Adventures in Japan

Three French Hens

Today was to be one of our few laid-back, relaxing kind of days on this holiday trip, so what happens? I wake up at seven and can't fall back asleep. Figures.

Today we went to Shikoku-mura. It's a park that contains recondtructions of traditional buildings from all over Shikoku and surrounds. I'll guide you through some of the highlights.

The first thing we encountered was a vine bridge. These were used in the mountainous areas of this region. They were also scary as hell if the one we crossed today is any indication.

This is the bridge:


These are the gaps on the bridge:

This is my foot in relation to the gaps in the bridge:


Not cool, man, not cool. Especially if this was above mountain chasms, man.

This is an ancient Kabuki theatre:


There were a lot of old houses that had been moved from wherever and relocated to this park. A lot of these houses had straw roofs. Very thick straw roofs.

This is a picture of my hand and a straw roof:


This is an old Japanese residence, inhabited by freaky clay people about to be abducted by aliens:


There was a lot of meandering up and down and all around within this park. Attached to this park was a small gallery designed by the same guy who designed most of the galleries/museums we went to yesterday. Tadao Ando! That's the guy's name. Anyhoo... this gallery was quite small. No, sorry, the gallery was big and industrial looking, but the amount of artwork contained within was fairly paltry. Luckily there was also a waterfall garden complete with a nice view of the city.

This is not a nice picture of the nice view we had:


The city is bigger than it seems. Not that you can tell.

So. The waterfall garden. There were waterfalls and there were roses. Here are some roses:


And here is a rose with a waterfall in the background:


The garden was kinda cool. You notice that the sound of the water gets louder the farther down in to the garden you go. But it is really noticeable when you work your way back up. The sound gets less and less with every stair you climb.

This is a picture of a lighthouse from an island that officially did not exist during the war:


In addition to the lighthouse, there were lighthouse keeper houses on display. They were all designed by some British dude. The walls were 60 cm thick. That made for some interesting windows.

This is a picture of the vats they used to use when brewing soy sauce:


I put an empty can of cola (Bingo Bongo grape cola) in the frame to give you an idea of the size of the vats. To give you an idea of the size of the can of cola: it was the size of your face!

We saw a lot of other cool stuff. We also debated doing other things, but decided to take it easy. We had a couple of fantastic sandwiches and some awesome udon (seriously, our food has all been great in Takamatsu) and then settled in for a long night of blogging.

And now the blogging is done and the sleeping can begin!