wish you were here (Art Sites)

I’m trying here to catch up with what I’ve been up too but I’ll have to start with last weekend. We had to cancel planes to go to the Hiwasa sea turtle beach cleanup event we were planning to go to in Tokushima on Saturday because of the rain forecast. My older son and I went last year, cleaned up and went to the sea turtle museum on the beach near where the turtles come up and lay their eggs. Too bad we had to cancel.
So we ended up meeting some friends we were planning to go with who are from Tokushima. Without too much planning (as usual), we ended up heading toward Tokushima and looking for a place between Takamatsu and Tokushima to meet up with them. We stopped around Tsuda-no-Matsubara, much closer to Takamatsu than Tokushima (sorry). As it was not raining at the time, we played on the beach there near a large swimming area which, at this time of the year, is completely empty. Before long though, it started to sprinkle. And then it got down right rainy. It was okay though as it was about time for lunch. We headed for an Italian restaurant we had been to before, a close drive from the beach, La Fresca. My wife went in to ask about the waiting time. Between our family and our friends there would be four adults and four kids so we were not expecting quick seating. But the woman who my wife talked to responded with the less than formal and rare one word response, “MURI!”. In other words, “Forget about it!”. I thought, Okay, no tatemae there eh? So we went to someplace else.
While driving around in the now pouring rain we noticed a place on the map my wife had heard of but not been to, Ooyama Bokujou. The homemade soft ice cream she had heard about was all I needed to know about so, after eating, this was out next destination.

This place was much more than good ice cream. They had lots of homemade bread and pastries which made me regret not just coming straight to there for lunch. The little shop has a huge kitchen you can look back to. The guy working there was cutting what looked like a round of sponge cake for the bottom of a cheese cake. With the rain clearing up for a little while we walked down the road to where they keep the Jersey cows, sheep, goats and ponies. I grew up around cows (Holsteins, not Jerseys) but it had been a while and the air brought back lots of childhood memories-and made my son exclaim that it smelled, well, like you would expect it to.

I noticed this three-wheeler, something I sort of wish I could have driven around a little bit. I’ll have to ask next time if they’ll let me take it for a spin if I throw some hay around. I’ll definitely be going back with a lighter stomach to try one of the curry pastries that they make after you order it.
After saying goodbye to our friends from Tokushima, we headed home. On the walk to grandma and grandpa’s for dinner the roads were lined with flowers drenched with rain screaming for me to photograph them.

  

While talking to a guy at work who lives close to Ritsurin Koen, I heard a rumor that the park would be changing its English name to Ritsurin Garden as it’s more of a Japanese garden than a park. To me it’s clearly a matter of what part of the park you go to. Living a few train stops away and having the year round entry passport (that cost 5000 yen and gets you and two other people in anytime all year), I was in the habit of going there almost every weekend with my older son when my wife was pregnant with number two and wasn’t up for going out to “do stuff”.
In my mind, if you go in the main gate and go toward the right side of the park there are lots of “Japanese Garden” areas but there is also a big open space with a nice big tree in the middle, some benches and some monuments: a park. Perfect for morning picnics or Hanami in the spring. However, the scene of the garden cradled by Mt. Shuin that opens up as you walk in along the broad path from the main entrance is unmistakably a Japanese landscaped garden. And most of the park to the left is more of what I think of as a Japanese garden than park too.
Regardless, my three year old son loves the place. My wife and I have to be careful about mentioning it becuase, if he hears its name, he reads it as an instant promise that we are going and we will never hear the end of it. So we have to talk in code and often call it by an alternative reading of the Kanji with the same meaning, Kuribayashi (Chestnut Forest). The main selling point for him are the dango sold at a couple places in the park. He loves settling down to a skewer of dango and a rod of dry baked fu for feeding the Koi.

I like that too but, more than the defrosted dango, I like the places built in the garden made to sit down and have a cup of macha tea while looking out over the garden. The last time I went with the family, we stopped by the smaller of the two main tea houses in the garden, the Higurashi-tei (not pictured here), for some informal tea and sweets. This tea house overlooks a small garden but the woodwork of the building itself draws my attention as much as the views of the garden. For taking tea here we got a free entry pass to the bigger, main teahouse, the Kikugetsu-tei that overlooks the south pond (following two pictures). This is a much more elaborate place that, I think, is best appreciated when visited in each season. The park is so big and accommodates so many different types of trees and flowers that it seems like every month there is something new in bloom, completely changing the scene and showing you new niches of the park that you overlooked the month before. I must have been there a hundred times now, early in the morning before the tour buses pull in, and I amazed to always find something new.
  

Last Saturday was a great day for being outside. I spent about 15 minutes fingering through my book of 50 mountains in Kagawa and decided to set out for Doyama (堂山). After persuading my wife that our older son could handle it and promising to shoulder our one-year-old up and down the mountain, she agreed to come along. Doyama is classified as a Satoyama situated pretty much in the middle of the Sanuki plain that reaches up 304 meters. The approach is pretty rough for our three-year-old. The hardest part for him was that his little brother was getting a free ride in the carrier that he used to get to ride around in. But once we got to the first major stop along the top and ate lunch he was ready to go. The first place that seems like the top is marked by a little box sized shrine called Ryuogu (龍王宮) on an clearing with some benches and a very nice view. While eating the box lunch she made, I joked with my wife how the shrine, “Dragon King Palace” sounded like the name of a Chinese restaurant. There’s also a box there with notes and pictures of a group that climb it every morning to watch the sunrise. This is obviously a very popular mountain with the locals.
However there was still about an hour’s walk to the real top of the mountain. I figured this would be easy as it seemed to be just walking across the top of the range. But there were a lot of steep up and down parts of the trail, even a part with a rope for getting up and down. I came across a non-poisonous looking snake on the side of the trail but that was about all the wild animals I saw. Of course the birds were going crazy singing and there were harmless looking spiders that looked like daddy long legs (without the long legs) all over. There was one opening along the trail to the top that gave a really great view of the valley going down the side of the mountain. This is what I came for. I took some pictures but none that capture the scale or feeling so you’ll have to find out for yourself what it’s like. I have no doubt you'll recognize it when you come to it.
We made it to the top but with all the trees there wasn’t much of a view from there. Heading back, we started seeing other climbers. The one-year old took his afternoon nap in while riding down the mountain and I broke down and carried our older son for about ten minutes of steep steps.
Other than the mountain itself, at the bottom there is a shrine called Tsunashiki Tenmangu. I haven’t looked into the history of this one too much but I read on the plaque there that it got its name (which I translate into “Hammock Tenmangu” ) from a story about the creation of a hammock made out of fishing ropes for Sugawara no Michizane when he was passing through here on his way to Kyushu after exile. Also at the bottom, down the road from the shrine, is a Temple called Shoukei-ji (正花寺) that houses an “Important Cultural Asset”, a wooden Bosatsu statue made in the Nara period. The temple looked to be in need of some care and despite the notice of the statue on the plaque, there didn’t seem to be anybody around to show it to you.
All around this was a great mountain and I really enjoyed spending the day on it.
Getting there by train is easy enough you just get off at Okamoto Station on Kotoden’s Kotohira line and follow the mountain trial guides directions from there. If going by car, you go south on route 32 past the Nariai Nishimura Joy and take one of the last right turns before passing the Okamoto Station.
  

Today was the last day of the Golden Week vacation for me. We spent most of the vacation time in Kyoto and visiting Nara one of the days. We managed to avoid getting caught in any traffic jams by leaving before the weekend and driving back at night before the last day of vacation. On the way back though, the opposite lane was completely jammed most of the way!
For the last day of Golden week, we woke up to it raining and thinking it would rain the rest of the day but, fortunately, it didn’t. While our one year old took his morning nap I took our older three year old for a drive to the local Koi dealers, Mr. Miyatake’s place to talk Koi and ask about the latest problems my father in law is having with his Koi. We got back and ate lunch and met up with the rest of the family, my wife, one year old, and the grandparents.
As the weather was looking good, we (excluding my wife) decided to go climb a mountain. So following Grandma’s directions, we ended up at the foot of Dakeyama (嶽山) which, from the map I have, looks to be in Miki-cho. Like most of the mountains in Kagawa it’s not that tall but this one certainly has a tall mountain feel to it. At 204.7 meters it only takes about 30 minutes to get to the top, but don’t underestimate this mountain. Once you get to the top, your on this narrow ridge that feels like it just drops off on both sides. This is not the place to take a couple one and three year-olds that like to push each other around. One wrong step and there you go rolling down the side of the mountain!
But as it's bare rock at the top, the 360 degree view is really nice. We could see Sunport and Yashima to the North and, to the South East, Nyotai-san (女体山), Mt. Woman Body.
After getting down safely using the repelling chain that connects posts along the path, we found a couple four leaf clovers. This is the biggest one I think I’ve ever seen.
As it was too late to start preparing for dinner at home we ended up deciding to eat out somewhere in the neighborhood. Okonomiyaki was the popular vote and so we stopped at place called Jozen. It’s kind of on the end of a rice field like a lot of places in Ota that border the undeveloped rice fields. It’s about the fourth time I’ve been there and every time we go they are playing jazz. So it was Sonny Rollins and Okonomiyaki tonight. Before it was mostly Mingus.
A busy last day to a busy Golden Week.
  

Today marked the first day of my Golden Week vacation. It was a nice warm, sunny day perfect for being outdoors. But instead I spent most of the day inside because the Takamatsu City Kendo Tournament was held today and I’d promised the team I’m on at work that I’d be a substitute member for the tournament. And the day before yesterday the team captain told me that, since one of the other members was not going to be able to go, I’d become an active member. This was not the kind of pressure I’d been hoping for the first day of vacation, but being in tournaments is an important part of Kendo and I haven’t been in that many so far so I do need the experience.
Having lived in Japan off and on for the last 14 years I'm pretty used to standing out and getting the stares. But getting into a Kendo uniform, which has your name written big right under your belt and walking around the tournament always gets a full up-down inspection stare. I can see the eyes of almost everyone I pass going from my face to my nafuda (name tag that has my last name and team/company name) and then back to my face. I don’t have any bad feeling though. I even caught myself doing the exact same thing last year at a tournament in Kochi when I past another foreigner. I remember thinking “wow, now this is rare. What’s his name, what team is he on?”
Anyhow, I got there early to take pictures of the senior members of the Kagawa Kendo community display the kendo and Iai kata (below). In the opening ceremony one of the directors that gave a speach remembered back to the early days of the tournament when it was held outside where Chuo Koen is now. That would have been nice today.
Our team didn’t make it past the first round but that was okay. I also got to watch the Elementary kids I usually have Keiko with take third place. These kids are true professionals.
  

　I’m back home now after chasing the kids around in the wind and cold all day. It being the end of April, I was sort of looking forward a little bit more warmth this weekend but it felt more like it could have been the last days of February instead. Despite the wind and cold and occasional sprinkles, we managed to make the best of things. The kids are bathed and in bed and it’s time to savor the last moments of the weekend before it's back to work on Monday.
So I’ve broken into a bottle of Kenbishi sake that I received from some relatives around New years. I would usually have something more local like a Shikoku or Hiroshima brewed sake but this is all that’s left and it’s one I prefer warmer than cold so that’s just right considering the low temperatures tonight. This is a label that's pretty common on liquor shop shelves every where I’ve been in western Japan. The reason for that I think is that, after a little reading, it seems like this brewery has been around since before they started keeping records on things like good breweries (true, hard to imagine!). This brewery, located in Kobe, belongs to the Nada-Gogo or the “five villages of Nada” which is the biggest sake producing region in Japan brewing over a quarter of all the sake sold in Japan. Since less taxed, cheap (tasting) happo-shu and other beer-like drinks that have been created for no other reason than to avoid the out of date liquor tax system have become available for next to nothing a can, I assume that "a quarter of all the sake sold in Japan" is, unfortunately, not what it used to be.
At any rate, the things that define the sake made in the Nada five are: the type of rice called Yamada Nishiki, the hard water that flows down from the Rokko Mountains referred to as Miyamizu, the tradition of the Tamba master brewers or Tamba Toji and the climate that accounts for the cold winds that blow down from the Rokko mountains used to slow down the fermentation process or "Rokko Oroshi". The first records of sake made with the Kenbishi name are from 1505! From the Muromachi through Taisho periods it was located on the eastern border of Hyogo prefecture in Itami City but since 1929 up to the present has been brewing out of Kobe’s Higashinada-ku. The region is noted as one of the first to be associated with the Kanzukuri (cold weather production) method of brewing which became the standard for brewing. Interestingly, there also seems to be historical mention of this sake as the one that the Akoroshi, Forty-seven Ronin, used for their last toast of revenge before their famous attack on the Daimyo that left them leaderless. Google the Genroku Ako incident for the whole story.
Well, that’s what’s in my tokkuri tonight. I’m looking forward to writing more about one of my more local preferences, Yorokobi Gaijin which, contrary to its phonetic implications, has nothing to do with happy foreigners.  

　As far as rainy Saturdays go, today was pretty average. After breakfast we just kind of sat around trying to decide what to do for the rest of the day. My wife decided to take our older son, now 3 and half years old, to the Joy Fit gym for the parent child program they have starting at noon. I got to stay home and do cleaning around the house while our second son took his morning nap. After my wife came back, we went out to get lunch at Tanaka Udon for what must be around the 50th time in the last two years I’ve lived here.
Needless to say, this place is really popular with our family.
It’s usually a little crowded but big enough so that we never have to wait more than 15 minutes to get a place to sit. The menu is pretty big but the usual order is oroshi niku bukkake udon, pictured above or I will often just get wakame udon. The bukkake part of the name is in reference to the sesame seeds, green onions, grated ginger, grated daikon and sauce that it comes with and you pour over it. They also have an Oden corner all year round which is hard to get past without fixing yourself a plate of skewered food while waiting for the udon. From what I read in a news article posted on the wall there, it’s one of the few udon shops in Kagawa that actually uses locally produced Kagawa wheat to make its noodles. Having been there so frequently I know it’s also a great place to go for a abroad menu that usually includes a dish tailored to the particular season.
You can get there by heading south from downtown as if you were going to get on the highway at the Chuo Interchange from Route 43. Only instead of getting on the highway you just keep going straight on 43, past the entrance and the under the overpass. You keep going straight through four more traffic lights, through the Sun Messe area, and look for it on the right immediately after the fourth light.

  

I drove out to Kobe with the family for the weekend to go to a friend's wedding. It was considerably less expensive with the recent highway discount on tolls.
It was a small wedding and on Saturday and we had some time to pass before coming back to Takamatsu on Sunday. So after meeting with a friend who came from Osaka to get together for a couple hours we drove out to the island off of Kobe connected by bridge to make a stop at the huge IKEA there.
It’s been a while since I’ve been in such a huge store and I felt like I had left Japan for an hour or two. It was much too big to go through in the two hours we had planned on spending there before heading back home. The kids had a great time in the display kids rooms and my wife found some bowls she’s been looking for a while now. I was amazed at just how much stuff they had there.
It only took us about two hours on the highway crossing over Awajishima to get back to Takamatsu.
No big plans for this weekend. Looks like another rainy weekend.

  

As an admirer of freshwater fish in ponds and aquariums, I’ve managed to check out a good deal of what Takamatsu has to offer in the way of fish at various pet shops and fish stores. I’ve gotten the impression that, as a result of the relatively high level and frequency of maintenance required when keeping aquarium fish in a store atmosphere, a lot of the places (not just in Takamatsu) are by nature a little on the smelly side and what is usually considered standard sanitation is a challenge for most stores. Also, with all the diverse gadgets and equipment related to salt water and planted aquariums the shelves tend to get pretty chaotic in some stores.
One store that was surprisingly clean and orderly despite the number of aquariums/variety of fish and the small staff was a family fish store called Takasu Kanshougyo-ten （高須観賞魚店）. Takasu carries mostly tropical fish, aquarium supplies and equipment but also has some year-old or tosai Nishikigoi (Koi) and a few varieties of fancy goldfish. I got myself an ADA NA fluorescent light bulb for my aquarium and lots of friendly advice on keeping planted aquariums (in Japanese). The picture is of the my goldfish under the new light.
If you’re around the middle of the Kotoden Shido line and have about an hour of free time, get off at the Rokuman-ji station and walk out to and along route 11 heading west or in the direction of Kawaramachi station for about 2 minutes. You’ll most likely notice the store without looking too hard as it has big fish (Koi) decorations on the upper part of the store’s building. But be careful, keeping tropical fish in planted aquariums can be infectious especially when a store like this one makes it look so easy.
  

　The tunnel of cherry blossom trees at Kikaku Koen forms a 20 x 300 meter bridge out to the turtle-like island in the middle of the lake. At the head of the bridge is a shrine called Usa Jinja. This is one of the 40,000 branch shrines that enshrine Japan’s legendary 15th Emperor, Ojin (or Homutawake) deified as Hachiman Daimyojin, the god of military power. The main shrine, Usa Jingu is in Usa City across the inland sea from Ehime prefecture in Kyushu’s Oita Prefecture but Hachiman shrines are everywhere making it the most common shrine in Japan. One of the most memorable ones I’ve been to was the Tsurugaoka Hachiman in Kamakura which is home to an elaborate Yabusame (horse-back archery) ceremony every year in mid September. There’s also a big Hachiman shrine in downtown Takamatsu called Iwaseo Hachiman at the foot of Mt. Iwaseo.
Like many shrines the Hachiman at Kikaku Koen has a hanashizume festival every spring that consists of some 200 people dressed in period clothing in a progression from the shrine out to the island. According to one Japanese source I found the Hanashizume no matusri or festivals of appeasing flowers were traditionally held as a means to ward off epidemics which were believed to be started by bad spirits released by the flowers when they fall. Please correct me if this is way off.
In this photo I took when I went recently to view the blossoms, the Orion constellation just happened to be right over the shrine.
  

The cherry blossom viewing season is over for this year but here are some highlights of the cherry blossoms at Kikaku Koen, a prefectural park in Eastern Kagawa. We went in the evening to catch the blossoms lit up. Along one side of the park there is a tunnel of cherry blossom trees to walk through. We just went for an evening walk but lots of people were there eating and drinking having Hanami parties.
This is a big open park centered around a small lake. There are 100 thousand irises planted all around the lake that bloom in late May and over three hundred different types of trees to enjoy in any season.
The name of the park is made up of the characters for turtle (ki亀) and crane (kaku鶴). The reason for this is that the island in the lake is thought to resemble a turtle or tortoise and the mountain at the western end of the park is thought to resemble a flying crane.
It took us about a half hour to drive there but probably the easiest way to get there would be to take the Kotoden, Nagao line all the way to Nagao, the last station. From there it’s only a five minute drive to the park.
  

Where better to start than with one of the local Udon shops? Although there are an infinite number of places to get Udon here in Kagawa, each place seems to have its own special noodle texture, broth or combination of ingredients to be eaten with. There are places in old elaborate buildings that look like they’ve been there forever with a long history and there are places that seem to have just been set up. Some places you can get in and out of quickly and some that will take a while to get you seated and fed. Considering the seemingly narrow range of the product, this range of variation is something that always provides me with something new to enjoy when I find myself at a new Udon place. But in general, our family usually ends up going to one of four or five places to eat when looking for lunch on the weekends.
One of the closest places that comes to mind for lunch after being out for the morning is about a 2 minute walk from the Kotoden, Kotohira line’s Ota station. Ueta Udon（上田うどん）is one of the places you can get in and out of really quickly thanks to it being mostly self-service. You tell them what size you want, you pay and they hand you over a bowl with the noodles. You add the hot or cold broth you want and as much green onions, ground sesame, grated daikon as you like. You get yourself a cup of tea and some chop sticks and are ready to sit down and eat.
Being right next to the station there is not too much in the way of parking so you’re likely to run into locals with their kids (like me) and, if not careful, in a friendly conversation. Some people just run in, order a bag of noodles and tempura and run home to make the rest there, Sanuki style take out. A basic, no frills，serious Udon noodle shop is waiting there at the North end of Ota station at the closest train road crossing. Look for it in your pursuit of happiness and a straight forward Udon lunch.