This time around the weather was gorgeous, with a blazing sun and cool sea breeze (instead of the strident Siberian blast that characterizes Winter weather hereabouts), and I also took some time to photograph the rock formations that I've so often admired from the highway, but never actually gotten out and photographed. Here are the pictures that I deemed fit to print, as well as some explanations (as ever- click the photo for an enlarged view):
Our first stop was the rocky salamander shrine, this time covered in flowers and seagulls (and therefore, seagull droppings). The gulls were incensed about having their nesting area invaded, and we snap a handful of pictures before beating a path to lower ground:
This picture is looking out from a deep divide in a cliff wall across a bay. There are several stone arches in the area, which is eroding rapidly due to the intensity of the wind, water, and harsh winters. I tried climbing a rocky prominence just outside of the frame of this photo, and turned back when child-sized chunks rotten rock dislodged at my touch.
The cliffs from a higher vantage, which was also fairly terrifying to climb to.
Depending upon one's perspective, the water at Sasagawanagare holds a brilliant pallet of marine colors. The combination of shockingly blue sea water, rocks, seaweed, and who knows what else gives every foot of the bay its own chromatic personality:
This is looking out towards Awashima (the island faintly visible to the center right), past some of the rocky crags in the bay. The sun was dazzlingly bright, so I snapped my shutter down pretty tight to take this one:
This is just another shot of the side of one of the inlets. Not much to comment, I'm just trying to give a good idea of what the place is like.
The most dramatic arch in the area, as far as I could tell. The tree framed through the center is typical of the pines that cling to the rocks in the area- scraggly and elegant. I may have once mentioned; the prints and drawings of Japan with it's cloud-draped mountains and gnarly, graceful pines always struck me as being highly stylized, that is, until I moved here. Granted, they are highly stylized, but once you've had a chance to watch nature at work for a bit here, you realize that the artists were really drawing what they saw more than one would have thought possible.
Sometimes your pictures contain more than you realize. I just wanted a shot from low down of the rocky coast, but I also accidentally managed to show how much of a trash-heap the coast of Japan has become. Enjoying the beauty of Japan increasingly requires strong selective attention skills, and despite the accords being signed in places like Kyoto, Japan still has a lot of work to do on environmental issues.
On a more light-hearted note, I love the signs warning of big waves along the coastal highway. The really scary thing is that during a good storm, this isn't exaggerating that much...
...nor is this one, which I'm seriously considering having made into a T-shirt.
This is exactly what you probably think it is. It's still fairly common for Japanese towns to have penis matsuri, and to parade the thing around while the local women ride it in hopes of boosting fertility. I've never been to one myself, but I think it's pretty amazing that a fertility rite like this is still practiced in ultra-modern, ultra-industrial Japan. In any event, they are still plentiful, and this one lives just off the highway near Sasagawanagare:
Finally, a shot from a high point on the mountain road we took towards the end of the day. The road proved, hilariously and after several kilometers, to be an abrupt rock-wall dead end, but some of the vistas along the way were worth it. I'll leave you with this- cloud shadows over the Sea of Japan.
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