When I was in Hiroshima, I made a short trip to the town of Iwakuni. There is a 5-arches wooden bridge crossing the Nishiki river. It’s the Kintai-kyô 錦帯橋 bridge.
It was built in 1673 by Kodama Kurôemon under an order from the local lord, Kikkawa Hiroyoshi. It was destroyed by a typhoon in 1950 and rebuilt in 1953. The bridge is 210 metres in length. It cost 300 Yen to cross it both ways.
Yesterday evening, as I was coming back from the nearby super market, I noticed this manhole cover.
It looks like a face of a video game character, with a mouth and two eyes. I’ll try to find more. 😉
During my trip in Hiroshima, I visited the Hiroshima castle.
As most Japanese castles, it’s not the original building but a reconstitution as it was destroyed by the A-bomb in 1945.
The inside of what is also called the Carp Castle (rijô 鯉城) has been amenaged as a museum about the history of Hiroshima. There, we learn that the castle was built in 1589 by Môri Terumoto 毛利輝元 who was one of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s council of Five Elders. In 1600, being on the defeated side at the Sekigahara battle, Môri was forced to leave the castle and to retreat to Hagi (Yamaguchi prefecture). Fukushima Masanori 福島正則 became then the new lord of the castle until 1619. He was then replaced by Asano Nagaakira 浅野長晟.
The museum also explains the different types of Japanese castles and the social organization during the Edo period. It’s probably not the most interesting attraction in Hiroshima, but it’s worth seeing.
The other day, in the bus taking me to Asakusa to attend the Sanja-matsuri, I see this want ad on the window.
It says “Recruiting fortune tellers. Hourly wage from 1,500 to 2,500 Yen. Desired skills : tarot, spiritualism (…). Clients are all women.” The ad itself is funny, but the fact it is stuck on a bus’s window is quite unusual, I think.
Actually is held in Asakusa district the sanja-matsuri festival 三社祭 (festival of the 3 shrines). It celebrates the three founders of the Sensô-ji 浅草寺, Hinokuma Hamanari, Hinokuma Takenari and Hajino Nakatomo.
Many people, both locals and tourists come to see the procession of portable shrines.
If you’re in Tokyo, go there, it’s impressing.
Recently, posters recalling good manners as the one below are being shown in Tokyo’s subway.
Here, we have a very frequent case. Japanese women, usually young, who put their make-up in the subway. Personally, I don’t mind much this, but it seems quite dangerous to put on mascara or get one’s eyelashes straight in the subway, especially as the train might brake suddenly.
As I said before, I went to Hiroshima during the “Golden Week”. Apart from the Itsukushima-jinja sanctuary, I also went to the famous Atomic Bomb Dome, also called Genbaku dômu 原爆ドーム. This is another site registered to the Unesco World Culture Heritage.
The building used to be Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall and was designed by a Czech architect called Jan Letzel. The atomic bomb is said to have exploded about 160 metres from the building. (The bomb actually exploded about 600 metres from the ground, so the Genbaku domu is actually located 160 metres from the pointed straight under where the bomb exploded.)
Not far from there i, in a park, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum where the history of the city, that of the development of atomic bombs and the ravages the bomb thrown on the 6th of august 1945 by US Army caused on the city and people of Hiroshima are presented. A visit to this museum won’t leave you intact, I assure you.
Yesterday night, there were two perceptible earthquakes in the Kanto region. The first one was at 1:02 am, the second at 1:45 am.
The second earthquake was a bit stronger and long, with 5 in intensity in the north of Ibaraki prefecture, and 3 in Tokyo. In the house where I live, the doors started trembling and the hole building was shaking. What is important in this kind of situations, is to stay calm, even if it’s not an easy thing to do, especially with night-time earthquakes as they come when you’re sleeping.
I think that opening windows and doors to secure an escape route is important. But one must not run out during the earthquake. It is also better to have some shoes nearby to avoid walking on shattered glass.
There was no damage yesterday, but it was not easy to sleep again after that.
Not far away from Tokyo Midtown, in Roppongi, there’s an old shop that was turned into a shelter for vending machines selling drinks. There it is.
What is puzzling here is what is written in English. “Sand Sushi Salad Rice“. The majority of speakers of English who don’t understand Japanese will probably think that it was a place where people were selling sushi, salad, rice and… sand !?
Of course, Japanese people don’t eat sand with their sushi or their salads. Neither is there a sandman who brings sand to make children falling asleep. In fact, this “sand” is a contraction of “sandwich”, sandoitchi サンドイッチ in Japanese. It happens often that long words are abbreviated in Japanese. “sando サンド” is therefore often used for sandwich.
I however wonder how many foreigners who don’t know about the subtlety of Japanese language have looked at this shop with perplexity.
I took advantage of the holidays period called “Golden Week” in Japan to get out of Tokyo and go to Hiroshima. There, I made a visit to the Itsukushima shrine, located in Miyajima, in the West of Hiroshima, and registered as a Unesco World Heritage site. It is also one of the “Three most beautiful landscapes of Japan (nihon sankei 日本三景)”.
The torii gate to the shrine (ootorii 大鳥居) is particularly famous for being in the sea, giving the impression it floats over the water. It was edified in 1168, but the actual one dates back from 1875.
The shrine itself is built on pilotis and also gives the impression of floating on the sea, at high tide. To observe this, it is better to go there late in the afternoon. The first picture, above, was taken at around 6:40 pm, but the sea level is not high enough yet. It’s probably better to go there in summer.
The several buildings that compose the shrine are connected to each other by roofed corridors. Apart from the buildings used for religious purposes, there’s also a stage for nô theater.
I hope this will make you feel like going there.