Northern Honshu to Aomori

19/5/14

We are back in the inland of Honshu, still in stunning landscapes.

We have met some lovelly Japanese people in the last week or so.

This lady in a small roadside cafe, is chopping and pounding wasabe. The wasabi grows wild here, and she makes it into a finely chopped topping for steamed or miso boiled vegetables. It is hot but totally different to the wasabe paste we get at home. 

These young ladies (L-R Tokako, me, Miwa, mother of Yuna) went to a lot of trouble to help us find the Miso factory and Samari display today. We stopped them on the street when we thought we were close to our destination. They got into their car and guided us to the site. Then they went in with us and explained the displays as best they could given the language difficulties. A translation app was helpful. Thanks girls! 

We also learned that Yuna practices with a Samuri fighting weapon... She gave us a demonstration and then a gift of a weapon! 

And here is the view from our camping spot tonight! Oh it's a hard life! 

20/5/14

Continuing through more spectacular landscapes towards Aomori in the very north of Honshu. We are to meet up with Stuart and Nira in Saporro (Hokkaido) on 23rd. The weather is noticeably cooler here than Southern Honshu, and we are still seeing occasional snow (at 780m!) and cherry blossoms.

The hues in the trees as spring starts to produce pink and green new leaves is quite beautiful. 

 The rice paddies are just now being prepared for planting in most places.

We are passing by lakes of the most brilliant blue colour, and steaming hot streams of milky white.

And to finish off the day we found an Onsen -this time a mixed gender one -the first of those we have tried. It was in a beautiful traditional building. 

The mixed gender wasn't too threatening. Nobody stared. The men mostly used a facecloth to cover the best bits, but not too rigorously. One woman had a cloth tied around herself like a (short) sarong, so that is apparently acceptable in the mixed context. Anyway we felt well warmed for the final leg into Aomori. 

Once in Aomori we decided to find the ferry port. And then we decided to go across tonight -spur of the moment but it will be good to be over there. We will arrive about midnight. 

So we are off on the next phase of our travels! 

Tsunami

19/5/14

For the last couple of days we have been travelling north along the east coast of Honshu, through Tsunami affected towns. The map shows them as brown colour, and road signs indicate "past Tsunami unundation section". The worst visible damage was in the Fukushima uninhibited zone, where presumably there has been less urgency to clean up the damage. And it was certainly visible. 

Remember this building in Sendai? This is where hundreds of people climbed to escape and some of the videos we saw were taken from. It was a school, and the teachers got the kids to the roof. It is badly damaged to the top of the third floor and something obviously floating impacted the fourth floor breaking the brick wall. It must have been terrifying for those on the roof. 

Many or even most towns are building up the vacant allotments, raising the level. This is taking an immense amount of soil, gravel and resources. 

There are shrines for the dead...this is presumably the deity who was supposed to protect them from the sea...... FAIL, 

The names of the lost -Sendai.

And small personal shrine on a housing slab with no house...

By any measure this is the most devastating thing I have seen -the combination of nuclear melt down and Tsunami. 20,000 lives lost and many more completely disrupted.

In most areas the mess has been cleaned up, and some new buildings have been completed on raised  slabs. People are very resilient and life appears to be returning to normal!

And on a lighter note, this coastline is spectacular. 

Fukushima, radiation, empty zone

17/5/14

We are in Fukushima prefecture. We wanted to see the effects of the Daichi plant meltdown for ourselves so we headed directly for the plant. I started my Geiger counter going a few days ago to get a baseline, and without that I don't think we would have done what we did. 

On this map there is a flag on the plant itself, the blue line is our track, and the grey circles are guarded gates around the exclusion zone. The pink area is the official exclusion zone.

The Geiger counter was very interesting! Here are the readings I got, travelling clockwise. The unit is counts per minute(CPM). Most of the readings were taken over 10mins.

Baseline taken in the Alps: 13 CPM

Food bought in Fukushima prefecture but 70km from the reactors :14 CPM

@70km from reactors: 13 CPM

@ 50km from Reactors 34 CPM

@ 35 km: 31.5 CPM

@ 33.8km: At first exclusion gate: 58.1 CPM

@ 33.1 km, 2nd exclusion gate:139.7 CPM

@ 34.4 km 3rd gate: 223.8 CPM

@ 34.3 km 4th gate: 2 readings: 282.7 CPM, 298 CPM

@30.3 km, 5th gate: 250.8 CPM

@ 29.4 km,gate6 : 202.5 CPM

That is the highest count we got was 23 times background!  The Geiger counter was firing off continuously, just like in the movies! 

There appears to be a gated exclusion zone, where residents and officials are allowed in, in white paper overalls and wearing paper masks. They are bussed in and the driver waits outside the zone with his bus to bring them back. 

Some of the gates have guards, others are just locked and have surveillance cameras on them.

Here is the proof we got into the exclusion zone....Joe has his foot under the gate!

There is also a much wider zone which is deserted! There are no people or animals in the houses, and no lights on.  The rice paddies are defunct, animal sheds empty. The gardens are tended though, so we guess the owners are allowed back from time to time. We don't how wide this zone is. Some cars were left in this zone, possibly because the owners had nowhere in their new residences to park them? There were no cars on the streets. 

Farm machinery has just been left.

Beautiful expensive houses abandoned, rice paddies going wild, hot houses just left empty. Some of the hot houses had crops in them, gone brown and dry. 

Driving through this deserted area felt surreal. It was just as you would imagine the place would look after a nuclear fall out, or an Ebola pandemic -all of the people gone, but houses left as they were. We thought of the anguish the residents must have felt (still feel) when they were told they couldn't stay, couldn't produce food in these areas. The feeling for us was very sad.

Roads are not being repaired. Grass is growing in the cracks in the bitumen. 

The only people in this area were workers, and what they ewe doing was obvious. There were teams doing radioactivity readings, and others doing remedial work. They were removing all of the mulch and soil down to a depth of about 1meter! The soil was bagged up. Trucks seemed to be taking the soil TOWARDS the exclusion zone. I suppose that makes sense! 

Everybody was wearing face masks, and many were wearing the white paper overalls. 

We kept driving towards the plant. It is south of Fukushima City. We kept driving closer from the north along the coast, expecting to find a road block. The Geiger counter was showing normal readings even after we passed through the 20 km exclusion zone we have heard about. But from 20km out there were no people. After dark there were no lights in the houses or businesses. 

We were finally stopped just 6.6 kms from the plant. From here on it was permits only and we were turned back. They were checking every car going in. We guessed that these were workers going to the plant.

The spread of the radioactivity was to the northwest, with the prevailing breeze. Very fortunately that area is sparsely populated. If the wind had been different the highly populated coastal strip could have been affected. Apparently judging by our readings this area was not affected at all. 

The impact on Japan of the plant meltdown has been immense! The gated exclusion area is around 1/5 of the width of the country in that  northwesterly direction. 

And of course they were coping with the Tsunami at the same time -but that's another story! 

Japan Alps -astonishing!

13/5/14

We have been blown away by the Japan Alps. Turn after turn there are astonishing views, breathtaking slopes, snow topped mountains, lakes, rivers, deep gorges. For example one of our camping spots...

We stopped in Nikko today. We visited a natural history museum, viewed a huge waterfall, and saw a movie on the seasons in this area. We must come back here for autumn colours. This is Nikko's volcano, which blocked rivers causing the three lakes of this area, and the three waterfalls. 

The gorges and steep mountain sides don't show well in photos, but you might get an idea of the terrain from this screen dump of our track this afternoon. On this track we went down about 400m.

This is also a big trout fishing area, with many lakes and streams. We have seen quite a few fly fishermen in the lakes. 

Yesterday we saw what think may be bears scats! At least they are only Japanese black bears here -only as tall as a man on their hind legs, but in Hokkaido there are Grizzley Bears - now that's another story! 

Mountains, camping sites, Japan Alps -so much beauty!

11/5/2014

For the last few days we have been wandering around in the Japanese Alps. There is SO much stunning beauty -gorges, snow topped mountains, wild (controlled) rivers. Here are some shots of the views as we went.

This one is for Lynette -so you think you have deer? 

Today we stopped at a road-side cafe 

because I saw an interesting bonsai in front of the shop. We met two lovely people who were very excited about our car! They had a good look and we managed to communicate quite well. Unfortunately we didn't get their names, but we got a photo.

They offered us coffee (and refused payment) and some fern fronds which had been boiled and salted and were delicious.

The edible part is the curled young frond. It is very similar to what I know as King Fern in Australia. It has a deep groove down the centre of the stem. 

The lady (?mother) is going to Australia next April to visit friends in the Yarra Valley! We hope she has great hospitality there as we have had in Japan! 

We have found a place to camp every night and have not once been disturbed or complained to. We have slept in small tracks where we could get off the road, 

vacant allotments a bit out of town, shrine parking areas on very quiet roads, 

and tonight in the parking area of a 5 star onsen hotel! It is raining so that onsen is a very welcome thought! The hotel is on a lake and appears to be a fishing resort. We have seen very cold looking fishermen coming up from the lake, so I guess they appreciate the hot tub too! 

 This time we asked permission to camp (being totally self sufficient helps!) and to use the onsen. (Yes that is snow on the ground). Yes to both questions. So when we felt cold we headed over to the hotel with our towels. And... Since I am the only woman here, we can have the onsen to ourselves (together)! And no charge for us tonight! 

And.... It is one of the nicest onsens we have found, with a stone fish-statue in the middle, and two aquariums featuring trout. We luxuriated in it for 45 minutes (in and out), and forgot the cold night outside! 

The Onsen is "Marunuma"  or "Kan Ko So". 

email: kankoso@marunuma.com

Www.marunuma.com

Tel. 0278-58-2002

The busy season is summer, and it is closed in winter. 

Highly recommended!