こんにちは and welcome back—if you’re just joining in, welcome to Part 4 of my series of pics from around Japan. You can start with Part 1 or browse the rest of the series here.
I take a LOT of pictures of Japanese English that’s just a little off—sometimes because the grammar itself is mangled like in this sentence, but more often because even though the grammar’s completely correct it’s a phrase no sane native English speaker would ever say aloud. (Another sign at this same restaurant read “Take-outs are impossible.”)
A shaded graveyard in Kanazawa. Japanese graves tend to be larger than their Western counterparts and include a place to store the deceased’s ashes. Though most graveyards tend to be on the newer side and better maintained, we stumbled upon this one while wandering down a side street.
Old Western-style warehouse buildings, also in Kanazawa. A lot of these brick buildings were built during the Meiji era (1868-1912) when Japan first opened to the West, though most of them were torn down or bombed during World War II. Kanazawa, being one of the few Japanese cities not destroyed during the war, still has some nice ones left, as do Yokohama and Hakodate.
View from a hill in Kenroku-en garden, Kanazawa. Kanazawa, along with Mito and Okayama, is home to one of Japan’s three most famous gardens, and Kenroku-en is a relaxing place to wander for an afternoon, provided it’s not too crowded.
Old munitions storage tunnel in Kanazawa castle park. The castle itself, while a reproduction, is a site to behold, and the park itself is huge and full of cool trails, lookouts, and buildings. After the castle was destroyed by fire in the 1800s, the site was variously used as a school and a storage area for munitions during the buildup to World War II. The only evidence of this I found in the park, though, was this tunnel (the red brick interior suggests the tunnel was built later than the rest of the wall), which an older Japanese-only sign denotes as one of the storage areas.
The tunnel and accompanying sign are a rarity in that very few Japanese tourist sites mention the war or places that were affected by the war—at least not in English anyway. I was lucky enough to have a Japanese coworker with me to translate, though this also makes me wonder how much of Japan’s wartime past is available to Japanese tourists but not foreign ones.
Construction site on my morning commute. When I first came to Toyama this was a tall older building that once had something to do with agriculture—now it’s a Lawson convenience store that sells beer, ice cream, and bento lunches. Much of this entire road was once made up of older warehouse and retail buildings that are being torn down to build a new generation of brand-name-friendly suburban sprawl.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Only in Japan could you capture samurai armor, women’s underwear, and stuffed pandas in the same photo.
Together at last.
Namerikawa City’s mascot, the firefly squid. Though the mascot has gone through a few incarnations over the years (you can check out Kirarin and Pikka, the latest incarnations, here) I prefer the older and less anthropomorphic 1980s version, which still grazes bus stops, the downtown shopping center, and this set of public bathrooms.
Many Japanese cities use characters like the firefly squid to draw in tourists and establish themselves as unique, and while the newer Namerikawa mascots are (arguably) deployed for this purpose, their older counterpart feels like a piece of history from the Japan of a generation ago.
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