Adventures in Japan

Day Fifteen: Meiji Mura and the Fishing Birdsof Inuyama

Meiji Mura is a collection of buildings and structures from the Meiji time period.

The Meiji era was a very interesting time for Japan. The country had finally opened its borders to the world and was trying to play catch-up. It was a time of rampant rapid modernization. An interesting, interesting time. Fairly boring buildings. They look like English buildings. Which I have seen before.

There were some cool buildings. A nice church. A cool corner of a bank. A pretty bridge.


But Carla and I were expecting more of a... fusion? A meeting of, a merging of East and West. There was one building, a summer house, that was like that.


It was a western style house, but with all sorts of lovely little Japanese touches.


But most buildings were just boring. Nice. Some were nice to look at, but boring. The surrounds were lovely as well, but...


And Frank Loyd Wright's amazing Imperial Hotel was there as well. It wasn't East meets West, it wasn't East or West. It was all Wright. So many little nooks and crannies and angles and spaces of beauty.

The whole open air museum was beautiful but blah.


Inu means dog and yama means mountain, but we didn't see either in Inuyama. Luckily, we weren't there to see mountains or dogs. Or the castle which I am sure is very nice. We were there to see the cormorants. The fishing birds.

I'm sure you've all heard of the fishing birds. They're kind of a big deal.

Let's hit the highlights. Dudes catch birds. Dudes train birds. Dudes tie thin ropes around birds' necks. Birds catch fish. Dudes yank on ropes. Birds puke fishes.


Maybe some stuff you didn't know; once in captivity, Cormorants don't reproduce. (On a related note) After centuries of training and using these birds, their trainers still can't tell the difference between male and female. Cormorants always swallow fish head first, if they catch a fish by the tail, they'll throw the fish up in the air and swallow them head first.

One other thing, just about as soon as they started fishing with birds the fishermen realized that it was a really inefficient way of fishing. Bust also really interesting to watch. All sorts of big mucky mucks through the years have enjoyed floating down the river and watching the birds do their thing.

We are not all that mucky, but we still enjoyed the spectacle. The evening was nice and pleasant, weather wise. Watching the world around us slide from dusk to darkness from just a few inches above the (surprisingly smooth) river was an experience we'd like to repeat. And the birds were cute.


I don't like birds, in general. They're unpredictable, quick, they have too many pointy bits and not enough brains. Ducks, however, are okay. Not a lot of pointy bits and they're cute. Cute counts for a lot. Cormorants are close enough to ducks to get a pass from me. A lot of the kids on this bird watching tour called them cute. "Kawaii!" they would say.


Those kids were not on our boat. There were not all that many people on our boat. That was nice. The whole thing was nice. Watching cute birds catch fish by firelight is a pretty decent way of spending an evening.