Japan 2023. Day 36. A quick trip to Kyoto

I had pledged to stay away from the big cities, but last night when I looked for "attractions near me" I found that the Kyoto National Museum is only 15 km from Otsu, so there I went. I remember the Tokyo National Museum as one of the best museums in the world, in that it gave a wonderful idea, through displays and life-size models, buildings, and streets, of the development of Japan as a nation. Unfortunately the Kyoto museum is not that informative; I saw some beautiful tea bowls, lacquer dining sets, kimonos and other textiles, and some fine bronze statues, but by now I have seen a lot of the same elsewhere. 

The museum is surrounded by grandiose temples, but after Nara I am templed out. So I went walking and reminded myself that Kyoto is a warren of small streets, where buildings are incredibly mashed against each other, such that a medical practice might be sandwiched between a clothes boutique and an electronics store, with narrow apartment buildings thrown in for good measure.

Then I found out that Kyoto has a Hop on-Hop off bus, so unashamedly living my motorcycle in the free parking lot of the museum I hopped on and spent a couple of hours taking a bird's eye view of the city. Man, these folks have a lot of temples! Buddhism doesn't have a formal structure, somehow alike to the Protestant church in the US, so each school of thought has sprouted its own following (e.g., the Esoteric Buddhist branch, or the Zen Buddhist branch, or the Pure Land Buddhism branch), and everyone of these branches had to have a main temple in Kyoto (which for over 1,000 years was the residence of the Emperor (until Emperor Meiji moved his residence to Edo (Tokyo) in 1868).

So, of course there are a couple of castles, but they happen to be flatlander castles. One was for the Shogun (the de facto ruler of Japan), and the other was for the Emperor (the divine ruler of Japan). Emperor Meiji fought his contemporary Shogun, won, and became both the political and divine ruler of Japan. 

I am running out of steam, and I am slo running out of yen. Should I pull US$ 150 out of the ATM (and risk having a lot of leftover yen before I fly to Australia), or seek to stretch my US$ 35 for the remaining three days? I finally talked myself into having too many yen on hand, rather than too few, so tonight I am treating myself to a fancy dinner. Maybe pizza?

Japan 2023. Day 35. Back to Lake Biwa

By getting started around 7:30 am I was able to beat the traffic out of Iga. I believe I followed the same route I used coming in, but now I had more time to look around and realized that all around me, on the steep slopes of the canyon, are tea plantations. They only cover a dozen acres here and one half acre there, but add the charm of a carefully tended garden in the middle of the wilderness.

By 9:30 am I was on the east side of Lake Biwa, at the just-opening gate of the Lake Biwa Museum, Aquarium, and Research Center.I spent a delightful 5 hours in the museum, which is very well done. Turns out that Lake Biwa occupies a half graben and thus has much in common with Lake Tahoe. The graben has the largest fault displacement to the west, where the majestic Hira mountain range dominates the horizon. The lake is about 100 m deep along its western portion. To the east the faults that define the graben are poorly developed, the depth of the lake is under 20 m, and the eastern horizon is dominated by low hills, small lacustrine deltas, and rice fields (which now occupy what used to be peripheral lagoons and wetlands). Portions of the graben have been occupied by lakes for the last 4 million years, but the modern Lake Biwa was only developed over the last 500,000 years (to judge from the ages of lacustrine sediments recovered in deep borings). 

There has been a lot of work done on the stratigraphy of the lake sediments, and on the fossils (macro, micro, and pollen) found within them, which clearly shows four big swings in climate over the last 500,000 years. Pollen studies have allowed the museum researchers to "reconstruct" the type of forests that were present in the Jomon period, ca. 10,000 years ago, and 200,000 years ago. They have been physically reconstructed as part of the landscaping of the museum grounds, so I was honored to walk through Late Pleistocene forests! A couple of hundred thousand years ago there were giant elephants tromping through the lake mud, as well as some nasty looking crocs. 

Clearly the biologists have had a field day collecting specimens of beautiful butterflies, nasty looking beetles, mollusks, birds, fishes (more about them when I tell you about the aquarium), mushrooms, bugs, and all sorts of microorganisms, and in very biologist-like fashion have shed many crocodile tears over the lost diversity as wetlands were transformed into rice paddies. In response, the rice industry has launched a big research project, through the same museum, to document the many environmental services provided by rice agriculture. The results are quite impressive (a little like what Ducks Unlimited has done for the rice growers of the Sacramento Valley). 

Clearly the lake has been a unique resource for the local inhabitants, past and present, and the museum includes very interesting displays on the ethnography of the area. At some point very interesting comparisons are made with Lake Baikal (which is at least 50 times larger than Lake Biwa, and seems to be a formal "Sister Lake"), Lake Tanganyika, and Lake Malawi (but in the map on the display no mention was made of Lake Tahoe, the Great Salt Lake, or even the Great Lakes).

If I could add my two cents, I would have liked to see more about the physical limnology of the lake, like dissolved oxygen variations, temperature vs. depth distribution, or shallow and deep circulation patterns. Standing on my favorite soap box, I think that by overlooking the physical environment of the lake in favor of the biological aspects only tells half the story of this fantastic body of water.

This blog entry is getting to be too long, but I must make honorary mention of the aquarium, which is devoted to the many fishes, turtles, frogs, and other wet things that live in or around the lake. The Big Guy is a species of catfish, but there are lots of other types, which give great variety to the night life of the lake.

Japan 2023. Day 34. Nara

Today I took a break from my motorcycle tour of Japan, and decided to use Japan  Railways (JR) to go visit the town of Nara. I like the train, although in Japan it can be quite confusing because they operate different lines on the same railway network. For example, from here in Iga I had to take the local line for a couple of stations (260 yen) so I could transfer to a JR line (680 yen) that would take me 80% of the way, before I transferred to yet another line that eventually brought me to Nara. I love these little challenges, and feel quite grateful to the local railway employees who go out of their way to make sure I am on the right train at the right time.

Nara is an old capital of the Japanese empire (710-784 AD), at a time when fervor for the Buddhist faith was at a peak, and has to be the place with the highest density of Buddhist temples in Japan (although it is still not a match for Chiangmai Mai in Thailand). To me, a provincial from the sticks who has seen nothing but Shinto chapels, it looks like an overkill. Of course, as a country bumpkin used to being the only Gaijin in the prefecture, the other thing that is very noticeable is the presence of Gaijin tourists. Big, pink, and loud they seem out of place in gentle Japan.

Nara is also known for its famous deer, who freely move through the eastern third of the city, begging for alms. They are super tame, but said tourists often forget that deer are wild animals, with a strong instinct of self-preservation, and can be quite dangerous if they are startled (for example, by that loud kid chasing after a fawn). They are the undisputed owners of the green areas of the city, where many of the big temples are located, so in my mind deer and tourists belong together in Nara.

The jewel of the complex of temples is the Great Buddha temple, where a sitting bronze Buddha dominates the temple. The giant statue is maybe 30 m high (as tall as a 4-story building) and sits enigmatically between two additional, slightly smaller gilded statues of Buddha, and is surrounded by four hideous and terrifying "demons" (actually, they may be alternate representations of Buddha, in a less enlightened state). Maybe a little repetitive, but certainly very impressive.

In due time I took the same sequence of trains to get back to my temporary home in Iga, at about 4 pm, and leisurely walked from the train station to the hotel. It was overcast but warm and with high humidity. I took a few minutes to go shopping at the local supermarket, go to my room, dressed to go to the onsen, and suddenly the skies opened and from the window of my room I saw the most violent storm hit the town. Oh, how pretty rain is when you watch it form under a safe roof!

Japan 2023. Day 33. Iga, the Ninja City

I must be getting tired. My clockwork system for arranging hotel stays broke down, and yesterday evening I realized that I had no place to stay this evening and the following one. In effect, I found two new days in my life. The plan was to go south along the west coast of Lake Biwa to Otsu, but they won't be expecting me there until two nights from now. What am I going to do with these two days?

A quick check of the map showed me I could head for the urban footprint of Kyoto (probably 50 km away), or delay the pain by visiting one of the other small cities in the periphery of Kyoto. I settled for the town of Iga, because they call themselves the Ninja City. What is that all about?

The drive along the west shore was delightful, and I was just gliding on the astral plane when I hit Otsu, which is a fully developed area at the southernmost end of the lake. The lake itself becomes a lot narrower here, as if the full width of a ping-pong paddle had given way to the handle. This is called the Southern Basin, and is not only narrower, but also shallower (5 to 10 m) and more eutrophic than the Northern Basin (50 m deep on the average and mesotrophic). As a landscape the Southern Basin is attractive, because you can see both shores, which makes for pretty views.

I moved stoically through Otsu, and since I am coming back here in a couple of days I will reserve further judgment until I have had more time to let it permeate through me. All tortures end, sooner or later, and after an hour I found myself back on the open road, zig-zagging my way through luscious canyons until I reached the intermontane plain of Iga. The one lonely promontory is where the feudal castle is located, and also where one can find the Ninja Museum. I don't know if this is documented history, but the city council claims that this is the birthplace of the ninjas, who were farmers who hired their services as spies, burglars, soldiers of fortune, or assassins. The first thing you see in the museum is a ninja house, where a character actor demonstrated for us the secret panels, false ceilings, hidden basements, panels to secret compartments in the walls, and escape tunnels that made the whole house akin to a Gruyère cheese (I thought the ninjas were home or castle invaders, but apparently they were scaredy-cats who lived afraid that someone was going to come into their homes and steal their stuff).

The museum part was very interesting, with cool displays of the way ninjas moved like ghosts through the swamps using wide wooden sandals, their clever tools for breaking and entering (how difficult could it be with houses built of thin wood and paper?), lock picks, and grappling hooks. We all think of ninjas dressed in black, but apparently they favored dark blue peasant pants and shorts which, on top of making for good camouflage, were nicely augmented with enough pockets and gear to be the envy of Inspector Gadget.

Ah, but I know what Ronnie would love to know: What weapons did they use? Apparently the ninjas were experts in the preparation of gunpowder, and used all kinds of petards, bombs, and shrapnel cannon blasts. They also had cool short swords, knives, and an incredible variety of shuriken (throwing stars). However, their favorite killing technique was strangulation. Just your friendly peasants trying to make a few additional yen.

I think tomorrow I might take the train to Nara, which is a very important religious center.

Japan 2023. Day 32. Ride along the north shore of Lake Biwa

I started with the idea of riding half way clockwise around Lake Biwa, then thought I might be able to drive all around the lake, then convinced myself that it is too large a lake to go around it in one day, and finally followed my original plan. Lake Biwa has been studied since the 1950's, and is the poster child of the many issues and interests that develop around a large lake. Its watershed is comparatively small, as is usually the case with lakes, and just by chance happens to be mostly within one prefecture.

Prefectures, in Japan, are akin to states in the US, but are much smaller in surface area. There are 47 prefectures in Japan. They do have a governor and I presume a prefecture congress. There is a larger political grouping, called a region. There are 9 regions in Japan, but you never hear about what the regional government does or doesn't do. And of course there is a central federal government.

Going back to Lake Biwa, the prefecture decided to keep responsibility for issues related to the lake, rather than let the central government take charge (a bit how California has kept all environmental issues under its jurisdiction, rather than let US EPA run the show). Lake Biwa is the main source of drinking water for the prefectures of Kyoto and Osaka, who are always worried about the reliability of their water supply, plus they are both worried about potential flooding threats. But they have to humbly petition the prefecture of Biwa to address these issues, for which Biwa charges a pretty penny.

Then we have the issues of water quality at the lake, the agricultural needs of the Biwa prefecture, and the environmental conscience of the Japanese, which like the environmental conscience in the USA, suddenly woke up with a start in the late 1960's early 1970's. To take a historic approach, in the post World War II years Japan was in dire need of agricultural production, so the wetlands around the lake (deltas formed where the rivers entered the lake) were drained to allow for more rice paddies. Suddenly in the 1980's people discovered that wetlands were not wasted land after all, because of the many environmental services they provide. Then came the increase in phosphorus and nitrate because of ag runoff, so in the 1970's there was a flurry of legislation and engineering to minimize ag runoff and treat sewage. Trillions of yens were spent, but the overall effects in water quality have been barely detectable. The public and the politicians forgot the concept of residence time of a contaminant, which takes into account the level of the contaminant (moderate), the volume of the lake (ginormous), and the rate at which water is replaced (tiny). I believe that they have done the right moves, but a few millennia will have to pass before a significant change will be detected. 

Regarding the loss of wetlands, somewhere in the 1990's legislation was passed to encourage the development of reed belts around the lake. The idea is that the patches of reeds would serve as nurseries for the lake critters, protect the coast from erosion (not that there is that much coastal erosion in a lake), and trap any contaminants being shed from the shore. As far as I can tell that initiative has fallen flat, either because the road hugs the coast very closely, or because shipping facilities need a "clean" shoreline, or beaches are being protected for recreational purposes.

Looking at the beautiful lake I don't detect big troubles, but am still glad the folks here have been willing to invest big money to prevent exacerbating conditions of environmental concern. On a historical note, in the 1960's the women of the Biwa prefecture protested against phosphate-bearing detergents because of the prevalence of diaper rashes in babies, eczema on the hands of mothers, and (minor) concern about the effects on fish. These "soap" protests led to the enactment of the Soap Legislation, banning the manufacture and use of synthetic phosphate-bearing detergents within the prefecture, which according to the locals was the first time, anywhere in the world, that such an "environmental" legislation was enacted (the Soap Laws were then used as the model of similar legislation in the US and Europe).

Tomorrow I will move to the south end of Lake Biwa, and two days later I will head for Osaka and the end of my Japan trip.

Japan 2023. Day 31. My last glimpse of the Sea of Japan and my first glimpse of Lake Biwa

Today was a low stress, high beauty, kind of a day. No pesky freeways to stress me, and lots of green on the land side and open ocean on the other side. I had the peace of mind to look at the birds, stop to take pictures, and reflect on the beautiful sunny day. BROOM! Goodness gracious! I had forgotten that today is Sunday and lots of motorcycles are on the road. I am pretty sure these are Kyotoites who pour out en masse to the great outdoors to try to even their humdrum lives as Sarariman (meaning an office worker and derived from the English "salary man"). The good thing is that now I have lots of company on the roads.

I had lunch at a restaurant called  図や時刻表, which probably means as little to you as it did to me. I have learnt that you just have to be brave, walk in, and say Hai (yes) to whatever the waitress asks you. This time I had walked into a Korean Barbecue place, where I was escorted to a cozy cubicle with a burner in the middle of the table. The waitress suggested the set menu, to which I said Hai! A few minutes later here comes an accompaniment of small dishes (rice, pickles, Kim-chee), plus a tray of sliced meats that included beef, pork, and chicken. It is pretty straightforward: You are your own chef, and at your leisure you can barbecue your meat, morsel by morsel. Delicious!

I took several side roads into beautiful mountain valleys, which led me to a family park where scouts were camping, families were playing mini-golf or were having a pic-nic, and folks were happily enjoying the sunny day. I also found a beautiful Buddhist temple, with fierce devils, fat frogs, dragons, and a ginormous gilded statue of The Buddha. 

 

Finally, I arrived at the northern end of Lake Biwa, which is the largest lake in Japan. I had before talked about Lake Shinji, which I overestimated to be as large as Lake Tahoe. No. Lake Shinji covers an area of 100 square kilometers, whereas Lake Tahoe covers an area of 490 square kilometers. Lake Biwa is a tad bigger, covering an area of 690 square kilometers. I plan to stay two days on the north side of Lake Biwa, and two days on the southern end, because I want to soak in its spirit. I have been toying with the idea of doing some work in limnology over the next few years, and Lake Biwa has been one of those lakes that have set the bar regarding limnological studies.

Japan 2023. Day 30. Ine, the Venice of Japan

Deep inside me there is a sybarite, born to enjoy living in the lap of luxury. Of course I keep this persona hidden deep inside me, because it would be a considerable handicap to my way of travel. A big room and a soft bed did wonders for me, however, so I went around Hashidate Bay with a benign smile, at ease with the world around me. 

Imagine my surprise when a mere 25 km to the north I found a charming small town, Ine, that had sprouted around the shores of a coastal pocket, with the houses coming right up to the edge of the water. Many of the houses have docks under them, so you can get from your living room to your boat, and then directly into the small entrant to the bay. This is a very unusual arrangement, because normally the tide would require a good buffer zone. The entrance to the pocket bay is, however, partially blocked by an island, and the special configuration dampens the range of the tide to a mere 0.5 m. I don't know if Ine started as a fishermen's village, but today is a very desirable vacation spot for the urbanites of Kyoto, just like Sausalito is a refuge for the wealthy of San Francisco. The small houses are as cute as they can be, built of dark wood in traditional Japanese style, and of course may come with the use of a motor boat for your touring pleasure (I took a boat tour of the small embayment and enjoyed it very much).

For lunch I stopped at a convenience store and bought a package of small candied crabs, maybe an inch in size, and a wine cooler. You are supposed to eat the crabs whole, crunching through shell and dried inside. I figure you should do this once in your life, but I would not take that as the main reason to come to Ine.

The other place worth visiting is the Amanohashidate Shinto temple and sand bar. The temple is old, beautiful, and has the disorganized cluster of different shrines that can be expected of a structure that has grown over a couple of centuries. The sand bar blocks another embayment within the larger Hashidate Bay, and is a super popular park for families with kids to rent bikes and go across the embayment. A very touristy development makes this a good shopping Mecca for the tourist.

Japan 2023. Day 29. I gaze over the Sea of Japan

Today is going to be a long riding day, with about 6 hours of mixed highway and smaller roads. I am going to be following the shore of southern Honshu to the east, parallel to the Sea of Japan to the north. 

Since I have been avoiding large towns, these long treks give me the chance to look at many beautiful sights, including the rocky coastal cliffs, and green valleys dotted here and there with quaint rice paddies. 

I had lunch at an Italian restaurant, which is quite trippy. The salad was good, the little individual pizza was very thin and plain, and the pasta was out of this world! Spaghetti with a meat sauce and a very healthy serving of small mushrooms and very tender octopus. At some point I will have to falter and try some KFC.

My final destination was Hashidate Bay, where for a change I am staying at a large Western-style hotel (a special offer from Booking.com, but still twice as much as I have been paying so far). Tomorrow I will explore the bay, trying to stay away from the Kyoto urban area, which is less than 100 km away.

But now I get to enjoy my big room and soft bed. Ahhhh 

Japan 2023. Day 28. Riding around Lake Shinji

I dislike my tiny room. It is not only that it is tiny, but the bed occupies too much space to let me go through. So I have to dive from the foot of the bed, and if I want to get off the bed I have to crawl sideways like a crab. In contrast, in a capsule hotel, like the one I stayed once in Sidney, the "door" opens on the long side of the bed, so you can comfortably get on and off. I am just going to open the door unto the corridor and use the latter as my dressing room.

My small resort town is maybe 10 kilometers from the larger town of Matsue, which is where I headed for the day. The weather forecast is for showers, so I am not going to venture very far from home. My first stop was at the Modern Art Museum, which is "strange" at best (and as I noted before lo raro es pariente de lo feo). I paid an additional ticket for seeing a special exhibition of a famous Japanese photographer, which left me cold. Furthermore, in the regular exhibition there was a room devoted to his work, with many of the photographs that were in the special exhibition; it did make it clear, however, that he had published a lot of books with his work, and on this basis alone he can claim fame.

My favorite hall was devoted to the art of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), who I mentioned before because of his magnificent prints of Fuji-San from different vantage points. The works were original, part of a collection that was donated to the museum in 2017. The color prints were magnificent, but I was particularly impressed by his numerous sketch books. To me a sketch is made with a few strokes, but to him it was the finished work, in exquisite detail, needing only to transfer it unto the printing stone to make the color prints. There were a good 20 notebooks, each with a hundred folios that were covered from edge to edge with elaborately detailed ink drawings. An art instructor once told me that to be a good drawer you need to carry a sketchbook with you all the time, and once you find a worthwhile scene be willing to spend a couple of hours drawing what you see (or what your interpretation is of what you see). Maybe I should start carrying a sketchbook.

My next stop was at the Museum of City History, which went back to the beginning of the Edo Period (1603 to 1867). In 1603 the shoguns battled, and the Kyoto shogun lost. The winning shogun, “the Shogun”, then moved the capital to Edo (Tokyo), and installed his compadres in the different provinces to consolidate his control of the land. One of them was appointed lord of Matsue, and the first thing he did was to build himself a castle. His samurai soldiers by default pledged felty to the Shogun, and Watsue prospered by being the gate between all traffic that came from the sea through the lakes Nakaumi on the downstream and Shinji on the upstream.

Matsue calls itself the City of Water, and its main Shinto temple is the home of the god of water (but I thought this god lived in the waterfall at Nachi). Aware of its responsibility to keep the god happy, every ten years the city organizes a huge festival, in which the god is transported by barge to the downstream lake by following the Ohashi River, accompanied by a raucuous fleet of ceremonial barges with lots of rowers, color, music, and martial arts displays. The last such festival; was in 2019, so I am going to assume that the next one will be in the spring of 2029. That pageantry would be worth seeing.

I had a great lunch at a fast food eatery whose name I will not even try to pronounce. While there I noticed that they were looking for employees, and were offering an hourly pay that varied from 1,050 yen (US$ 7.40) for the 9 am to 10 pm schedule, 1,450 yen (US$ 10,30) for the 10 pm to 5 am schedule, and 1,200 yen (US$ 8.53) for the 5 am to 9 am schedule. If minimum wage is at this level, how can young people make ends meet?

After lunch the weather looked fair, so I took a ride around Lake Shinji, which is maybe as large as Lake Tahoe. It was a lovely ride, but the wind buffeted me mercilessly for about half of the traverse. I can hear an onsen bath calling.

Japan 2023. Day 27. Crossing Honshu from south to north

Call it my irresistible charm, but today in the morning, on my way to the shower, Mama San intersected me and directed me to a small cabin that is clearly her art room, where she had laid a delicious breakfast for me. On top of that, she handed me a bento box she had prepared for my lunch. She is such a neat lady. Afterward, when I was ready to go we exchanged hugs, took selfies, and with much hand waving I was on my way.

There is a type of mask the Japanese carve, which shows an older person with puffy cheeks and a crease for a mouth that keeps you in doubt whether it is a serious face or a subdued smile. After looking at the selfies I can assure you that it is the latter.

The goal today is to cross from Shikoku to Honshu (the main island) through the archipelago of small islands that straddle the Sea of Hiuchi, from Imabari in Shikoku to Onomichi in Honshu. The islands form the Setonaikai National Park, and they are really pretty. Unfortunately, or fortunately, they are connected by a series of beautiful bridges that form part of the interstate system of highways, which means they are high speed viaducts, so once again I was forced to forego my admiration of the landscape for concentrating on the road and the 18-wheelers as I sped close to 80 km/hr.

I hold that the beauty of motorcycle travel is that you can cover real ground, but you do it at a speed that allows you to take in the details. Alas, that is only true up to speeds of 50 km/hr, where the autonomic system can take care of balance and reaction to changes in the road ahead. All goes to pots at higher speeds, and I become very aware that at 80 km/hr there is null comma nichts (zero point zero) possibility for reacting to a mishap. To top it all, as I started my crossing of Honshu from Onomichi in the south to Matsue in the north, it started to rain. My old nemesis! This time I was half prepared, and stopped at a rest station to eat my bento box lunch and don my raincoat. But as it started to rain the wind started to buffet, which can be pretty scary on a motorcycle riding the high viaducts of the interstate highways. 

Let me unpack the last sentence. In the southern portion of Honshu, the rivers flow east to west, along very deep canyons. Japanese engineers reacted to this inconvenience of the topography by building bridges that are 100+ m high across the canyons, and connecting them through tunnels, so now I had three of my nemesis working in concert: Wind gusts cutting across the very tall viaducts, rain, and tunnels that range in length from 250 m to 6,000 m! My preference would have been to take country roads, but the fabric of the topography made that an impossible option.

Finally I was able to get off the interstate, and for the last 20 km to my destination I rode through the prettiest canyon, with postage size rice fields and beautiful country residences. Unfortunately I had been under a lot of stress, and was very tired, so the last 20 km were also dicey because I was falling asleep.

Finally I made it to Matsue, which happens to be a resort onsen town, with beautiful resort hotels lining the sides of a narrow hot water stream. Looks like I will spend the next two days in the lap of luxury. Jein. Yes, the hotel is very nice, but rooms are frightfully expensive. Yet, I got a good rate through Booking.com. Ah, but you get what you pay for. My room at Mama San's was 12 tatamis in floor area, simple but commodious. Here my room has maybe two tatamis in floor area (did I already tell you that a tatami is 1 m by 2 m?), and I can barely walk past the bed to the tiny bedside table. And they expect me to pay for the complimentary coffee! They do have a nice onsen, however, so I will take as much advantage of the facilities as I can, and will take over a table in the common living area as my office (that is where I am writing this blog entry from). 

Japan 2023. Day 26. Matsuyama and dinner with Mama San

I mentioned that I am staying at a very basic Japanese hostel that caters to bicyclists. The whole place is run by this bent old lady, to whom I will refer as Mama San, following the standard Japanese costume. She is really sweet but also high tech. Trying to establish some conversation she was a bit frustrated I was such a dolt, so she reached for her cell phone, opened her translation app, and we were able to exchange some basic instructions about the bath.

In the morning I took an early shower, but Mama San was already busy picking from the line the clothes that had dried overnight, tidying the yard, and just keeping an eye on things. As soon as she saw me she went into her apartment and brought out my folded dry clothes, and a small plastic bag with a banana and a hard boiled egg. Then she asked me, via her app, if I liked vegetarian food. I said yes, and she immediately followed with an invitation to dinner. Five sharp. Wow! 

Then it was time for my morning foray to the city of Matsuyama, which is 40 km away. Once there I visited the Matsuyama Castle, which is one of the finest examples of medieval castles in Japan. I had the feeling that I had seen this before, but maybe I am confusing it with the Osaka Castle or the Edo Castle, both of which I visited 15 years ago.

From there I went to visit the Dogo Onsen, and as soon as I saw the tram station, and the mechanical clock, I knew that I had indeed been here before. But where is the Dogo Onsen bathhouse? I remember it as a wide, squat building, with all the signs of old age, and instead I was confronted with a gleaming shopping center. I think these crazies have renovated the onsen, reputed to be the oldest public bathhouse in Japan, and have replaced it with a super modern building. I am glad I had the opportunity to bathe inside it while in its former glory. I was most definitely boycotting the new building, but as a consolation prize I used the foot onsen, just to be able to say that "I took the waters at the Dogo Onsen".

My next stop was the Matsuyama City Park, which is a bit like Golden Gate Park in that it has a botanical garden, a large play area for children, and the city's archaeology museum. My interest was on the latter, but the signaling was so poor that I ended walking over the whole park before I found the museum. It was a nice museum, pitched at elementary and high school visiting groups. Unfortunately, all signs were in Japanese, so I am sure I missed quite a bit of it.

By now I was getting hungry, and although the idea of having dinner with Mama San was exciting, I remembered the emphasis on vegetarian, so I decided I would like to have a heavy lunch. I have not had seafood for a while, and thought I could go for another round of Hama Sushi. I punched it into Google Maps and was pleasantly surprised that there was one on the way out of the city. It was another delicious meal, and for less than 1,000 yen (about US$ 7) I left very satisfied.

The travel back was uneventful, and I had plenty of time to stop at the supermarket to buy a tray of 8 beautiful kiwis and a carton of mango juice as a present to Mama San. At the appointed time I knocked at her door, and she was very glad to see me (but the living room did not look like I was being expected). She was very pleased with the presento, but pointing to her car made it clear that we were going out for dinner. Double Wow!

I think Mama San must be in her 70's, and her driving skills are "hesitating" to say the least. Hey, if I survived the freeway in Osaka I can well survive a drive around Saijo. Taking a leaf from her book I had downloaded the translator in the Apple apps store, which by the way is a piece of sh.., and we were holding a good conversation/guided tour of the neighborhood, when Mama San pointed ahead to the local Hama Sushi. No, it couldn’t be. She did say vegetarian, and sushi is not vegetarian (I have to conclude that her translator is just about as crappy as mine). As you can imagine I responded with enthusiasm, trying not to let out the fact that I am some sort of expert in the way Hama Sushi works. She was so sweet, guiding me every step of the way, and encouraging me to order this and that … kore, sore, are. Pretty soon she had piled six small plates all around me, and whenever I encouraged her to take a piece she would wave the idea away. In true Japanese fashion, she was taking a secondary role in the dinner party, but I insisted and we enjoyed ourselves greatly, showing each other photos of our families (Mama San lost her husband to cancer last February, has a married son, and two strapping grandsons living in Matsuyama). She was curious about me traveling alone, and about my work as a university professor, and about DJ preparing sushi, Ronnie devouring sushi, and Faby baking bread.

A wonderful lady, Mama San.

Japan 2023. Day 25. On the way to Matsuyama

Today I headed due west, to the other end of the island of Shikoku. I must have covered 150 km, with about 1/3 in the Iya Valley, another 1/3 crossing through small and beautiful canyons connected by tunnels, and a last 1/3 following the urban and industrial corridor that parallels the southern shore of the Sea of Hiuchi. I don't really mind urban, because it is so full of color and loud signs in Japanese, but I was getting annoyed at the drivers, who obviously thought motorcycles belong on the gutter (I learnt way back there that a motorcycle should take the lane, just like a car) and would pass me way too close for comfort. 

I kept looking wistfully at the tall mountains to my left, thinking how much nicer it would be there rather than amongst these jerks. In this mood I spied a small sign that depicted a train going through the forest and decided to go investigate. 5 km later I found a big Tori gate that gave access to a tourist development called Minetopia Besshi ... now, where have I heard that name before? I needed a break, so I decided to go in and check it out. It turned out to be a sort of mining museum and looking at the samples on display it suddenly hit me: This is the Besshi Mountain Range, which is the type locality for Besshi-type massive sulfide deposits, which are present in mixed volcanic-sedimentary environments. Deposits of this type form thin, laterally extensive sheets of pyrrhotite and/or pyrite, commonly hosted by turbidites that have been intruded by basaltic sills. These deposits are typically copper-rich and contain some gold.

My curiosity aroused, I studied with care the exhibits, which included a geologic map (in Japanese, of course), where I believe I distinguished four separate terranes obducted unto the accretionary wedge, not unlike the geology of the Klamath Mountains in Northern California and Oregon.

I kept going up and up in this beautiful mountain range, and high upon the canyon I found three or four large dams. The Japanese love concrete, and these dams had concrete curtains that are almost 100 m in height. At the end, the road made a loop and I found myself back at the beginning of the urban strip, and back with the same brand of jerks. It must be something in the water.

I am spending the next couple of nights near the town of Saijo, in a cyclists hostel that is as basic as they get. I am in the flatland very close to the shore, but all I can see around me are boring rice fields (mind you, small rice fields with their attractive farmhouses are fine to look at, but these are large scale operations with no charm). Why exactly did I come here? I am close to the city of Matsuyama, which I will explore tomorrow, and I hope its ancient castle and historic onsen (bathhouse) will keep me entertained for the day. 

Japan 2023. Day 24. Riding up and down the Iya Valley

Richard and Hellen told me about this place, in the upper Iya Valley, where you could take a funicular up to the top of a mountain, and from there have this great view of a hanging bridge made out of vines, magnificent scenery, lots of flowers, and a small mountain village populated by stuffed mannequins. Of course I didn't take any notes, but took off blindly in search of the place, trusting on my ability to make sense of pictographs. 

The Iya Valley is perhaps as large as the Santa Clara Valley, and is surrounded by mountains on both sides as steep as the Santa Cruz Mountains. But to create a good mental image you need to add a thick mixed forest of pines and bamboos (the latter also develop pine-like tops, so from the distance it is difficult to tell if you are looking at a stand of pines or a stand of bamboo), and the mighty Yoshino River and its no less mighty tributaries (the tributaries being disgorged out of deep canyons).

Today being Sunday, there were lots of weekend-riders in nice looking motorbikes. I had a tank full of gasoline, and was glad to join them and just cruise up the valley looking at rice fields and small hamlets. I also saw the brilliant pink Barbie service station, where Barbie can take her pink car, to have a Ken-looking service attendant clad in pink pump pink gas into the tank. Weird.

I had gone maybe 40 km up the valley when my innocence was rewarded by a sign that directed a left turn up one of the canyons to a vine bridge. The Oboke Canyon is spectacularly deep, and you could see from the vegetation line that when the Yoshino River is in flood it rivals the Colorado. It was a fun ride too, with plenty of blind curves where you have to do your best not to tip over (that trick of sticking your knee sideways really helps to turn when you are going at speed). 

Eventually I reached the Vine Bridge, but it turned out to be just a tourist trap. It is a steel cable bridge, to which some entrepreneurial locals have added a cleverly woven net of jungle vines, 1 to 2 cm thick, to create the illusion that the whole thing is supported only by the vines. No funicular, no flowers, and no mannequins. They did have a number of eating places, where I bought myself a skewer with a charbroiled fish, liberally salted.

On my way back I explored a couple more canyons, enjoying my encounters with nature, and with the oddities of this beautiful land. At one point I almost collided with a small tractor that seemed to be covered in grass. On closer inspection it turned out to be a rice planter; the farmer had stacked trays of rice shoots wherever he could make them fit, and was ready to drive into the flooded field to start dropping the little guys into the mud.

I had lunch in a roadside eatery, where lots of people were sitting at the counter, while a group of four short-order cooks were frantically serving bowls of ramen with soybean sprouts and a heavy load of meat, fried wontons, bowls of rice, etc. Naturally I ate too much and everything was delicious. 

On a separate subject, I am now seriously planning the Indonesia part of my trip. Bob has put me in contact with friends he has there, one of whom, Dr. Rita, is the Director of the National Weather Bureau (which also includes the Geophysical Survey), and her secretary, Okee, helped me identify the flights that I needed to make reservations for while in the country. Another of Bob's friends, Prof. Gayatri, is a Professor at the University of Yogyakarta, and she helped me find a student, Irvan, who I will hire to be my traveling companion for the three weeks I will be there. So today I made the flight reservations for Irvan and myself for the initial leg of the trip in Sumatra. Okee is seeing what kind of support the field personnel of the National Weather Bureau can provide to us while in Sumatra. Thank you Bob and all your friends for making this part of the trip possible!

Japan 2023. Day 23. From the Kii Peninsula to the island of Shikoku

I left my comfortable apartment on the southeast corner of the Kii Peninsula (more like a blob than a peninsula) at 5 am, heading first southwest and then north along the coastal road. My goal was to reach Wakayama by 9 am. I was going to try for the 10:30 am ferry to Tokushima, on the island of Shikoku. It was not a difficult ride because the sun was shining and the coastal views were spectacular, but I could not dilly dally either. I saw a family of monkeys crossing the road!

At the end I arrived at 9:45 am, and I wasted precious 15 minutes trying to find the terminal, which has to be one of the most poorly signaled in the world (and I have seen bad before). I remember someone bickering about this in Google, and remembered the mention that the ticket office "was on the other side of the light". A pretty obscure reference if you ask me, but looking for "a light" I spotted a traffic light in the distance, and lo and behold on the other side was the office. It took but a moment to buy my ticket (5,000 yen including the motorbike) and after studying a sketch I crossed to the coast side of the traffic light and after a couple of turns found where I was supposed to wait.

We are definitely not in the tourist season, because the cavernous ferry was barely half full with vehicles and carried very few lowly pedestrians. Mine was the only motorbike. 

The ferry departed at 10:30 am, and took two and a half hours to reach the port of Tokushima. This is a big city, in the estuary of the Yoshino River, and I thought I would treat myself to a nice lunch of curry. I punched COCO Curry in my phone, and easily  found three locations within a 15 km radius. I have moved into two cups of coffee and a little thing (e.g., a rice cake) for breakfast, a substantial cooked lunch, and maybe a convenience store bowl of noodles for supper. This was lunch, so I had a nice Cesar salad, rice with tuna curry, and a lemon lassie drink. Yum, yum.

I need to get a coin purse. Coins are actively used in Japanese stores, and I had a coin purse I bought in Veracruz that I liked very much. Unfortunately, after I got drenched a couple of days ago the leather got all soggy, and I had the silly notion that I could speed the drying out by putting it into the microwave oven. It was ugly. Within less than 15 seconds it had shrunk to a third its original size, and was beginning to puff like a chicharron. With great sadness I had to throw it in the trash. But where do you find a coin purse in Japan? I tried a couple of drugstores and food markets to no avail, so I thought I could check a used goods store. Turns out there is a whole chain, like Goodwill, here in Japan. It is called "Second Street", so once again I punched it in Google maps and 15 minutes later I was there. The first floor was all new manga comics, DVD's, game cartridges, and electronics. The second floor was all clothing, and I was flabbergasted when I saw the high prices. I have not gone to any new clothes or shoes stores, but to judge from the price of the used stuff they must be astronomically high. Makes sense given that Japanese are very much into image, but it made me think that this is a land of contrasts. Some things are dirt cheap, like food, gasoline, or French wine, whereas other things are ridiculously overpriced, like ferry tickets, train tickets, and used clothes.

I left the city, to the west, to begin my exploration of the Iya Valley, which is a very pretty rural area, with postage stamp-sized rice paddies, apparently tended by gentlemen farmers who have beautiful Japanese style mansions. Maybe this is what you are supposed to do during your retirement, just like owning a vineyard in Provence (you own the rice paddy, but you lease it to a farmer who does all the heavy work; in the meantime you lord over it all from your beautiful mansion). The ag landscape is very pretty, but I was wondering where my lodging was going to be.

It was in a small cluster of houses, which could hardly be called a town. Why would a backpackers lodge be located here? Aha, it is a bicycle lodge (or motorcycle lodge, since I am the only resident), and they attract (?) lodgers by organizing bike excursions to nearby villages. It was only 4 pm, and I was not ready to tuck into bed, so I scootered to the first of the villages mentioned in the brochure, and found a real jewel of old Japan. It is only one street preserved in what now has become the modern town of Mima, but it is gorgeous. Lined with old Japanese wooden buildings that are now occupied by pottery shops, restaurants, ice cream shops (Japanese love ise-kremu), and a few wealthy homeowners.  

Tomorrow I will further explore Mima and its surroundings.

Japan 2023. Day 22. I’m baskin’ in sunshine

What happened? Yesterday we had the universal deluge and today there is nothing but sunshine. Not that I am complaining, mind you, because my gear was in need of serious solar radiation. Now I am all dry and packed as if I was just starting the trip.

Since I have a super comfy apartment to relax, I decided that today was going to be an easy day (I have a long ride ahead of me tomorrow), so I left my jacket and boots drying, and in my shirtsleeves and sandals went to visit the Shinto temple complex of Kumano Nachi Taisha. It was an easy ride of no more than 10 km, and by 8:30 am I was at the site of Nachi Falls, which at 130 m free-fall is the tallest waterfall in Japan. The early inhabitants of Japan not only saw the beauty of the waterfall, but realized that this was the abode of one of their deities (I will let you guess who). So the waterfall itself is the shrine, and pilgrims pray directly at the waterfall.

From there it was an easy walk to the Kumano Nachi Taisha Grand Shrine, which is the head shrine of over 4,000 Kumano shrines in Japan. The grand shrine is part of the Kumano Sanzan (the three grand shrines of Kumano), and a major pilgrimage destination. Were I not so lazy, I could have walked 50 km of the Kumano-Kodo trail and claimed double pilgrimage rights, because I have also walked/biked the Camino de Santiago.

An interesting motif found in the Kumano Sanzan is the Yatagarasu three-legged crow. It is believed to be a divine messenger and guide, who helped the first emperor of Japan navigate the impenetrable Kumano mountains in the Japanese creation narrative. The three legs represent heaven, earth, and humankind.

On a more mundane level, the Yatagarasu is in the logo of the Japanese Football Association. Which reminds me, DJ, that folks here are crazy about baseball, and have named their teams after American and Mexican teams. I almost bought you a jersey of the Tigres!

A shrine is more like a monastery, with lots of monks and lots of buildings. Some are secondary shrines for, after all, 8 million gods have to live somewhere. But there are also administrative buildings, apartment complexes, dormitories, and facilities to park and feed large numbers of pilgrims and tourists. The place was pleasantly empty when I was there, but by the time I was ready to leave big tourist buses were starting to arrive.

I spent the early afternoon shopping for socks (the original ones I packed are beginning to look ratty), and food. I figure I could cook tonight and take a break from restaurant food (not that I complain about the food, which everywhere here has been fantastic).

OK, I am done for the day!

Japan 2023. Day 21. In every life a lot of rain shall fall

And today was my turn, big time. When I started on the 120 km to my next destination the sky was clear, but within 5 minutes it had clouded over, 10 minutes later I felt the first drops, and half an hour later I was soaked to the bone. The three hours that followed could very well be described as the worst ride of my life (but then again there was that time in Northern Vietnam when I got caught in a monsoon rain, in an underpowered scooter, and crawling uphill behind a heavily loaded diesel truck that was spewing soot directly at my face).

But I digress. What should have taken me two and a half hours took me close to three and a half, trying to take the curves carefully so I wouldn't skid. I was due at my next accommodation at 1:30 pm (good that they would let me check in early), and I only kept going with dreams of a warm onsen.

On the other hand I didn't want to have to acknowledge that the day had been a total loss, so when I got to Nachikatsuura at 12:30 pm, I figured I still had an hour to kill and I might just as well visit the Whales Museum. It is a strange museum (y como lo raro es pariente de lo feo ...), of the type of Natural Science Museums of the Victorian Era, with lots of bones, and organs and fetal specimens preserved in large flasks of yellowing formaldehyde. They had some full skeletons of Right, Sperm, and Orca whales, and hanging from the ceiling was an enormous model of a Right whale, and a full-size replica of a boat and crew in hot pursuit. Turns out that the Tajii port, where the museum is located, was the home port of the whaling fleet of a 1,000 years ago, when as many as 60 boats, each with a dozen men, would go battle the giants of the sea with spears and hand-thrown harpoons.

Had it been a sunny day, I could have gone out and looked at their collection of life whales and dolphins, but by the time I had gone through the exhibition I was starting to shiver and figured it was time to go home.

For the next couple of days "home" will be a full apartment, all for my little self. I quickly unloaded my soggy possessions (but my backpack is water-proof), and then mounted my steed one more time to run to the supermarket to buy stuff for lunch and dinner. With the onsen clearly imprinted in my mind, I decided to buy a bottle of red wine to enjoy the full experience. A French Vieux Papes, Cuvée Réservée, for only US$ 6!

I hurried back home, peeled off every stitch of wet clothing, and sank mercifully into a piping hot bath. Ahhh!

I spent the best part of the afternoon looking at the map of Japan, figuring out the route I want to take, and booking 2-day stays all over the place. I hope I have not overstretched myself with very long motorcycle legs.   

Japan 2023. Day 20. A ride worthy of the Geotrekkers

Yesterday I forgot to mention that the hellacious ride from Osaka was lucky in that it didn't rain. It is overcast all over because there is a typhoon moving slowly from south to north a few hundred kilometers to the east, and over the last 10 days there have been some serious rainstorms, so to have a dry day was indeed a boon.

As I do every afternoon I had washed clothes, which were now drying in the wind, and my smelly boots were getting a good dose of marine air. I spent a restful night, listening to the breaking of the waves just outside my little balcony. I woke to the melody of rainfall, and for a moment basked in my fortune of the previous day. Then I remembered that my boots and clothes were on the balcony, bolted to retrieve them, and found that everything was soaking wet. The clothes were no big deal for they could hang all day long, but the boots were a disaster. Unfortunately the uber-neat Japanese don't leave old newspapers lying around, so I had to sacrifice a magazine to stuff my boots with paper, before going back to bed for an extra hour of sleep.

The weather forecast showed a good probability of rain squalls, and for a moment I thought the day would be wasted, but then I remembered my friend Hellen, from England, who said "if you wait for perfect weather you would never get out of the house", so I got ready to go; rain jacket and plastic bags around my socks and I was off for another day of adventure. I plan to invest three days riding through that Kii Mountain Range, with its main peak Mt. Gongenyama, which is reputed to be one of the most beautiful areas of Honshu, and the background of the Kumano-Kodo holy pilgrimage. The mountains are impressive, having risen relatively recently in geologic time, as shown by deep gorges and impossibly steep flanks. They are covered with verdure, but now and then you can glimpse the metamorphic rocks that underlie them. To you geologists, this is the forearc metamorphic belt of Japan.

Sprinkled throughout are onsen villages and Shinto shrines, which the locals have transformed into (pricey) accommodations for tourists. My original plan was to be one of them tourists with an organized group, but the company didn't get enough people signed in (did I mention we are in the typhoon season?) and cancelled on me. No matter, I have my own spark of divine fire.

Higher and higher I went, and of course it took a lot longer than I had expected. Trying to find a shortcut to the coast I got into this narrow (but paved) twisty mountain road that would have been the joy of the Geotrekkers. To judge by the amount of leaf litter on the road I am guessing that a vehicle comes this way maybe once a week, and for a moment I felt very lonely and very far away. Finally, after perhaps 20 km, I reached a larger road, and started seeing the usual signs of civilization, such as rice paddies and handfuls of rural houses. By then I was starving, so I was happy to catch up with the mountain grocer, who brings his truck up the mountain once a week to provide these folks with fresh fruit and vegetables. 

At about 2 pm I reached the Kumanogawa River, whose enormous valley has become the main path for the Kumano-Kodo trail. The river transforms itself into a big estuary, on which the coastal town of Shingu has developed. It is here that the Shinto temple of Kumano Hayatama Taisha is located, as a convenient place to finish the pilgrimage. But the Kumano-Kodo "trail" is a bit like the Camino de Santiago, where pilgrims move over many routes. The ultimate goal is to reach Mt. Gongenyama, because legend tells us that it was on the big boulder on the flank of the mountain (Gotobiki Iwa) that Hatayama-no-o-kami (main deity of the Shinto religion) first descended to Earth, thus showing the way for the other deities to descend. The shrine at the site of the boulder, Kamikura Jinja, is the true goal of the pilgrimage.

After my visit to the temple I started seriously looking for a place to eat. What will it be? Curry? As if in answer to my prayers Hama Sushi came into view. From the outside it looks more like an AutoZone, but inside it is an ultra modern, highly automated sushi restaurant. I tapped the big screen and a numbered ticket was produced, which showed me at what cubicle to sit. All the necessary sauces and trimmings were there, and the small drawer beneath the table had chopsticks, wet napkins, toothpicks, and the like. Warm water was directly piped unto a side of the cubicle. Americans are used to buying sushi trays with a dozen pieces of sushi, but Japanese believe that sushi should be consumed in small portions, immediately after the chef has prepared it. So there is this tablet in the cubicle, where you can select a pair of nigiri sushi for about US$ 0.70. So to start with I selected a slightly charred flounder. A cartoon character bowed her thanks and informed me that my order was in progress. A minute later this plate with my two pieces of sushi was whisked in from the kitchen on a conveyor belt. Swish! Then I ordered tuna. Swish! Then charred fatty salmon. Swish! The crab butter with basil. Swish! (Please don't feel obliged to try crab butter anytime soon) Then I felt like having a bowl of udon. Swish! And to top it all, nigiri sushi topped with slightly charred duck. Swish! Outside of the crab butter everything else was delicious. I wonder if in the kitchen they have a sushi-making robot.

By the time I got back on the road at 4 pm, I had to go 100 km on the coastal highway before I could reach Marine-Q. It was a pretty ride, at low tide, so the rocks protruding through the water gave the scenery a spectacular beauty. I was almost home, around 6:30 pm, when I felt a few drops of rain. Once again, my luck had held!  

Japan 2023. Day 19. I have died and gone to heaven

I woke up very early in the morning, eager to go pick up my scooter. Unfortunately that was not happening until 10 am, but I had the crazy idea that I would walk to the rental place. A look at the 4 hours Google map estimated for the walk quickly convinced me that I had to look at an alternative plan: The metro. 

The Osaka metro is composed of many parts (subway, monorail, light train, local trains), so getting from point A to point B is not trivial. I also thought it was my responsibility as a tourist to visit the Osaka Castle Park, so the first leg was to get into The Osaka Loop to go to the park. A helpful policeman directed me to “the next door” and I even managed to figure out and buy the correct fare. 

Osaka Castle Park is like Chapultepec Park in Mexico City. Sure, once in your lifetime you visit the “Castillo”, but for most city dwellers the park is a place to go exercise in the early morning, walk the dog, our just take a shortcut to get to school. The Osaka Castle is a museum and a fine exponent of the castles the Shoguns were building in the Edo period, but I had zero interest in visiting it.

After crossing the park I got back to The Osaka Loop, successfully transferred into one of the radial light train lines, ran for about 20 km, navigated the “add fare” machine, and by 9 am was sitting in front of the bike shop, waiting for the owner. Luke, a red-headed Scot, got there at 9:30 am, and heartily welcomed me to Osaka and the local world of motorcycling. He came in on a very large bike, and I was beginning to have a moment of low esteem when he opened the shop and I saw a dozen beauties. Honda ADV 150, 3,000 km on the odometer, gleaming, and large! Luke assured me that I could take this baby in the freeway with no problem (although I repeated my silent bow that I would never, ever ride on the freeway). He is such a nice man, and he spent a good hour going over the bike, the puncture repair kit, the tire inflation cartridges, the documents, and the set of useful sentences in case I had to deal with the police.

At 10:30 am I left the shop, relying on Google maps to navigate me out of the greater Osaka metropolitan area.  The bike has a nifty holder for the cell phone, as well as a charging port, so I was all set. The route I had chosen, without any freeways, should get me to the town of Gobo and my hotel for the night in 4 hours. And then my beautiful plan met morning traffic in Osaka, and I turned right when I should have turned left, and before you know it I am in the freeway, racing at 80 km per hour, and trying not to be blown by the wake of the 18-wheelers. I was funneled into a rat race, and I had to run as fast as the other rats; fortunately I had a fine machine that rose to the challenge, and like it or not I managed to get out of the metropolitan area and into the toll road to the south. Once again I was faced with smiling clerks who expected something from me, so I gave them money and accepted whatever pieces of paper they wanted to give in return. Note to self: Whatever paper you get, hoard it with care because you are likely to need it at a later time. I didn’t, and when I finally came out of toll road 100 km later I caused a small commotion because I had lost the ticket that showed what station I had entered in. A friendly operator came and sorted it out, and once again I handed cash without understanding a word of what was being said.

The toll road was not as stressful as the urban freeway, but it was still fast and with lots of 18-wheelers. Furthermore, it had tunnels that were 1,000 to 4,000 m long. Tunnels are really hard on the motorcycle rider, because they funnel your vision, and after a while you start loosing your artificial horizon and start swinging on your lane, a bit mesmerized by the infinite horizon geometry of the tunnel. Fortunately I found a rest stop with a restaurant half way down to Gobo, so I stopped to have lunch (Udon noodles with deep fried pork skins; yummy!) and stretch, and by 1:30 pm I had reached my little hotel south of Gobo, Marine-Q.

Marine-Q is a bit of Americana. It sits around a small bay and is, for all practical purposes, a surfer hangout of the 50’s. It is a bit run down, but the view of the bay is magnificent, and the decor is a heartfelt tribute to surfboards, VW buses, beach bunnies, and surfer dudes. After unloading the bike and washing clothes I went for a joy ride along highway 42, and it felt like I was riding highway 1 through Southern California, the central Coast, and Monterey Bay. I don’t know what gave me the feeling of being in a time machine, but riding without the heavy jacket, shirt sleeves flapping in the wind, and seeing weather-beaten buildings made me think of places like Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Castroville, and Half Moon Bay. Maybe it is because signs in Japanese are as meaningless as unreadable placards that have been blanched by the sun, or maybe it was the plastic-covered greenhouses, but there is something familiar in this place.

Tomorrow I start my exploration of the mountains of southern Honshu. I haver labored for three days to get to this happy place, so now I am going to try to relax and enjoy the life of the low-rider.  

Japan 2023. Day 18. Chitose to Osaka

Yesterday, while I was waiting for my food at the izakaya I got an emergency message, I happened to be looking at my phone so I read it immediately. It warned that an earthquake had started and ... the ground started rocking and nobody gave it a second thought. So this is what all that "prediction" effort has gone into, with not even enough time to finish reading the message, or to send a prayer to the Almighty.

Today I spent half the day flying from the Sapporo airport (which is in Chitose) to Tokyo-Haneda, and then jumping into a second leg to Osaka. On the flight to Tokyo I drew seat 63A, which put me 2/3 down the airplane, at a window seat. The two seats to my right were occupied by two short Japanese ladies, who kept their eyes down and never said a word. I like the politeness of the Japanese, but on leaving the plane it becomes a real nuisance because some ladies just keep their eyes down and let the guys go first. The guys, ignoring deplaning etiquette across the world, just crowd the corridor trying to be the fist out. I was fuming, so I gave a gentle nudge to my ladies, and as soon as I had the way free I cut sharply in front of the next guy, who looked at me with absolute surprise. Some Japanese are just rude.

Then again, waiting for the luggage to be delivered is an absolute joy. Americans crowd around the conveyor belt, with their useless carts by their side and the whole family to witness dad picking up the luggage (and blocking the view of everyone else). If you attempt to squeeze through you will probably swing yourself against a cart, stumble on a kid, or give grandma a whack in the head. Not in Japan. Here everybody stays a good three feet away from the conveyor belt, carts are not pressed into service until the luggage has been retrieved, and dad gets to do all the work without having the family all around him. Japanese are such polite folks.

While I was getting my ticket for the second leg, at the Tokyo airport, I got another earthquake alert. Excellent! Time to confirm my theory that such "predictions" are useless. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, ... forty one thousand. Nada! It had been a false alarm! So I will repeat what I say to my students every year. For a forecast to be useful (1) it has to be timely, providing enough time for people to take protective action, and (2) it has to be accurate, or like my friends at the airport you very soon learn to ignore it.

When I landed in Osaka the sky was gray and the runway looked wet. Note to self: Buy an umbrella at the first possible chance. I was planning on taking the bus to town, so I was hurrying to the exit, when I saw a stand full of umbrellas, with a sign saying "Left behind. Feel free to take one". "Well, I don't mind if I do", I thought as I reached for one of the cheap transparent umbrellas that everybody else carries around here, but then I saw an umbrella with gravitas. An umbrella that was used to walking the corridors of power. An umbrella that would proclaim to the world "My master is a man of consequence". So I took it, and I am now the proud owner of an umbrella that I might feel obliged to carry with me back to California (or not, depending on how tired I am by the end of the trip). 

Getting to Osaka proper I felt like the ultimate country bumpkin. This is a real city, vibrant, colorful, and crowded with crazy people. Teeny boppers like to dress like dolls, with lots of ruffles, bows, and shoes that would be the envy of a steel worker. Half of the older girls and young women like to dress like grunges, but the other half dress to the hilt. One young woman I saw had small, 3-dimensional sculptures of butterflies glued to her super long fingernails. Some of the young women look like animé characters straight from a manga comic book. It is very flattering for your typical skinny girl, but on older women it looks like ... well, let us say it is not pretty. Guys, universally, dress like grunges.

I am still perfecting my menu reading. For lunch I thought I had ordered warm soba noodles in beef broth, but instead got a big pile of cold noodles, which were pretty tasteless. Thank the Shinto gods for soy sauce, which is an exudate from the process of miso mold production, although I am sure the Japanese look with horror at the barbaric use that Americans make of soy sauce and wasabi mustard.

My hotel is a one-star typical Japanese hotel (but it has an onsen), and my room is exactly three tatamis in floor area (I am pretty sure that my friends at Hokkaido Adventures made sure the rooms they reserved were six or even eight tatamis in floor area). It is a place to sleep and little else. So, I decided to venture out into the town, to visit the Osaka Ukiyo-e Museum which displays the work of artists of the Edo Period. Turns out that it has works from my all time favorite Japanese artist, Utagawa Hiroshige. I bet you never could have guessed I had a favorite Japanese artist, because I didn't know I had one, but Hiroshige painted many of the famous prints we all have seen of Fujisan, and (my favorite) of the tsunami wave that entered the Bay of Edo in the early 1800's (one of my favorite print shirts has this particular print on it). By the way, Edo was the ancient name for Tokyo, and fuji means peak, so Mount Fuji would be Mount Peak.

Alas, after getting all fired up to visit the museum I rushed to make it on time for the very last entry time, only to find out that it is closed on Mondays. Rats! I will have another chance to visit it after my motorcycle tour comes to an end.

So I came back "pastoreando un ganso", looking at crazy people, fantastic food displays, the fish market, shops with this and that, and made it back to my hotel in time to take an onsen bath and come down to the lobby to write this blog entry. Tomorrow I go to pick up my scooter!