A couple of weeks ago I mentioned cycling through southeastern Fukuoka. Tonight I’m a bit pressed for time so I’m only posting one photo and what I foresee as very little commentary.
Category Archives: Cycling
A Cycling Milestone
Today we made a day trip to Hiroshima and back. We toured through the A-Bomb Memorial Museum in the morning and then visited Miyajima, which is famous for the huge toriii in the sea. I’ll write about the trip once I’ve had some sleep and some time to organize the photos. In the meantime, here’s a snippet of data about my neglected cycling life.
Rural Kitakyushu: Nishi Ono Hachiman Shrine, Part 4
The saga is coming to an end. This is the last installment about Nishi Ono Hachimangu, and unless I run out of other things to write about, it’s the last post about my April 30th bike trip through parts of rural Kitakyushu. We’ll look at some small outlying buildings and altars, as well as the forest setting of this shrine in one of the farming areas of Kokura-minami.
Rural Kitakyushu: Nishi Ono Hachiman Shrine, Part 3
This is the third installment about Nishi Ono Hachimangu, a shrine in one of the farming areas of Kokura-minami. There’s a photo honouring the previous emperor, speculation about the motives of the people who take care of shrines, plus detail shots of drums, lamps, and the underside of a building.
Rural Kitakyushu: Nishi Ono Hachiman Shrine, Part 2
Today you get to read the second part of my feature on Nishi Ono Hachiman Shrine in Kokura-minami. You can expect some standard interior views of a traditional Shinto shrine, as well as an aviation surprise at the end.
Rural Kitakyushu: Nishi Ono Hachiman Shrine, Part 1
Remember the frogs? I found them behind the main buildings of Nishi Ono Hachinmangu (西大野八幡宮, West Big Field Hachiman Shrine), which is the topic of today’s post. As with the Nanae Falls, I have a whole lot of photos so I’m splitting the post into sections. Today’s entry is all about the outsides of the buildings.
Rural Kitakyushu: Sevenfold Waterfalls Part 2
This is the second in a two-part entry about the Sevenfold Waterfalls (Nanae Falls) in Dobaru, Kokura-minami. Today is the grand finale, with photos of the tallest waterfall of the bunch. You also get to see a picture of me. If you haven’t read it, you might want to have a look at yesterday’s post, where I talk about most of the stages of these waterfalls, as well as the challenges of the trail.
Rural Kitakyushu: Dammed Rivers
Take the many rivers and mountains of Japan, a large pool of available labour, and a government with a rural power base and a tendency to sponsor megaprojects, and you get expressways to nowhere and dams and reservoirs everywhere. Yesterday I wrote about a super-intense fisherman I saw in one section of the Masubuchi Reservoir. Today I’ll write some more about the reservoir and its associated dams.
Rural Kitakyushu: Reservoir Mobs
I’m mostly back, but don’t have much time to write. So tonight I’m just going to make a quick post of a couple of pictures. They’re from the Masubuchi Reservoir which is in Kokura-minami and has a couple of dams, a suspension bridge, at least one turtle, and from the numbers of fishermen around, probably a good number of fish.
Rural Kitakyushu: An Old Ladies’ Farming Club
As any of the locals will tell you, Japan has four distinct seasons. It’s late spring here, which means that some fields are planted and others are being prepared for crops. Today, in this fourth set of pictures from my April 30th bike trip, I’ll show you what some of the farm wives in this country have to go through. As you’ll see, it’s less of a farming club and more of a labour camp for grandmothers.