-drive, but not just yet. I am so running out of room for all my pics and some of my tv shows. 

Shrine-climbing. 

Shrines are everywhere in Japan, and more especially in rural Japan, and MORE especially on Shikoku, the island of the 88-temple pilgrimage (88 keys on a piano, right....). Pilgrims are abundant, and shrines are prolific, even if that"s not quite the right way to use "prolific". You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a dish of incense or a tiny bottle of sake wrapped in an ancient and weathered red handkerchief. Or sometimes just a random stone draped with some tinselly-looking wires. On a typical bike ride, I probably pass by about 25 different shrines that I notice, and probably many more that I don't see because I am focused on teaching myself to ride with no hands on the handlebars. It's a very small town and there's not a lot to do. 

In Yasuda, the next tiny town over, they have a very famous pilgrimage-worthy shrine up an endless mountain. My bicycle and I tried to find this shrine and instead we ran into a pilgrim who told us it was really quite far still, yo! And we turned around.

But on my way home, I ran into another shrine. Or the bottom of one. 

You can see it was a bit of a hike up to that little gate-like arch. 

And here are some shots from the actual steps up which I dragged myself. (Mind you, this is all after having climbed the insurmountable mountain with my little black bicycle. My calves have never looked so good.)

looking up

looking down

Almost there

The view from above

It was a very nice view, although the scenery around me was mostly in its end-of-summer-not-yet-drowned-by-typhoon-browns-greens-and-yellows stage. But you could certainly see quite a ways. And if the tsunami had come at exactly this moment, I would have been perfectly safe. Stranded in the woods with mosquitos and pilgrims, but un-drowned. 

And last, some ramen. 

I did not use to be much of a fan of ramen. When my sister was last in Tokyo, she took me to a little ramen joint that changed my world view as it looks at ramen. This has made me much more open-minded about the ramen experience and so now when my friend Saya from 北川村 asks me if I like ramen, I reply steadily, believing in things I have only partially seen, Yes. 

Salt ramen: before

Salt ramen: after

 

The Loop

I`ve been out of it.

My power cord died on October 6th. It was a MacBookPro power cord from about 6 years ago. It finally burned itself to a crisp. Any simultaneous passing of visionary computer thinkers is purely coincidental. So I haven`t been able to upload any pictures (or even charge my camera), nor have I been eager to log in from work and update my little corner of the web.

But I`m doing it today, because I`m basically done for the week. I don`t have to think about next week`s lessons or I already finished preparing them. Sometimes it`s both. It was a satisfactory week as far as teaching went. My classes survived themselves, some of the students actually thrived in the new atmosphere of lots of games, lots of competition. Most of the others made it work and did well. I gave out stickers to my fifth years. And I taught a couple piano lessons. I had my own Japanese lesson with my very patient Japanese teacher who is a member of my eikawa. I told a joke about multilinguistics in my eikawa and they all stared at me blankly. My adult conversation class does very very well until we encounter humor. I`m going to address this with them at a later date.

I also had the most fantastic dinner last night. Damn. Some of the teachers from the Jr High picked me up and we went to a traditional grilling/roasting/broiling place, the name of which I do not know, nor ever knew, and we had a little grill on the table over which we cooked the most succulent and tender beef, tongue, pork, ika, chicken, and something so marbled with white veins of fat that it absolutely melted in my mouth and went straight to my tummy`s emergency flotation supplies. Onions, eggplant, a mixed salad with tomatoes, another mixed salad with broccoli and cauliflower, thick as my wrist fried ebi, all rounded out with a birthday cake (by which I finally realized we were celebrating two teachers` birthdays) and ice cream. Washed down by cold beer and a surprising bottle of Yellow Tail Merlot. They all turned to me as the expert on opening wine bottles, until I pointed out that it was a twist-off cap- slightly anticlimactic, but still indicating my superior experience with red wines.

So to sum up, it`s been good. It`s raining like the dickens here and I just finished drawing up a condensed history of the English language for my adult class. I have to think of a costume for halloween. I don`t even like halloween and I HATE costumes, but I have to think of something. Anime characters are kind of out since I have small boobs, extremely curly hair and I refuse to wear a wig. Maybe I will try to be a pirate... 
 

KitaGawaMura and Someone Famous Lived Here

It's true. He is famous. But I don't know why. 

My bike trip today started out a little prematurely when one of my students came and knocked on my apt door a little before 10.00 A.M. I was on the phone with my dad, I think, and the nice kid came in, looked through most of my stuff, and asked when we were going to go play? So we went on a bike ride. But she got tired and we had to turn around. So I went on my own bike ride after that. The funny thing about Shikoku is that you can be going up a hill and it will just continue going uphill forever. Even if you seem to have passed the summit three times, there will continue to be more uphillness in front of you. I have proven it many a time. Today in Yasuda, I swear I went over the top of this one mountain four times. I kept looking around and it would seem I had hit the plateau - no more room to go up. Let that not deceive you, friend. There is ALWAYS room to climb another 50 meters straight up. 

So Kitagawamura is actually rather large in terms of space, though quite small in terms of population. There are only about 1500 people in the same square footage of about ten Tanos. It is very spread out. And somewhere up in the mountains, past the power plant, and if you keep following the river north, you run into this tiny little collection of buildings that surrounds an old thatched roof house that was the birthplace of some gentlefellow. 

It is quite a beautiful little house. But there are only three rooms and a kitchen.
And the girl who works in the gift shop informed me that all 6 family members
lived and slept in the smallest room at the back, the front room being reserved for
guests. I told her I hope they had a LOT of guests ALL the time.  

Oh, okay. His name was Shintaro Nakaoka. This sign merely states that he was born here
and that his sister kept the house for awhile before it traded hands through several generations.
The original house (built in the mid 19th century) was destroyed in a natural disaster (?)
and rebuilt in the 1960s. I still don't know why he is famous, or what he did. I could google him, I suppose...

(Once again, blogger will not let me type in the left hand corner. *%&$(@)ers!)

It is also doing strange stuff with the pictures I try to add now. I don't understand! This makes no sense! 

I don't get why it is being so uncontrollable. This is a view of the guest room from the kitchen.
It was a very cool and refreshing place in the summer, but probably quite energy-sappingly cold in winter.

Guest room complete with little statue of famous gentleman.

Very pretty opening archway. 

So I googled this gentleman and it turns out he was very close comrades with Ryuichi Sakamoto who was a famous samurai in the mid 19th century and was instrumental in helping open up Japan to trade with the outside world. Most interesting is that Sakamoto was dead-set against foreigners and interacting with the world, so much so that he set off on an expedition to assassinate a fellow who was encouraging said opening of Japan. When Sakamoto met the other guy, S became his disciple and followed through with all by helping construct treaties and working with the navy, etc... Pretty big turn around. Nakaoka was a close comrade of Sakamoto's and was a two-sword carrying samurai, something only permitted to a few samurai. He was with Sakamoto when S was assassinated and was wounded in the same attack, succumbing to his wounds two days later.

Finally, some context.