Continuing up the east coast of Kii peninsular, we saw more spectacular coastline. We notice that ALL coastal villiages have Tsunami walls, signs directing to evacuation centres, and loud speakers (for warning sirens).
These certainly alter the view and the experience of seaside living! Sometimes the beach is outside the sea wall. Here the cafe is right up against the sea wall and we could see over it.
We have also seen an few aquariums as we've gone along the coast. They have all been very good, from the Osaka aquarium with its whale shark, to the Toba aquarium with the best tropical live coral display we've seen.
Here is a picture of anemonies that I have not see before.
But the highlight of the marine -type displays has been ( for me) the AMA divers (women pearl divers) demonstration today at Mikimoto Island. These women have been diving for pearls and abalone, kelp, sea urchins, for centuries off the coast here. They used to dive bare breasted! In this cold water!
These statues show the old and new costumes they wore.
Now they dive in thin white garments -no protection at all against the cold.
They are said to be able to hold their breaths for more than a minute! And they dive to more than 30 feet. They have bamboo buckets for their catch. The surprising thing for me was their constant whistling. This presumably alters the diffusion of gasses in the lungs, somehow improving their performance. They seemed to whistle each breath whilst on the surface.
The rest of Mikimoto Island was devoted to pearl culture. There were very interesting displays of how the pearls are cultured, how they are strung, and how they are valued. The shop had fabulous jewellery, with one special pearl valued at $250,000. I can tell you that I really lusted after some of the strings, but Joe would have none of it....:(
After all of the sightseeing is over we have to find somewhere to sleep. We have found that if we pick the white roads (minor of minor roads) and in the green areas, on our map we often find places where we can sneak off the road and be undisturbed by traffic or people.
But sometimes the roads turn out to be REALLY minor. The roads can be less then one lane wide, and if we see another vehicle coming someone has to back up. We have learned that white roads in built-up areas are too narrow, but in the bush they are narrow but just passable.
This is the view from where we slept last night....
A couple of vehicles did come past while we were drinking our sake in the evening. We had to pull in the awning and put up the steps, but they passed with a wave and no comment!
In return we make sure we leave no trace of our camping, actually picking up some of the rubbish we find around. (Japan could do well to join the "Clean up the World " campaign. We find the cities spotless, but the country-side has lots of rubbish dumped - mainly drink cans and plastics -not toilet paper as we sometimes find in the Aussie bush!
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