It’s time for Golden Week once again! Not much new to add that I haven’t written about here and here, but if you want more you can always head to the hitchhikers guide to the universe – I mean, wikipedia.
This year, in order to help jump start the dying economy, the gov has cut the highway fee to just 1000 yen, or around ten bucks. What what – highway fee?! Yeah, basically all highways are toll roads here. I’ve never driven on them, but I understand they are quite expensive to use. But now it’s only ten bucks. As you might imagine, this has led to more people using them. Many, many, many more. So many, in fact, that the news reports that most of the day is one really long traffic jam.
That was before Golden Week. For Golden Week, traffic is expected to increase even more. The help combat exploding bladders, the gov has installed an additional 666 port-a-potties along the sides of the roads. (yes, I am not making this up’666. I can only guess someone in the Japanese gov is in fact the Lord of Terror). I’d sure hate to be the guy that has to clean them.
I’m going to Shikoku this year. I’m taking the night bus there rather than the train. It’s cheaper. Also, trains were fully booked about a month ago, so I missed buying my ticket. My hope is the roads are less busy at night.
Looking at this map above, Shikoku is the 2nd island from the bottom, nestled right between Kyushu (w/Nagasaki) and Honshu (big island, w/Tokyo, Kyoto, Mt Fuji, etc). It is known as being much less populated and more rural than Honshu. Everyone I tell my travel plans to expects me to get lost, because (according to them) no one will speak English and I will never be able to understand the Japanese dialect spoken there. Sounds like an adventure!
I’m planning to see a few places while in Shikoku. One of them is Dogo Onsen (hot spring) in Matsuyama, which is famous for a few reasons. The haiku poet Shiki is one, but the bigger reason is Soseki and his novel Botchan, which is generally considered one of the best fiction books in Japan, often compared to Huck Finn. Soseki taught in Matsuyama for a while, and absolutely hated it. He thought it was a backwater hell hole, more or less. Botchan is somewhat based on this and has the main character going to teach in Matsuyama and hating it. Anyways, even though Soseki is less than kind to the city, the city loves him and uses him as their claim to fame.
Anyways, I’ll have a full report when I get back.
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They probably installed 666 becasue going to a port-o-pottie is loke going to Hell.
They probably installed 666 becasue going to a port-o-pottie is loke going to Hell.
Have a nice road trip! UT
Have a nice road trip! UT
You gotta check this out if you haven’t already — a split screen video of Shatner watching the new Star Trek trailer.
http://www.riskybusinessblog.com/2009/05/star-trek-jj-abrams-trailer-and-william-shatner.html
You gotta check this out if you haven’t already — a split screen video of Shatner watching the new Star Trek trailer.
http://www.riskybusinessblog.com/2009/05/star-trek-jj-abrams-trailer-and-william-shatner.html