Post by Ella The Cat Shrine at Sengan-en (mentioned by Grubb in his “Span of the clan” post) “enshrines the two cats that safely returned from the battlefield out of seven that were taken”. Were they warrior cats? I searched for an answer. It seems cats were taken to do battle with rodents. Hungry combatants…
Category: Silently in Japan
The span of the clan
The Shimazu-shi were the daimyo, or feudal lords, of Satsuma (Kagoshima), Ōsumi, and Hyūga provinces in Japan from the 13th century until the mid-19th. In other words, the Shimazu family were landholding magnates for around 500 years. The span of this clan makes European dynasties look like brief historical blips. The feudal narrative of the Shimazu clan…
Photos Sakurajima island
Post by Ella
Calculator conversion
Post by The Nerdy one Did you know…iPhone users…your built-in calculator has a currency converter. I’m not sure how often the calculator has its conversion rates updated, but most sources say once a day.
Sunday on Sakurajima
Celebrating the Day of the Dead in Mexico City, Malcolm Lowry might have been under the volcano, but after taking a ferry from Kagoshima to Sakurajima this morning, we were on the volcano. And it’s still active. After the ferry docked in Sakurajima, the island created by the volcano with the same name, we took…
Small bowls delicious
Post by Ella Kagoshima is a small town of 600,000 people. Compare that to Osaka city with nearly 3 million and Tokyo city with 14 million. Our hotel in Kagoshima is not in an area with many restaurants so we relied on google maps to locate a few choices. We walked into a tiny place…
…Yaki
Okonomiyaki is a savory Japanese pancake, usually made with a batter of flour, eggs, and dashi (Japanese broth or water), and then filled with shredded cabbage. Usually meat or seafood is folded in. Very thick. More than an inch I’d say. The topping is a Japanese mayo. Bonito flakes are available if you’d like to…
Takkyubin
Post by Ella What a deal. Luggage forwarding service (known as Takkyubin) is common all over Japan. I’ve used it three times now. From Osaka, we forwarded one suitcase to Fujiya Mae, our ryokan on our 4th night of our hike. We exchanged dirty underwear and socks for clean and stuffed little trinkets we’d picked…
Art and the inner hush
There’s always a minor sense of relief when we make it through the fleet of taxis (not to mention armada of buses) bunched around an historic site. So there was a little spring to our step leaving the Osaka Castle and trekking to the subway where we caught a metro that took us to within a…
Fron city to volcano by Shinkhansen
Post by Ella Osaka to Kagoshima, home of Mt. Sakurajima. 4 hrs 15 min. Not non stop but stops were brief. Be ready to get off (or on) the second the train stopped. One thing about going so fast (up to 200mph), it’s hard to appreciate the scenery. Quite a bit of the time we…
View from the castle keep
Yesterday morning was devoted to seeing the Osaka Castle and the National Art Museum. The castle, known for its eight story pagoda-style toshu, or castle keep, covers 15-acres with a river-size moat circling an enormous outer wall, and a smaller moat outside the inner wall. Built in the 16th century by the Toyotami clan, it was…
Bowing deer, big Buddha
Took a day trip to Nara yesterday to see the fabled bowing deer. They roam at will in a park that encloses shrines and temples and have an unusual reputation for bowing back if you bow to them first. According to the guide books, this imitative behavior has evolved over the centuries. I bowed a number of…
Riding the trains
Post by Ella Japan Railways (JR) is a mega corporation that runs the majority of train lines in Japan. There are branches: JR East, JR West, JR Hokkaido to name a few. Each has its own website and there is no unifying theme for the look and feel of the interface. There are also many smaller…
When the earth moves
Post by Ella Weather and geologic stuff happen all the time here. There is an app for that. Safety Tips gives you the latest info about earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones and volcanic eruptions. Earthquakes especially are common here and all new buildings (1990s I think and later) are superbly engineered for earthquake resilience. If you allow…
47. Good Fortune
Post by Ella Yesterday, a day trip to Nara, home to a famous deer park and several temples, shrines and gardens. At Kohfukuji, a temple that originated in 630, I paid my 200 Yen and received Good Fortune #47. Nothing goes the way you would like at first, but if you work hard perseveringly, you will…