Even Pooh needs a vacation now and then. Here he looks like he’s waiting his turn for a ride on the rickshaw.
By the way, see that white bird on the fence behind him? They are herons, specifically egrets. According to legend, one day an injured egret found the hot spring at Dogo and soaked in it every day for a time. Eventually he was healed. People who were watching decided there must be something special about the waters and so they too soaked in them. Soon, Dogo Hot spring (onsen) became known as a hot spring for good heath and became popular.
True? Well, maybe bits of it — who knows. Either way, you’ll find pictures of egrets all over the area in honor of this story.
More from Dogo Onsen (including an old blog post that still survives…).
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Today’s photo is of an old steam train as it leaves the station. Wait — what?
About
Matsuyama is actually one of the few Japanese cities that still has a streetcar service. This steam-train recreation runs the line once or twice every hour, taking people to the Dogo Hot-spring area.
As I’ve mentioned before, Dogo is famous for being in Soseki’s classic novel Botchan. He wasn’t too kind about the city (Matsuyama), but he enjoyed the hot springs.
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If any of our readers are interested, there is a 3-day photo workshop in Akihabara in 3 weeks. There will be 3 pros there giving various classes: Juan Pons, Hal Schmitt, and Rick Sammon. Lots of 3s, huh? I swear I didn’t do that on purpose. Anyway, I’m a huge Rick Sammon fan, so I would fully recommend going to this event just to meet him.
Anyone interested should visit photofest where you can sign up. The nice guys behind this event ask me to tell you that any signups include a free dinner with the pros on the 29th. Sweet! Check it out. If you do sign up, be sure to mention you heard about the event at JapanDave.
Daily HDR Photo — Japanese Clock Transformer
Today’s photos come to us from Dogo Onsen, the oldest hot-spring in Japan. There is this wonderful clock there that transforms and plays us a tune every half hour. (video at the end of the post, so keep reading)
About
Dogo Onsen (ohn-sen / hot-spring) is said to be over 3000 years old. It was a favorite of Prince Shotoku (574−622), who often bathed in it.
But Dogo’s biggest claims to fame are more recent.
Natsume Soseki, one of Japan’s most famous novelists, used Dogo daily when he taught at a nearby school. He featured the hot-spring in his novel Botchan. It’s one of my favorite novels. Wonderful story. I can’t recommend it enough.
The other recent claim to fame is Spirited Away, which was the highest grossing film of all time in Japan until Avatar. The design of the bathhouse of the gods featured in that movie is based on Dogo Onsen.
As you might imagine, tourism us a huge part of the town and it’s quite busy.
This clock is cool. As you can see from the two photos, there are lots of moving parts. All the characters are from Botchan, by the way.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
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Botchan Clock Video
The transformation starts about 30 seconds in.
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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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