After having seen a concert on Sunday night in Miyajima, we stayed overnight and enjoyed the town the next day.
Miyajima is a very nice, quaint area that's been popular for tourists for over a thousand years, so I was surprised to find that it was not hyper-commercialized and disgustingly crowded. I'm sure it helped that we were there on a weekday, but in any case, it was clean, pleasant, and real. The bench scene that I posted yesterday tells a lot, I think.
Since Fumie's mom was looking after Anthony (thank you, thank you, thank you!), Fumie and I were free to enjoy the area at our leisure, and it felt like a 2nd honeymoon.
There's a ropeway that goes toward the top of Mt. Misen, the tallest mountain on the island, so we decided to give that a try. Most of the streets in the little town are pleasant, but the one that leads toward the ropeway happens to be particularly nice.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 60mm — 1/250 sec, f/4.8, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Road Leading to the Ropeway
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Heading Up
The ropeway is in two parts (elevation sectional view), the first going up 300m over a distance of about 1.1 km (two thirds of a mile), then a section that goes up 70m in about half the distance. The picture below is just before arriving at the transfer spot, looking back down.
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Looking Back
Once you arrive at the top of the ropeway, it's a short hike to a local summit that has a very nice view, at about 450m above sea level.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 18mm — 1/1000 sec, f/7.1, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Shishi-iwa (“Lion Rock”) Observation Area, 448m
(All these images are geoencoded, but note that the location as shown on Google satellite maps is off by about 100m for the ones up on the mountain. I'd guess this is because the satellite was not looking absolutely straight down, and so there are some major Parallax errors.)
Despite having spent 1,800 yen ($15) each for the ropeway, it doesn't actually bring you to the top of the mountain. For that you have to hike about 1.3 km further. It's not a difficult hike in the sense that the path is completely improved the whole way, with stairs where needed. The problem is the “where needed” is much of the way, as you have to first lose about 30m of elevation, then over the last short distance climb 125m of elevation.
So, in one sense, it's no harder than taking the stairs to the 41st floor (after having started on the 10th floor, and gone down to the ground floor).
It's more interesting than climbing stairs, of course. There's a temple along the way, and interesting rock formations, such as this one close to the top...
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Watch your Head
The Kuguri-iwa — くぐり岩 — “Duck-under Rock”
Once at the top (535m), you're treated to a horrid sight, but I'll save that for later. The view of the surroundings is wonderful.
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View From the Top
The building complex in the lower-left of the picture above is the ropeway terminal building. The little clearing to its upper-right is the Shishiiwa Observation Area (mentioned a couple of pictures earlier).
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Well-Earned View
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Me and Fumie
kindly taken by an Australian wearing a silly hat
The sort-of clearing at the top had some huge boulders which, I imagine, were the very top, but where mostly inaccessible. Some college-age kids had climbed onto them, and feeling young myself, I put my ancient rock-climbing skills to the test and joined them. (I used to go rock climbing quite a bit before I got married, but gave it up because I worried that the rock would scuff my wedding ring.)
One of the guy's girlfriend extended the legs on her camera's tripod to extend her reach, and handed it up to them. The picture I took of the scene came out interesting, I think....
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Extended Reach
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View From the Very Top
The aforementioned “horrid sight” is a notably ugly concrete-and-rust building at the summit. Only in Japan could you spend hours hiking through pristine forests, past quaint temples, through and around interesting natural rock formations, only to finally arrive at the most ugly, most inappropriate building you could imagine.
There was one worker there, an older gentleman who likely spends most of his time smoking and feeding the deer, occasionally selling beer, sodas, ice-cream, and other snacks to the steady trickle of tourists that make it that far. He said that he hikes up and down every day, and doesn't use the ropeway.
I'm sure that he gets more business on weekends and holidays. I've seen pictures of the summit just packed with people.
On the way back down, I noticed someone else trying to negotiate the boulders, without success....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 22mm — 1/1600 sec, f/8, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 18mm — 1/80 sec, f/8, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Back at the Ropeway
About to head down
On the car ferry for the short trip to the mainland, I took a picture that shows much of the first part of the ropeway....
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Mt. Misen Ropeway, as Seen From 2km Away
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Bench
Miyajima, Japan
The short path on Miyajima Island that fronts the ocean between the Itsukushima Shrine (厳島神社、宮島, where we saw Kousuke Atari in concert), and our hotel (Kinsuikan Inn — 錦水館) was lined with benches and large stone lanterns.
Deer run wild over the whole island.
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A small part of
Itsukushima Shrine (厳島神社、宮島), Miyajima Japan
during low tide
As I mentioned yesterday, we went to Miyajima on Sunday to see Kousuke Atari (中孝介) in concert at the Itsukushima Shrine (厳島神社), a large complex almost completely over the water when the tide is in. In the picture above, which I took the morning after the concert when the tide was out, you can see the piers and such.
The concert was in the open air away from the building, on a little dais you can sort of see in the center of the picture.
Photography was not permitted during the concert, so I didn't bring my camera, but before he took the “stage” (the dais was pretty small) I snapped a picture with my archaic cell phone....
We were the 6th row back; the stage is just in front of the people on the right.
It's been ages since I've seen a live music concert, much less a pop music one. The audience had people of all ages, from children to the elderly with walkers, split about evenly down gender lines. For what I could tell, I was the only person (out of about the 800 in attendance) who clearly looked “not Japanese.”
The singer, Kousuke Atari, is from a relatively small island way in the south of Japan (Amami Ooshima) with its own indigenous language and culture that was mostly stamped out during the earlier half of the previous century. Coincidentally, Fumie's grandmother is also from there, and apparently when she was a little girl, kids would be punished for speaking the local dialect.
Times are different now, and the area's uniqueness is embraced. Part of his draw is that before he became famous, he spent years studying the local singing style, and now incorporates that into his more mainstream music.
He has an interesting quality about his voice in that he sometimes sounds as if he's harmonizing with someone else. Listening to his CDs, I thought it was two people harmonizing until I saw him sing live a cappella. You can sort of get a feel for the effect in this snippet from one of his songs.
His music tends to be more meaningful and less fluffy than a lot of pop music, and his image is that of a clean-cut regular guy instead of some kind of gimmicky/sexy put-on. His music is his image, I guess.
Currently, his most-popular song is “Hana” (花, “flower”), a song about not losing hope, and that even in this modern age you can rely on the basic kindness. (If you like, you can hear a snippet of the end of the song, or see a snippet of the video.)
Anyway, the Itsukushima Shrine concert was labeled “acoustic live,” and featured just him, a piano player, and a guitar player. It was very nice. He even did Ave Maria in Latin.
He maintains a blog, and later wrote about how much he enjoyed the concert and location. It's rare for the shrine to host events like that, much less pop music events. Itsukushima Shrine is a designated Japanese National Treasure and an UNESCO World Heritage Site. It indeed would have been special to an artist to be allowed to sing there.
He had to have done it for the privilege, because he almost certainly saw no profit from it. I chatted the next morning with someone from the local equipment-rental staff, who told me that they had 800 chairs prepared for the event. At 6,500 yen ($56) for a ticket, the event would have grossed about $45,000, only about $5,000 more than the guy estimated it cost to rent the equipment and pay the shrine. Subtract from that the marketing costs, the slice given to the ticket vendors, transportation and accommodation for everyone, and I can't imagine it's a profitable event. Well, at least, not monetarily.
I took a walk the next morning and found the aforementioned equipment-rental staff packing up the chairs and such...
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Hauling Stuff
while a dragon looks on
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Packing Up
(view from the side)
They took the opportunity of low tide to drive out onto the intertidal zone to make the job easier.
A few pretty pictures....
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Side View
(the dais is on the right; our seats were about where the guy facing away is standing)
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Front View Closeup
At the highest of high tides, the water comes right to the tops of these boards
Walking around the shrine to the back, you could see the little tent used as the room for the event staff and the artist before/after the concert, on a little patch that's always above water.
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View from the Back
The big orange gate in the background is the main gate for the shrine, and is out in the middle of the water when the tide is in. It's brilliantly lit up at night, but was at our backs during the concert. The singer had a direct view during the whole concert, which he said he really enjoyed.
Of course, we really enjoyed it as well, both before and after the concert, and the next day. It looks small in the picture above, but dominates much of the area, and is the world famous symbol for Miyajima, one of the historically “three beautiful scenes” of Japan. I took a bazillion pictures of it that will be appearing on my blog shortly....
Fumie and I just got back from an overnight trip to Miyajima (宮島, an island near Hiroshima), having seen pop singer Kousuke Atari (中孝介) in concert last night on the grounds of the famous Itsukushima Shrine (厳島神社).
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 18mm — 4.4 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Outer Buildings of Itsukushima Shrine
after the concert
I say “on the grounds” figuratively, since the entire shine — first built about 1,400 years ago, but having taken its present shape only 840 years ago — is on piers over the water. Well, at least while the tide is in. The concert was held in the open, just on the other side of the center buildings in the picture above.
After the concert, we walked around and I took some pictures. Fumie got used to waiting for the long exposures. (The shot below was a 10-second exposure.)
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 18mm — 10 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Waiting
It was a 5-hour drive back, and we're a bit tired, but it was a wonderful trip about which I'll write more later.
Continuing with the Fall Color Preview from last week, here are a few more from Kyoto last year.
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A Touch of Orange
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Konpukuji Temple
(related post)
The next few pics are from Enkouji Temple, where I took many of the pictures that appeared in last year's Fall Foliage Desktops post.
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Enkouji Garden
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To Each Their Own
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Everyone's a Photographer
The next shot is of one of the fusuma (sliding doors) inside the temple.
The next shot is representative of a common scene around town, with many colors mixed together.
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Lotsa' Colors
The problem is getting a nice shot without wires, poles, signs, and other visual litter. Here's a wider shot of the same scene, showing that the colors extend quite a ways both directions, but so does the reach of the wires. You don't really notice the wires and such when you're there because you've long learned to tune them out, but you can't tune them out of a photo, so it's a common letdown for me to find a wonderful scene only to find that it crumbles when I try to look at it with an eye for capturing it on film.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/180 sec, f/11, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Pretty, Sort Of
The next picture, of a monk walking under a canopy of yellow, is from outside the forsaken dorm (Kyoto University's Kumano Dorm). The lighting was a bit flat, but perhaps some of the beauty shows through.
