About two weeks ago on Sunday, I and two other ALTs went on a small quest to find a snow festival in the mountains. We started off up the coast, stopping frequently along the way, and then looped back around into the mountains, and on back to Murakami.
We started out on highway 113, or something like that (I forget exactly)- which winds along what is widely considered to be some of the most beautiful coastline around. If you'll recall a long-ago post about a place called Sanpoku, this is the coast in that same area.
Here are some shots of the coastline in a general kind of way. The mountains come more or less right down to the surf, resulting in spectacular rocky crags. This particular day also had high winds- resulting in a pleasing oceanic roar, and intermittent clouds, which are always nice for effect.
A few crepuscular rays also seldom go wrong. Also note the concrete dolosse, which are everywhere around here. Tragically, as a result of Japan's enormous socialized construction budget, the need for construction jobs has led to 60% of Japan's entire coast being encased in concrete in some way or another (according to Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan). Dolosse are also widely employed.
Here's one of my ALT friends taking a pic of it all:
Around the same place is a shrine perched atop rocky outcropping- like so:
This shrine is unusual in that you can actually the see the kami (神-patron spirit/god/God) housed within. Most shrines have a series of progressively more pure and sacred layers on the way into the kami's abode (for you Old Testament junkies out there- the design for the Jerusalem temple is a good analogue), but in this one He/She/It is just looking out at you from He/She/It's stone house (can you spot the deity in this photograph?):
The shrine was also unusual in that it stood atop a precarious rocky footpath, subject to occasional blasts from the waves. We were only able to stay for a short time, because the tide was coming in.
I couldn't dredge up any information on salamander mythology in Japan (information is difficult to pin down for Shinto as a whole- to say nothing of its regional permutations), but I thought it was interesting that one term for salamander in Japanese is 火蜥蜴, or "fire lizard." I had previously thought that the association of salamanders with fire was primarily a Western one, but apparently they picked up on it to some extent in Japan. I want to do some more snooping about salamanders and their mythological associations in Japan- I'll get back to you all when I find something to report.
The next point of interest we encountered was a small fishing town with its fleet in-harbor, all overshadowed by a pillar of rock:
I also thought it was neat that the fishing fleet were all equipped with out-sized incandescent bulbs, presumably to attract fish at night. The whole scene, between rock pillar and boats, was fun to explore- but I get the impression that not much goes on there. I did get some human interaction in the way of two shougakkou girls looking at me in alarm as I passed them with my camera, but that was about it.
From there the highway turns inland, and we swung back around into the mountains heading south. We were becoming progressively more pessimistic about ever finding the snow festival, when suddenly we saw
Hurray!
Then there was also
Some industrious someone even made a Doraemon:
For those of you who don't want to read the whole Wiki article- America has Mickey Mouse with his big buttons as its most widely known cartoon character (although that may be more outdated now...); while Japan has a 40 kilogram blue robot cat that can pull gadgets from the future out of his front pocket- Doraemon. I think this goes a long way to demonstrate some of the cultural differences between Japan and America...
While I'm on cultural differences and snow festivals- here's another little fact- Japanese snowmen are made with one large and one small snowball, instead of a graduated sequence of three like in America (for example: see the snowman at the end of the previous post).
The streets of the town (北中町- Kitanaka-machi- north middle town), were generally lined with snowmen up until a field at the southern end, which was a complete yukidaruma colony:
The whole thing was made complete with a now chapel at the head of the village:
The ALT in the foreground on the right told me that the chapel could also serve as an actual chapel- apparently a couple got married there last year.
After leaving the snow festival, it was all just driving down through the mountains to get back to Murakami, and then getting dinner at a kaiten sushi joint (surf 'n turf 'n surf?). That's all for now- this weekend I'm going to the Tokamachi snow festival, which is supposed to be one of the better snow festivals around, so I'll see how that compares. Until then!
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