Japan likes tunnels, or maybe it should be the Japanese like tunnels; it is hard to know which way to put it. Either way, there are a lot of tunnels in Japan: train tunnels, road tunnels, even a tunnel hacked through solid columnar basalt that is an art piece.
Believe it or not, this is the toilet.
Preparing the trees for the heavy winter snow.
Kanazawa Fish Market.
Michele having breakfast in the Kanazawa fish market.
Yuzawa is a resort town in the Japanese Alps. Well, the Chamber of Commerce says that Yuzawa is in the Japanese Alps, so I should believe them. However, I think the signature feature of the Swiss Alps, which tops out at 14,691 feet, is its glaciated topography. The Japanese Alps top out at 10,475 feet, so they may have had lots of glaciers, but Yuzawa is at only 3,875 feet, and there was not a sign of glaciation anywhere.
Still, there were ski slopes and chairlifts, and I was reminded that it snows at sea level here. We stayed in a large stand-alone hotel that kind of reminded me of the hotel on the Indian Reservation near the newly formed Tulare Lake. We were here to see at least part of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale and, especially, the Kiyotsukyo Gorge Tunnel.
The next three nights, we spent in Joetsu, an off-the-tourist road city, so we could double back to the eastern part of Triennal and then drove – mostly along the coast – to Kanazawa, at the center of the tourist road. We are now in Kanazawa, surrounded by American – or, at least, European-American looking – young people.
This part of Japan is known for its rice and its sake. Michele says that the rice is very good, but my taste buds aren’t refined enough to taste the difference between this rice and, say, Luna Koshihikari Organic Rice from the Sacramento Valley. The Sake was different; the local stuff was terrific.
As we leave the shoreline, we come back into rice country. I’m amazed at how the rice fields seem to fill every empty space, but on reflection, I think it is probably the opposite. As family fields get divided between heirs, some sell their plot and it then gets filled with buildings.
Populist Revolt Against Elite’s Vision of the U.S. New York Times
Not really a big surprise, still a big shock. It’s very likely not as bleak as it looks this morning.
It’s probably going to be a little worse if you are Jewish, or Muslim, or undocumented, or a woman, or anything but white European male, for that matter. The white male hierarchy – and it must be larger than I imagined from the viewpoint deep in my little bubble – will have more legitimacy.
The very rich will do better, NATO and Ukraine worse, but in our day-to-day lives, we (Michele and myself and most people we know) probably won’t notice much change .
We got a car in Nikko, and Michele, who has lots of experience driving on the left from driving around Ireland, drove us to the ski resort of Yuzawa for the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2024. Michele thought that the drive from Nikko to Yuzawa would give us a chance to see some Fall color, which we were otherwise too early to see at lower elevations like Kyoto.
It was a beautiful drive, most of it through heavy rain.
We ran for a while in semi-farm country and stopped to admire an old apple tree with impossibly large fruit; we ended up buying four apples. And ended the day under our first Christmas Tree of the year.
