1000 People Tow Castle Closer to Original Position

I am fascinated by Japanese history and especially castles. The keep of Hirosaki Castle in Aomori Prefecture was moved in 2015 to repair the stone walls that supported it. After the repairs were made, the castle needed to go back to its original place.  Last Sunday, about 1,000 people towed the 400 ton keep, 109 centimeters closer to its original position. In two weekends, the aim is to move the castle about 5 meters. By end of this year, it will be moved about 78 meters to its former/original site.  How incredible it would be to help move your local castle!

This is the history of Hirosaki Castle, from the Japan Castle website:

Ooura Tamenobu was awarded the area around Hirosaki for his loyalty to Hideyoshi during the Battle of Odawara. He changed his name to to Tsugaru and started work on Hirosaki Castle in 1603. He died in 1607 and work on the castle was put on hold until his son Tsugaru Nobuhira restarted it in 1610. He finished the castle in just one year by cannibalizing materials from Horikoshi Castle and Daikoji Castle. The 3 level main keep of Hirosaki Castle seems disproportionately small when compared to the huge estate encompassed by the castle today. Hirosaki Castle was originally built with a 5 level keep which was struck by lightning and burned to the ground in 1627. The new 3 level keep is actually just the renovated Ninomaru tasumi yagura watchtower. The Tsugaru clan held the castle until the Meiji Restoration when it was taken over by the government.

Hirosaki Castle has the only extant main keep to the east of Matsumoto Castle (Nagano Pref.) making it a historical treasure of the Tohoku region. Hirosaki Castle is also famous throughout Japan for the more than 2600 cherry trees that fill its grounds today. Every spring when the trees are in bloom thousands of visitors flock to the grounds for one of Japan's finest Cherry Blossom Festivals.

All’s Well That Ends Well

 

Last week, a 1.2 meter long pet monitor lizard was reported missing in Yokohama City. The owner, a man in his 60’s, returned home and the reptile was not in its cage. 

The owner searched on his own for five days before he called the police, which prompted a police search with ten officers for days. After the pet lizard had been missing for a week, the owner called the police at 1:15 am, notifying the authorities that he had discovered the large lizard hiding in the bottom of a closet in his own apartment.  This ended the long search and public alert. 

I have heard of missing snakes or lizards several times since I’ve been in Japan. I don’t know if there are any rules about these pets. I live in a small apartment and I’d hate to think one of my neighbors’ pets escaped and could be hiding in mine.

Instant Houses

A month ago, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake hit Kumamoto Prefecture. Unfortunately, many people are still sleeping in cars and staying in evacuation centers. 

“Instant Houses” are an idea led by Keisuke Kitagawa, School of Social Engineering professor at the Nagoya Institute of Technology. By early next month, he plans to have 120 of the houses installed for disaster victims so they can begin to rebuild their lives. 

The structures take an hour or two to complete. Urethane foam, which is a heat-insulating material, is sprayed onto the inside of an inflated fire-resistant sheet, which hardens into shape. The houses are secured to the ground and can withstand winds up to 130 meters per second. They are about 4.3 meters high, and have floor space of approximately 20 square meters.

The houses are available free of charge to disaster victims, due to donated funds collected. Air conditioners are also being installed at no cost. They are built near people’s homes, so residents can maintain connections to their communities.

Japan is prone to earthquakes and other disasters. This can help people survive and rebuild for many years to come.

Don’t Text and Walk

Work In Progress Wednesday

Sneek Sampler progress

Great Wave progress

New Start - I think this will be an ornament.

Frequent Flyer Account Gets Alleged Yakuza Member Arrested

If you travel by plane a lot, it seems like a good idea to have a frequent flyer account and let the miles add up. That is, unless you are a member of the mafia crime organization known as the Yakuza in Japan. In that case, you can get arrested. 

In May of this year, the Fukuoka Prefectural Police arrested Yuta Hirayama, a 42 year old man from Onojo, Fukuoka Prefecture. His arrest document states he has no officially designated job. Police claim he is a registered member of an organized crime syndicate that is a subordinate group to the Kudo-kai, which is a Japanese mafia group based in Fukuoka. 

Here are the facts, according to the police. Between June and November of 2023, Hirayama took nine flights with a major Japanese airline (including flights between Fukuoka and Tokyo Haneda for the purpose of visiting someone in prison in east Japan). He accrued 4,224 frequent flyer miles to an account registered to his name. The problem is that the terms of service for the frequent flyer program includes a clause that says by using the program, the users profess they are not members of a criminal organization. Police claim that Hirayama, as a member of a criminal group, committed fraud by using his account to accrue miles. 

I’ve posted before about Yakuza members and mobile phone contracts and Yakuza using point cards . Any program that offers some kind of customer credit is illegal for members of crime organizations.  The “exclusion of anti-social organizations clause” is also known as the “yakuza members not allowed” rule. It is unknown if prosecutors will seek jail time, but at the very least Hirayama will forfeit his frequent flyer miles.

Monday Morning Star Count

This week’s newly made hexagons. I don’t yet have a project for them, but I am getting a good number ready for when I do.

Houdai-in Temple

After our lunch and visit to Fugetsuro, we walked to Houdai-in Temple.  

 

This looks like an unusual temple building. The first floor is the entry way and office, where you take off your shoes and pay the 500 yen entrance fee. The second floor is a temple area, where photos are allowed to be taken. The third floor is a museum of special treasures, where photos are not allowed.

This is the area around the building.

This is the second floor. There are seats and a Japanese narrative is played over a speaker system.

I think these pages are the English version of the Japanese narrative over the speaker system.

The third floor museum was interesting. It was temperature controlled, and no photos allowed.

We stopped for a cold coffee after the temple.

Finally, we stopped at the fabric shop, then headed to the train station to make our ways home. What a good day with friends!

Lunch at Fugetsuro

Thursday, I met three friends in Shizuoka City and had lunch at a historical place, called Fugetsuro. It was the home of the last Shogun, when the Meiji era began. The three screen shots below came from the Fugetsuro web site.

Lunch was fabulous, although I don’t know what all I ate. We all ordered the Irodori set. 

This might have been tofu and wasabi on top.

The bowl with the lid on the lower left was rice, with baby fish on top. The brown bowl was miso soup. The bowl in the upper right was a custard dish with shrimp and something else. In the middle is sashimi (raw fish). The middle right is tempura (battered, lightly fried items). The fan shaped plate held some vegetable/salad items in little dishes. The center front rectangle is mochi on the inside covered with seeds. The fish tasted like salmon, but I think we were told it was mountain stream trout.

The server explained the meal. One person can’t eat shrimp, so one of the dishes was made special for her without the shrimp. I don’t eat meat, so they substituted a vegetable dish for an okra dish that had a sauce or something made from meat for me.

Dessert was ice cream or something frozen.

After finishing lunch, we visited a little museum area about Tokugawa Yoshinobu. He was the 15th/last shogun. His resignation at age 30 in 1867, ended over 250 years of feudal shogunal rule and made way for the Meiji Restoration.

After looking at the museum, we took a little walk around the outside. It’s hard to believe this is in the middle of the city.

I will have another post coming soon about what we did when we left Fugetsuro.

No Violence

I have never witnessed anything like this, but apparently it happens, or there wouldn’t be these posters at train stations.