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.
Category Archives: Japan
Rural Kitakyushu: Sevenfold Waterfalls Part 1
The Nanae Falls (七の滝—Nanae no Taki) are a series of waterfalls that feed a creek that flows into the Masubuchi Reservoir. The name translates as “seven stage falls” or “sevenfold waterfalls,” based on the fact that there are at least seven distinct waterfalls in series in this creek. This is the first two parts to this entry. I’ve split it because there are so many photos.
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.
Rural Kitakyushu: I Hope You Like Frogs
Here’s the third installment of photos from my April 30th bike trip. I spent a long time taking pictures at a very old-seeming shrine called Nishi Ono Hachimangu (西大野八幡宮—West Big Field Hachiman Shrine) in the Takazuo (高津尾) area of Kokura Minami Ward. While I have lots of photos of the building, today I’m going to limit myself to the local fauna.
Rural Kitakyushu: Not a Temple Nor on My Map, but Strange
In this second story about my April 30, 2005 cycling and hiking day trip through rural Kitakyushu, we’ll go explore a temple complex that I can’t find anywhere on my map. Though as you’ll soon find out it turns out to not be a temple complex after all.
Rural Kitakyushu: It’s All About the Snakes
This is the first in a series of anecdotes about a cycling and hiking day trip I made on Saturday, 30 April 2005 through some of the more rural areas of southeastern Kitakyushu.
It’s all about snakes.
Rural Kitakyushu: Introduction
It’s Golden Week—a series of public holidays—so we have a bit of time off. We took two vacation days (Monday and Friday this week) which gives a grand total of ten straight days off. We’re staying in Japan but we’ll be travelling a bit this week—day trips, but I’m not sure how much time or energy I’ll have to write—so I can’t guarantee daily posts. I’m going to schedule my blog software so that over the next couple of days it automatically posts the entries I’ve already written. But I won’t be sending out email alerts so either check back regularly—I’d suggest after 6am JST—or else use the RSS feed. You can find the RSS link at the bottom of each page.
With the housekeeping matters out of the way, let me tell you about what I did last Saturday. I went for a day-long bike, hike, and photo expedition through the southeast part of the city, an area that included the easternmost part of Yahata Higashi-ku (八幡東区—East Yahata Ward) and the southern part of Kokura Minami-ku (小倉南区—South Kokura Ward). I’d like to post about the entire trip at once, but there were so many interesting things that I’ll have to split it up into a number of posts. My outline shows between eight and eleven individual subjects but we’ll see how many of them blend together. And whether or not I run out of energy or lose interest.
Kitakyushu Strange, Part 4
I hope the barrage of Kitakyushu Strange isn’t getting tiresome, because they’re easy to write and I haven’t had a lot of time lately.
Welcome to another neighbourhood temple, this time in the Showa-machi (昭和町) area of Yahata Higashi-ku. It’s within walking distance of my school, and is home to a 2-storey bell tower complete with pigeon-resistant green netting. I found the place on an overcast day in late January this year, while I was out wandering around on my lunch break. There I encountered a down-on-his-luck otherworldly hero moonlighting as a security guard.