18 November 2015
Flood
A day trip to Iwakuni to walk over the bridge and see the castle
Now its really really raining. Enough for the streets to be flooded. At least flooded to the point they would be considered flooded in Adelaide, probably not Japanese flood level.
Bravely, or much more correctly, foolishly, I decided to go to Iwakuni anyway, to see a bridge and a castle, because thats what you do in Japan.
Super foolishly, I decided to walk from Iwakuni station to the main area of tourism interest, in the pouring rain, despite there being nuerous buses available. How else would I get to see Iwakuni?
To say I got wet would be an understatement, my jacket was soaked through and I was quite concerned my camera would break, my phone is waterproof, so that would be ok.
Eventually, I was wet enough that it no longer mattered, so I stupidly decided to walk up the big hill to the castle, along unmarked paths, is this where I slipped over? Of course not.
Despite the path I took up to the castle being dark, in cloud, with water running down the mud, I remained upright here. However I later took a hilarious spill down a wooden ramp in the castle car park.
Luckily there was absolutely no one around to see me. My knee now hurts, but I think its just bruised cause it hurts no more or less when bending it or walking on it.
I quite enjoyed taking photos of clouds on the ground.
When I left Hiroshima, I had convinced myself that by the time I got off the train at Iwakuni the weather would be clearing. So very wrong.
The main street here has nice covered footpaths so you dont have to get wet. So I stood out in the middle of the road in the now DRIVING rain to take a photo of the dry areas.
I thought I would stop for a coffee somewhere and see if the weather got any better, however I think everything is shut due to rain. Is that possible?
Iwakuni is also a U.S. air force base. So theres streets full of places welcoming Americans with underage Japanese schoolgirls.
I dont think too many tourists walk from the main station to the tourist area, it was full of rubbish.
Eventually I re found the right area, I climbed up an overpass in the rain to check I was on the right path. The extremely detailed tree manicuring along the street told me this was the way.
And heres the bridge. Its been reconstruted recently. Originally it was all wood but kept washing away. Also in the times before tourism, only Samurai could cross. Now you can pay $4 to walk over it. I didnt.
You can just see the castle on the top of the hill behind the bridge.
Instead of paying to walk over, I walked a couple of hundred metres upstream to the next bridge which had no fee to cross. Captain tightarse reporting for duty.
The samurai compound has many nice trees and gardens.
There is a cable car to the top, but no, I was too proud to use it. Instead I had to look around for a path of some description to walk up in the flood.
Eventually I found one behind this temple.
In the rain, the path was quite challenging despite not being very far.
The cloud made for an interesting experience.
Redundant photo from the only clearing on the way up.
And heres Japan standard castle recreation version 9.3d.
This particular one was built in the 1950's and is based on an original that only stood nearby for 7 years.
The samurai were banished to this part of Japan, but were not allowed to have castles. They built one anyway, but the emperor made them destroy it.
I had to wake up the guy selling tickets, I had the whole place to myself. So no one was going to stop me taking photos today. Actually they allow photos in this castle. There were many swords.
View back down to the bridge.
A castle to myself is an opportunity to take one of my signature photos.
Really raining hard now. If you look to the right of the bridge (I have zoomed in), you can see all the cars and buses and whatever parked in the river. They were brave doing this on a day like today I thought.
Time for one last photo of an impressive garden before I put my camera away and jogged / swam back to the station.