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Wajima to Suzu
What a dreadful night on the bed of iron at the hotel which was much worse than the thin Ryokan mattress. I must have been awake more than asleep. Great breakfast though of rice, noodles, boiled egg, seaweed, cabbage dumplings and various sweet breads and croissants. Some of us took lessons in chopstick painting and must admit I can feel sympathy for Miss Evans when she threw me out of art lessons almost 60 years ago. I painted two dragonflies which looked more like mosquitoes covered in stardust. A quick look around the street market selling all manner of things and certainly plenty of chopsticks at very low prices and much better painted than mine. My Garmin played up by losing the map of Japan so that I just saw a line on the map with no streets. Once on the road we continued north following the coast in over 20 degrees and blue sky. The coast was again very rugged with small islands and rocks close by which looked great in the morning sun. Not far along the road was a rice paddy on a hillside which naturally had many terraces and created a good photograph but
not maybe so good for the peasants who have to work it without the aid of modern machines employed in the lowlands. Another old industry was the creation of sea salt where salt water is carried onto the hillside and spread onto sand beds to crystallise into salt. This method has been used for over 400 years and has been largely superseded by modern factories using ionisation to separate the salts. After several steep hills and luckily the obligatory stops at viewpoints along the way we passed through many fishing villages to arrive at our Ryokan absolutely jiggered, even though it was only 68k and 750m of climbing. The tail wind of this morning was replaced with a headwind as we headed south this afternoon, maybe causing the tiredness and of course the lack of sleep last night. I won't mention the pace set by Oscar on the level. The Obsen tonight was what looked like a deep stainless steel sink set in the floor, which necessitated your knees being close to your chin. How some of the tall guys went on no one knows, but it was very hot and most welcome. After the typical Japanese evening meal where
there was a definite lack of cooked fish we had a song or two from our host who was 66 today. There were a couple of pieces of cooked pork belly which were actually quite nice, including the slabs of fat. Even more education was available to those who wanted it in the form of writing several Japanese characters with the big writing brushes. The writings were key words in Japanese culture such as that to describe the act of making sure everyone is considered over the individual needs. The act of developing one’s skills in a subject/job to the best of your ability and remaining humble. Knowing your place and respecting the hierarchy etc etc. Very interesting. We ended up with a joint photograph of all our efforts before bed at 9.30 for a 6am alarm. This is tiring me out. Help.
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