Tojinbo Cliffs

Tojinbo is a series of volcanically formed rock clifts that run about 1km along the central coast of Japan on the Japan Sea side.  You can take a JR train up from Nagoya or Kyoto, pass Lake Biwa and travel through Fukui prefecture to get there.  But traveling through this part of Japan during the month of January is kind of 100% guarantee of heavy snow.

 There was even heavy snow at Fukui station, which is getting back near sea level.

The cliffs are along the Japan sea and wind and rain can be really strong.  At the base of the path leading to the cliffs is a sign letting you know you are there.

 The cliffs peek around 70 feet above sea level and on this particular day waves hitting the cliffts were being forced about half way up the side.

It's really hard to get a feel for the strength of the wind and the voracity of the waves hitting the rocks, but it made standing out here difficult.

One of the signs near the cliffs told of a local legend of how a bad Buddhist priest was causing problems for the good Buddhist monk.

So the good Buddhist brought the bad monk to the edge of the cliffs and threw him over, today the ghost of the bad monk haunts this area.

But this made me question if the actions of the good monk really made them the bad monks.  They never really explain why the bad monk was so bad.

Port Kure

Kure is a port city southeast of Hiroshima.  This city is famous for being a naval center through the end of World War II and for shipbuilding since then.  It's easy to reach from Hiroshima station by JR train.

 The most famous ship ever built in the port of Kure was the Yamato, the largest battle ship ever.  Unfortunately it was sunk north of Okinawa during the war but today you can see a 1/10th model of the ship the Kure Maritime Museum.  The museum is within walking distance of Kure Station.

On display in the museum are original 2D pencil drawings of the Yamato, the drawings used to build this ship.  It's kind of amazing to see these kind of drawings now-a-days, no 3D anything was used in the making of this ship.

In a room adjacent to the Yamato model is a Mitsubishi Zero Type 62.

 From the second floor you can see the flight instruments are still inside the cockpit, which makes me wonder if this plane is still flyable.

 Across the street is a submarine, the Akishio SS-579.  This Submarine was launched in 1985 and decommissioned in 2004.

 You can visit inside the submarine and look through periscopes that were made by Nikon.

The port is very busy today, making large ships for the transport of natural gas and other fuels.  It also has ferries that run from the port to Hiroshima, Matsuyama and other places.

Kind of reminds me of Seattle.

Wake Up and Smell the Chorizo

I was lucky enough to travel to Detroit this past Christmas and visit with friends and family, my first time back to the US in over a year.  For christmas my parents got me a couple of t-shirts from Mexicantown, including one from a grocery store called La Colmena or the Honey Bee Market.  The back of the shirt says 'Wake Up and Smell the Chorizo', always a good reminder.

Best of all, I will always have a quick reference to the phone number of the Honey Bee Market.  You know, just in case.

 I brought home as gift, these Japanese style plug decoration for smart phones.  These were fun, everyone seem to like them.  I assume everyone is going to lose these things so next time I come home  I will bring a dozen more.

You can get chorizo in Japan, you just have to know what to look for.  On the package below, チョリソー says chorizo... So it's possible to wake up and directly follow the advice on the back of the t-shirt.

Chorizo in Japan is not cheap though, the red sticker on the package says half off and this still cost over $2.50/100g (or around $20/lb).

12/12 Earthquake

There was another large earthquake off the coast of northern Japan, kind of in the same area as the 3/11 event.

Today's earthquake caused a tsunami warning along the north -north east coast and was felt in Nagoya. But the effect in Nagoya was minimal, with damage or any other issues.

The photo above was taken one hours after the earthquake, from my apartment in Nagoya, you can see everything is okay.

Kobe

I took a quick day trip to Kobe, it's just over a hour away by bullet train, from Nagoya.  I went there without much of a plan, other than to ask the information desk at Kobe station what should I do?

They recommended taking the Nunobiki Ropeway to the summit of Mt. Rokko, the ropeway is just outside the bullet train station, Shin Kobe.  Below is the Nunobuki Dam, you can see it while traveling on the ropeway.  This is the first concrete dam in Japan which made me wonder what previous dams were made of?  Maybe sticks and mud.

At the top of the mountain, I was surprised to find a German Festival, the information lady did not mention this.

Among many German style dishes they had beer and pretzels, which was good enough for me. 

In Japan, German things are referred to as doitsu-things... For example German people are doitsu-jin, German language is doitsu-go and so on.  I was happy to find some doitsu-food.  

It's kind of like a little German town up here, you can see everyone sitting in the town square from the clock tower.

Kobe was on of the first open ports in Japan and as a result many foreign people started living here.  Below is part of Kobe that was set aside for foreign style houses but today is more like a tourist area.  I'm not sure if anyone really lives here anymore.

This is looking down the staircase of Kitanotenman Shrine onto the foreign house neighborhood.  Someone needs to keep cleaning up the autumn leaves.

Good advice.

The Street of Eternal Happiness

For the past few months, NPR has been playing a radio series titled the 'Street of Eternal Happiness' on the APM show Marketplace.  The radio show uses this area of Shanghai as a tool to show China's ongoing economic transformation.  The street of eternal happiness is actually Changle Road.

Since I have been listening to the radio show, I thought it would be fun to visit this area on this trip to Shanghai.  You can see above and below, it was kind of a chill day, this is a Sunday afternoon.

 Below are a bunch of kids waiting in line for some bubble tea.

Although the actual Changle Road is just one street, the radio show branches out to include areas around the street of eternal happiness, below is the Jinjiang hotel.  This is the hotel where President Nixon meet with Chairman Mao Zedong and signed the Shanghai Communique.

I also outsourced my haircut to China on this trip.  Below is the shop where I got a haircut, it's not far from where Nixon meet Mao.

Below is Fuxing Park, a good place to stretch.

Chinese High Speed Rail

I made a second visit to Shanghai to visit friends and took a day trip to Nanjing using the new Chinese bullet train.

Above is Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station, this place is huge and new!!  I showed up here without a ticket but just a plan for a day trip to Nanjing.  In Japan, within 15 minutes of showing up at a train station you will have a ticket and 10 to 30 minutes after that you will be on a train going somewhere.  At this station, it was not so obvious what to do and it took about a hour to get a ticket and about 30 minutes to wait for the train after getting a ticket.  But this is partly the fault of assuming it would be easy to walk up to a window, get a ticket and get on a train.... don't bother trying the automatic ticket machines, it's a waste of time, just get in line and wait.

Above is the platform seen from the top of the escalator.  The train on the left goes to Nanjing and on to Beijing.  Beijing south is a 5-6 hour train ride from Shanghai... Shanghai to Beijing is 1462km, Detroit to Chicago is 455km, transit time by fastest train possible is the same... Assuming the Amtrak train is not delayed for snow or fright.

Above is the CRH-380A train, the first high speed train designed and manufactured in China.  It kind of replicates foreign technology.

If you ask for a window seat on the way to Nanjing and end up getting car 16 seat 4F, this is the window.

Above is the platform at Nanjing, waiting for the train to return to Shanghai.

Above is the platform back at Shanghai, a successful round trip on the Chinese high speed rail.  In total, I think it was 4 hours of touring around Nanjing, 2 hours round trip on a train and 3 hours trying to figure out how to get tickets and waiting for trains.  China needs to address those 3 hours, it should be 30 minutes at most.