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.