Golden week 2014 - 4

Yesterday will come later, when I have pictures from kayaking. Today I wanted to go to cape Ahizuri but I first stopped by in Tatsukushi, a place my host recommended. This town marine world is influenced by some warm water stream and very clear water, which lets some nice corrals grow an pretty fish swim there. Through a glas bottom of a boat colors are not really pretty but the corals still look nice

The boat dropped me of at a rock an I was handed a little map, that showed a walking trail. So I followed, not really knowing, what to expect. It were really exciting rock formations. Somehow there must have been 'rock balls' with a lot of iron fallen into sand of different colors and 'baken' to stone. The continuous up and down of the sea has washed out wonderful pictures.

Even a dinosaur was hidden in the stone

And again and again these red balls

Some more sand

And here the force, that created this

Nature can also be an artist :-)

(No tricks. I removed all loose parts before I took the picture)

After a nice lunch I continued to the cape on narrow streets. I was lucky, that the street was a bit wider than here, when the bus came ;-)

The cape was nice but not so much the pictures.

But below all that Camelia trees, I passed, I found one remaining flower, that was left over from March

And last I at least visited one of the 88 temples, for which the pilgrim from all over Japan come. If I remember right, it is #38

Golden week 2014 - 2

On the next day my target was Uwajima. Instead of taking the direct way, I took a little detour. First going up North towards Iwajima. I had bought a nice scarf and I wanted to see, what else they offer. I was taking a little country road, that was passing a lot of bamboo forests. The rice fields left and right were just prepared for planting or newly planted. Close to the shop, that I visited I saw a beautifull house

From ther I was moving south west, stopping in Uchiko. This village has a beautifull Kabuki theater, which is still used.

It has the old mechanics of trap doors, where actors can be lifted up from below the stage. The seats are cushions, either four in a small box or six in a larger box.

The trap door from below in its 'up' position. It is lifted by two (or more?) men

Uchiko is famous for its wax production. I never thought about it but there is not only bee wax but also vegetable wax. There is a tree, that has berries, that contain wax. 

The berries are dried, grinded an heated to melt the wax.

With this construction the wax is extracted:

Below the stone in the middle the berries ar put. The heavy wood above is pushed down by pushing in these keys(Keile) left an right. 

The result is a greenish wax, that is bleached then to white wax in the sun. Producing wax was a lot of work but you could earn a lot of money with it. The museum, where this is show is in a house of a former wax producing family. Here some pictures of the house

Besides the theater and the wax museum there is a whole street with old style houses

In Uwajima I finished the day with a nice dinner

Golden Week 2014 - 1

First stop on this years Golden week vacation was Matsuyama. After walking up the hill to the castle on the afternoon of arrival, I decided to take the chairlift on the next morning. 

In the chairlift entrance hall I met a bunch of friendly ladies an guys from Team Camelia. They are doing English guided tours and three of them accompanied me up into the castle. The whole team you see here

The castle is very nice and definitely worth a visit. Here some pictures

 

Inside again some samples of wooden connections were on display (remember the pictures from my boon week sightseeing day in 2012)

My favorite

From the top of the castle I had a nice view over Matsuyama towards the inland sea

Coming down the hill on the other side I visited a garden, where in former times the house of The Lord was located. The walls are shown on the ground and the rooms are filled with water basins and flowers now. Around it a nice Japanese garden is arranged with refreshing water. 

The garden also had an interesting 'instrument' on display. You can listen to the sound through the pipe, that shows up in front. 

 

Here is the explanation. It sounds a bit like a Maultrommel

After some relaxing time in the garden, I visited Dogo, where the famous onsen is. First I checked out the glas museum and afterwards I took a bath in the onsen. They even have a German pamphlet, describing the different options and the procedure. Here the outside

On the way back to the hotel I saw the steam train, that is running on the tram tracks. It is a replica of German trains, that we're used earlier in the town.