Catching Up

I am behind on blogging, partly because of internet/blogger woes, and partly because I've just been busy catching up on touristing.  The travel cold I got is still making itself known, but aside from coughing like I'm about to lose a lung, I'm pretty okay.

So, here goes!  Catching y'all up on my adventure times!  (Apologies for a lack of pictures at the moment - due to internet problems, I am currently unable to use my own computer, and it makes things a bit harder.)  These will be brief, hopefully I will have time for more details later!

First up, the prefectural museum.  This is displaying all the wonderfulness that is Tottori prefecture, presumably.  It was all in Japanese and so a little hard to fully suss out, but that's what I gather from the online tourist blurb.  There's a nature section, with like three million stuffed, mounted, lucite-encased, and otherwise preserved animals that come from this prefecture or show up in the area, or... something.  Including a giant squid.  There was a history section, which was also neat.  Then there was the art section - a special exhibition of an early 1900s impressionist called Moriyama, who did some really neat things.  There were a few other artists in the mix too, and a random section of prints of Renaissance religious paintings, and I don't know what that was about.  I really enjoyed myself, and walked around the grounds too, which are gorgeous and at the foot of a little mountain.  I got an impromptu lesson in butterfly photography by a man who spoke about as much English as I do Japanese, and he was really nice about it.  That's largely been my experience in Tottori.  Very nice people, all a little baffled as to why someone like me would show up to do sightseeing.

Next, Hiroshima.  We went for the weekend, to both be tourists and so I could get firsthand ideas of how the face of nuclear anxiety was shaped at its source.  That meant we went to the Peace Park and museum, and I think it's really good to have been.  Not all easy, especially not when you're staring at things that belonged to people who died from radiation exposure, but good to see and to know, and most importantly in my case, to read how it's presented in English.  Interestingly, where Tokyo was almost devoid of Westerners, there were a lot in Hiroshima, and in the museum especially.  Our pick-me-up after that was visiting Miyajima, which is an island full of pretty.  It has a big famous torii gate out in the middle of the water, and we visited so we could take sunset pictures, and it was just gorgeous.  It was all really nice.  Also, we met a girl who was there because the husband of a friend of hers plays for the Hiroshima Carps baseball team.  Her name was Britney, and... well, she was a Britney.  She had been in Japan two weeks already and only in Hiroshima at that, and she hadn't been much of anywhere, or eaten anything all that new.  Cale and I had no idea how you could maintain that bubble, but Britney did.

Then we had to go back to Tottori - the bus trip is not a short one - and today, while Cale was at work, I hiked the mountain.  I am hoping to show pictures later, but Mount Kyusho is really gorgeous, covered in that sort of ur-forest that I always imagined in fantasy books. It isn't a tall mountain, so making it to the top is really pretty quick, but there's not a lot of lateral looping back and it's pretty much all steep upward movement, which for someone recovering from a cold is an adventure in and of itself.  Cale was pretty sure I might get eaten or attacked by wild animals, a fear not totally unjustified as there are bears, boars, snakes, and other things in the region, but there are bears, mountain lions, and rattlers back home. I did see a snake, but we went our separate ways.  My crowning achievement was in seeing, on my downward trip, something that honest to goodness scares the shit out of me.  I didn't even know they existed until a couple years ago.

I bet you all think you've seen a big wasp.  Maybe even a tarantula hawk.  And they are indeed big.

But Japan has the biggest wasps in the world, and not only are they enormous, they are notoriously aggressive once pissed off.  The Japanese Giant Hornet does not screw around - one or two can decimate an entire hive of honey bees in a matter of minutes, and its size means that a single sting injects enough venom to necessitate hospital treatment.  I don't get on with wasps, and so knowing these existed was bad enough.  Knowing they existed here, in rural Tottori, was also bad.  And then I saw one.  And didn't run screaming like a little girl.  Hoorah.

Sorry this is all so brief and photoless - if I get some internet back soon, I will remedy that!