sight-seeing in Tottori
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
Tottori is Japan's least populous prefecture, running along the coast of the Sea of Japan a good many klicks from just about everywhere.
But it's a fine town for a weekend visit with a kid in tow. This morning we did a toy museum that's got three floors and lots of interactive exhibits. The variety of toys was particularly good because it focused more on older, more playable toys and eschewed the more recent trend for every kind of toy to be either a cheap plastic disposable thing; a video game of a few fixed varieties (scrolling/jumping, FPS, etc); a product tie-in; or all three.
The kids—our two-year old and the five- and seven-year-old daughters of Jon's brother Martin and his wife Emma—had a ball playing with everything and running around looking at all of the cool toys. Me, too. Plus I got to play with one of my favourite toys while there, blasting away with my Minolta XD to take it all in.
In the afternoon we rented a car and headed for some of the more adult sites. First was a sprawling great Japanese-style wood-and-tatami-and-rice-paper mansion that's now open to the public. Second was a remote village called Itaibara. The place had formerly only had one road, a high winding affair that connected the woodsmen in the high mountain village with the outside world via some direction that pointed away from any major towns or cities. A newer road was put up the edge of the range behind the village at some point in the twentieth century, a very windy (but at least paved) thing that cuts through the final ridge rather than climb over it.
Once in the village it was immediately apparent that this place had had a truly isolated history. Not only was it too high and rocky for agriculture, but there were no stores or services. The recent history of the village's decline was evident in the run-down state of the homes and the fact that there didn't seem to be anyone younger than about sixty in the place.
While visiting the place, I was reminded of a booklet I'd just finished reading in which the author—the former head of the immigration bureau in Tokyo—espoused a huge influx of immigrants to shore up industries such as forestry, fishing and agriculture in this country. He wants ten million immigrants to shore up the collapsing population, and I agree that something's got to happen.
A really interesting glimpse into a bit of Japan that's about as remote from downtown Tokyo as it's possible to get.
Below is the car we rented. It's a Mazda "Verisa". Roomy, nice to drive, and capable of handling the winding road and the steep incline. I love it when a rental car works out (not something I've known to happen with "Big Three" cars).
