Quick spin

Here is a nice ** collage ** as they say. There is a few rogue images in there, I will allow you to hunt them down. One is of a cherry blossom located fairly close by which is 1100 years old, apparently, by the name of garyuzakura, well recommend it it is a mad looking thing. Cherry blossoms only lasted about 10 days, fairly shortlived but impressive of course. They are absolutely everywhere, along rivers etc so you can't miss them. This one was pretty cool though. Next triplet of images is from a museum, run by what is clearly a cult. They have a full on shrine/monument/tabernacle of sorts (pictured) dedicated to the founder who apparently received the light of god at some point and healed a dog? Subsequently set up a nice little (profitable) religion and built the weirdest looking pyramidical/meso-american looking monument with a museum inside. Oddest looking thing I've seen here, juts out from the landscapre, horrible atmosphere around it, big feck off plaza and car park (empty) weird looking domes and then on the inside a hollow pyramid with a little fountain in the middle. Weird, unsettling but quite cool as well, worth a look just for the oddity of it. Hikaru museum is the name of the place and they had an exhibition for the painting you see there, a famous one i believe by Hokusai. Inside of the museum is a little section explaining the cult (mahikari) and a whole corridor repeating it's belief system. Odd Sukyo Mahikari - Wikipedia. Interesting beliefs but at the end of the day, like all good organised religion, a well designed scheme to accumulate resources and influence. Takayama is a lot nicer now that winter has passed, will do more local reporting in the coming weeks.

Quick spin down the country there

111888 on the km counter.

We were lucky enough to have a 4 day weekend so I went for a little spin down the country. Tried avoiding the main toll roads which extended the length of the journey considerably. the road system seems to be tiered with each tier taking basically double the time, toll roads, national roads and local/regional roads is what i could gather.

First stint, went about 8 hours led me to a place called tottori where i slept in the car, in a very classy manner of course. Tottori is famous for sand dunes. these are nice, managed to get up there at sunrise. Next stretch, about another 8/9 hours was to a nice little place called shimonoseki which is a real treat of a town, located right at the bottom of the main island, cool scenery across the water. There were some pretty cool roads along the coastal stretch to here, felt like driving in a computer game or something, had to maintain a decent speed and the road markings were all glowing, luminous orange and the whole view in front and above was neon advertisements and flashing road signs, of course everything in kanji so the brain was blown off me, lads overtaking me on harley davidsons with led strips on the bikes and everything, very strange and surreal. Had enough time in shimonoseki to wander across to the island of ganryujima which is where Miyamoto Musashi beat his rival Kojiru to death with a rowing oar he had fashioned into a longer sword of some description. He famously turned up 3 hours late to trigger the other guy and then gave him a slagging to further perturb him. The island is located in the juncture between the main island  honshu and the southern island kyushu. It is a really interesting view, both of the bigger landmasses seem to wrap around it, like tails intertwining. nice view to bleed out to no doubt. apparently it was actually named in memory of the swordstyle of the defeated geezer which is a nice (possibly morbid) way to honour him. Get back on the road for another stint.

There is a striking contrast between the urban, suburban and rural. The landscape drifts between rice fields, long stretches of convenience stores and actual towns and cities. Quite striking coastal views contrasted with areas of decay, shut down hotels, shops and boarded up houses, remnants of places that used to breathe and live but now just lie abandoned in favour of greyer, more industrial stretches. Apartment blocks nested behind kilometres worth of fast food chains and 7-elevens, houses for the 24 hour staff, serving a constant stream of commuters busily motoring to and from god only knows where for whatever reason. Miles of 1.5 lane tarmac strips running along dams, lakes, rivers and canals. Small towns with no shops, just houses and a single glowing vending machine. Small shrines tucked up the side of a hill, hours of anonymous road forested on either side. Bendy bypasses tracking alongside a gorge cut through basalt, leading into heavily trafficked industrial estates. 6 lane roads bordered on either side by glowing neon narrowing into 2 lanes winding through dark valleys. Stretches with bountiful petrol stations, cars on all sides followed by hours of sleepy villages where you pass by one set of headlights. Oppurtune moments to join highways, pick up speed and disembark before the next toll gate into quiet stretches of what could be a road in any countryside across the world. Edging along in traffic at 20 alongside lamborghinis and porsches in the outskirts of a city or tracking along at well over 100 behind another kei car in some quiet valley. Strange contrasts all the way along.

Next stint, about 6 hours, manage to reach Nagasaki under cover of darkness and sleep in the car, again in the classiest way possible. Awake to find myself at the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea, always nice. Head into the city and visit the peace park. Fairly grim kind of atmosphere despite the good weather. a lot of eager tourists taking photos etc, quite the contrast imagining the place flattened less than a hundred years ago and now a full city sprang back up around the exact same spot. They have a nice observation deck on the top of the peace museum with a photo of the city in the aftermath lined up with the current landscape, real testament to the ethic. The images and stories in the museum are fairly nasty of course. Wiping out a croke park worth of people with one bomb is quite a dramatic way to resolve a dispute. It is hard to believe only a single lifetime has passed since then. 80 odd years ago there were millions of people compelled to murder each other, and the logical escalation was to start wiping out entire cities, on both sides. Difficult to consider there was a fairly significant reason the bombs were dropped, there was some sort of a machine in action that was responsible for millions of dead and was not displaying the signs of stopping - so at a certain point the unfortunate logic is to be more efficient in stopping it. Doesn't justify any of it but there was a reason. Fairly shitty morning for a lot of children and pensioners though. hard to wrap the head around the scale of the whole thing, how many people were involved on all sides and the sheer confusion from the bottom all the way to the top. decision making and mistakes with the most severe consequences at every level. Some grim enough testimonials from the people who survived the bomb, suffering for years from radiation etc. They had a clock which had been broken and stuck at the exact time of the explosion which was dark enough. lots of artifacts displayed that you could touch to see the impact of the heat and radiation, melted glass and radiated metals etc, can't imagine what the impact on the human physique would have been in reality, though they displayed plenty of images. One particularly grim spectacle of a swath of charred children among a flattened landscape. Plenty of actual informative things in there as well describing the mechanisms and science behind it, most went over my head but it is mad to see the sophistication of the physics of the inner bomb then the crude way it was detonated and assembled. It is a significant threshold that was crossed at that point. Think they could expand the whole museum or make a new thing around it, leading up to it almost, to serve as a memorial to the whole disaster of 1937-45, think the the context is pretty important to understand, it is not an isolated event but a descending staircase of decisions and actions that lead people to justify and carry out the next step on the stairs. Maybe they have it there and i missed it, i passed through it fairly quickly. can imagine some of the emotional impact of it would be lost though if every event was detailed in a linear way, you would probably be fairly numb by the time you reached 1945. Might help with perspective on the other hand.

Along all these stretches one of course needs to take a break lest you lapse yourself into the side of a wall. Fear not, as there always seems to be a fecking shop except for the most remote sections. 24hr convenience stores, which are quite literally like a rash across the country. All stocked with essentially the same materielle and almost always fully stocked no matter where, staffed by sometimes bewildered, sometimes completely numb masked workers. Seemingly not the kindest or most glamorous profession to get involved in but seemingly very necessary to the functioning of the whole system. Sandwiches and rice balls, bento boxes and noodle dinners, endless supply of red bulls, monsters and coffees, it is somewhat baffling to consider just how many resources are put through these shops alone. They say there is roughly 50-60,000 such stores, open 24 hours in the country. Chatgpt estimates roughly 26 billion calories on any given day, obviously a ridiculous rough estimate but still. Can't imagine how many kilos of plastics, papers etc just to wrap the calories in. Bizarre to try consider how this is sustained, ongoing year round for so long. That is just one section of consumption, in one country, expand it out to everything else (soap, cigarettes, tissues, socks, toothpaste) and the scale of our collective operations are really unbelievable. You would think ' oh gosh we must be eating everything up' but alas we seem to be able to continue for the time being. There seems to be plenty more to eat up for them moment nomnom

Anyway, on the road for about 8 hours and head for another cheery place, Hiroshima. Nice town, similar to Osaka little bit on a smaller scale, bit looser and not as clean. Nice covert nap in a car park after a sampling of the local fare, dish called okonomiyaki with noodles in it, thick fried rashers and lettuce with some sort of savoury sauce on top. Head in for another grim display of dead children and complete devastation in the early hours. Same sort of grim stories etc, a little bit more raw and less educational pieces, lots of art from the survivors, not pretty in any way, very raw and guttural. depictions of hordes of people with their flesh falling away, burn marks, eyes popping out etc. Wouldn't be considered romantic or anything like that. They had some interesting shots of the actual mushroom cloud on the morning, from a guy who was a few miles away. Quite a distinctive image in the collective consciousness now, very strange to consider we live under the possibility of seeing them again at any point. 1000 years ago or even 100, if people saw that image they would think nothing of it, have no reference for it. It's been so beaten into us now that we mostly all know exactly what it represents and we carry on with it always there knowing the possibility. I wonder was it necessary in some way, like some sort of perverted Aztec human sacrifice ritual, to have this massive event 80-90 odd years ago to scar us collectively, shake us out of the traditional notion of conquest and direct that energy into a more productive or progressive method of competing. you have to wonder if that wears off in some way, will we go at it again when we forget or will a new habit have formed. hard to know. Nice view of the atomic dome on the opposite side of the river to it, they've done a great bit of preservation on it. Place survived a nuke so can't imagine they need to do all too much but its still a nice monument. Of course in both places the overriding message is peace above all, message is fairly well presented, lots of art pieces and messages etc. It is a fairly significant piece of human history, even for the most hawkish i can imagine it would have some impact. I only realised while there that it is the 80th anniversary this year, good time to visit either of them I think for anyone who has the oppurtunity. Plenty of events to be held, pretty significant ones as well. Could be nice for all the lads who are scrapping to go and see what the escalation logic leads to.

Head back to Takayama on a bit of a marathon drive through the dark, 15 hours total but probably longer with breaks to stretch the legs etc. Hilarious sign reading chinese food 'san cock' , i read it as 'sans cock' and thought i really hope so, what sort of chinese food have i been eating so far? One particular stretch where you can really eat up road, would be nice with a decent car i think, route 1 from the outskirts of kyoto. Nice long straight stretches, some serious zigzagging ascents and descents through hills, big meandering turns through small towns and farmland, tight turns through forests, really nice. Acquainted myself with a few friendly deer along the way as well. Last 40 minutes to Takayama of course started to run out of fuel for the first time so a bit of a sweaty last stretch to the closest petrol station, lot of coasting down hills etc.

Back to takayama, early hours, fairly whalloped.

114086 on the km counter

Testament to the Suzy

A lot of internet chatter advising against bringing this beaut of a car on long spins, warnings of belts snapping etc etc. Lot of advice against driving long distances alone in such a vehicle. If this was a horse, it'd be hardy little mongol pony. Low horsepower but absolutely insane endurance. Not a single complaint from her for the whole 2000 odd kilometres. Trucking along nicely the whole way, no issues whatsoever. Bit cramped for sleeping in but a nimble little thing, easily manoeuvred in and out of all sorts of parking spots, corners and traffic lanes. Comfortably go about 100 in it though the suspension not all that on the bumpier sections. Anything over 100/110 and it does start to feel as though the tyres could just fly off at any point. But no, no issues. I imagine there are about 100 alternate realities where i am lying mangled in a horrific crash somewhere but not this one :D Great car would recommend for any length of trip. Whoever gets the car next will undoubtedly begrudge it's small yet noisy engine, moped wheels and grating gear changing mechanism, but I do believe it has a character and a charm all it's own. It accelerates like it wants to be a bigger machine, brakes aggressively and smoothly at all the right times, corners like a bike and fits pretty much anywhere you need it to. It is cheeky as well, it wants to be driving fast when it can, it can sit comfortably in its gears up to about 120 though the body does protest. Truly it's soul is stuck in the wrong body. I can only imagine the bond between a horse and rider back in the day if humans can grow so sentimental and attached to an inanimate piece of metal and plastic. It is a powerful concept though, it can deliver you to food, deliver food to you and bring you from place to place as required with little more than the turn of a key (and a lot of things i do not understand with fuel and gears etc). I imagine many people throughout history were praying for some sort of protective metal moving beast when their village was raided or word came of some horde over the next hill. Imagine the extra chaos if they had cars instead of just plain old feet. Anyway, Suzuki Cervo is great, i imagine it is a serious value purchase at the minute considering they went out of production 2006 or something, nearly a vintage car by now. I have the feeling though, this particular cervo has been on many a quiet adventure during it's 100k odd kilometres. Some mysterious aura in it, whispering that this wasn't the first bit of fun it's had. It did have a certain look to it when we went to choose our vehicles - it was sat in a dark corner, almost blending in to the shadows, almost completely looked over in favour of the more prominent SUVs, minivans and flashy nissans. It was sitting there waiting for another run, hopefully not it's last stint either. Plenty more in it.