Adventures with Tye!: Day 9. From Tokushima to Ehime.

5/7/2017

We had a lot of ground to cover today so we woke up early and hit the road. Our first stop was to the Naruto Whirlpools in Naruto, Tokushima. We drove about a half hour north, the way we came the night before. We parked our car and started walking towards the bridge between Shikoku and Awaji Island. It is in this pass that the Naruto Whirlpools happen. Because pictures of the whirlpools are not great compared to video, I will spare you photos of the whirlpools, and instead I combined multiple videos I took into one video so it is more convenient to see what I am talking about.

The observatory of the whirlpools is in a tourist center underneath the Naruto bridge. 

The Naruto Whirlpools are created at the border of the Inland sea between Shikoku and Honshu and the open ocean. The currents from the inland sea flow out to the ocean 4-6 times throughout the day. We were able to get there just before 11 am, one of the peak whirlpool times. We missed the strongest and best-formed whirlpools by about 10-15 minutes, but we still saw some amazing whirlpools.

These whirlpools have been a tourist attraction fo ra long time. The famous Ukiyo-e printer Hiroshige made a print of the Naruto Whirlpools around 150-200 years ago.

We bought our tickets and started quickly making our way to the center of the bridge. We had to hurry, as we knew every minute was a factor. There were dozens and dozens of people there all trying to watch the whirlpools, but it is Japan, so everyone was nice and shifted often so everyone could see.

Tye and I took some video of the whirlpools. 

The observatory had many thick windows set into the floor so that people could look at the whirlpools from directly above. It was a lot of fun!

We saw a tour boat that liked to drive right through the whirlpools and destroy them for the sake of their passengers…. I guess.  It annoyed me.

Afterwards we walked back to the car and started driving to our next stop, the scarecrow village in the mountains of Tokushima. It was going to take us around two hours to make it there. We entered the mountain passes from the north east and started driving due west into the mountains. The roads were so small, and the climb was quite steep.

There were parts of the road that were barely wide enough for my little k car, let alone two. It was actually quite stressful driving along those roads. I was terrified of oncoming traffic. You had to pull over as far as you absolutely could (inches from falling off the edge of the mountain (or crashing into the guard rail) and then squeak past the other car who was doing the same thing. During this you are going no more than 2 mph or so. Luckily there wasn’t a whole lot, because we were in the middle of freaking nowhere.

We made our way to a little town on the top of Mt. Tsurugi. There were a few restaurants and one shrine and one temple. There was also a building that gave out ropeway rides to the top of the mountain. WE were short on time, so we only stayed long enough to use the restroom and take a quick look at the temple and shrine as we stretched our legs.

There was a fairly long climb up to the small shrine, but when we arrived we saw that this was a simple, small-town shrine, and there wasn't much to it.

Next to it there was a large statue of what I think was the warrior Kannon surrounded by flames. He was standing at the head of a bunch of Buddha statues arranged in a square with a field in the middle.

Then we were off again, through more mountain passes with teeny roads.

We finally got to the Scarecrow village. Our first view of any scarecrows were dressed workman uniforms and they were placed on a ladder up a light pole. I thought they were real people at first, but as I drove closer I saw that they were scarecrows. Sadly I was driving and Tye didn't have his camera out, so We didn't get photos of those workmen scarecrows.

Just around the corner though, we came upon a parking lot where some hiking trail started with some scarecrows sitting on benches. But this was really just the town entrance, so after getting out and stretching our legs, we got back into the car to see the rest of the scarecrow village.

Some background: The scarecrow village of Nagoro in Tokushima Prefecture was always a small mountain village, but it used to have around 300 residents. Over time most of the residents have either died or moved away. Now there are only about 20 people living in this village. And that was the most recent estimate I have found from another blogger about four years ago. One of these residents is an old woman. She lives alone and misses all the people who used to live there. As a result she spent a lot of time creating life-size scarecrows of all the residents. They wear clothes and are placed around the village doing activities that they used to do in real life.

Most of the scarecrows are in good condition and many are inside buildings.

There are also many, namely those out in fields and gardens that are not in great condition and have mold growing on them.

This is the village communal center, it has a couple dozen scarecrows inside having a meeting about the "Nagoro Scarecrow Festival Summit."

This family is enjoying the afternoon sunshine on this porch.

This is the local bus stop and refreshment stand.

At the bus stop building there are a bunch of scarecrows as well as a book that has a picture, location and bio of ALL the scarecrows in the village. There is also a notebook where you can write down your visit and a note to the old lady.

Here were some scarecrows that looked like guards, guarding the road/bridge to the high school.

I heard from another friend that went a few years ago during the week that the village had their local festival, which they opened up the high school so that people could go in and see all the scarecrows inside. The scarecrows inside the school are the ones meant to represent each of the students that used to live in the town.

Cute little kitten!

We spent about a half hour walking around the town and taking pictures of the scarecrows. I was hoping to meet the woman who made the scarecrows, but she was nowhere to be seen.

When we were finished we packed ourselves back into the car and started driving to our next stop.

Google maps told us that our next stop was one and a half hours away. But it was taking its information from the Japanese drivers who go ridiculously fast on these tiny mountain roads. So an hour and a half later, I was still a half hour away from our destination. It was ok, though, I would rather arrive alive than try to compete with those crazy Japanese drivers.

After we hit that last, albeit delayed, half hour mark, Google sent us on a route that went completely out of our way, and I would bet money that it didn’t save us any time. Google Maps in Japan is extra stupid. I’ve been saying it since I first got here. Tye didn’t believe me, but he sees the truth now.

We finally made it to the town of Otoyo which is famous for having the oldest and tallest Cedar tree in all of Japan. For some reason the gps took me up a small utility road behind a neighborhood which lead up behind the cedar tree sit and not to the parking lot or actual entrance to the tree. It was such a ridiculously tiny road! I was terrified, because Google lead me that way, but once I was on that road, there was absolutely no way to turn around. So I kept going and I just knew this wasn't the way. but I had to follow it through and hope for a spot to turn around. When we realized we had arrived up behind the shrine, it was big enough to turn around. 

We took a few photographs from up behind the shrine, and went back, this was about a 30 minute detour because Google Maps in Japan is made of fail.

We drove back around and found the entrance to the shrine. 

We saw an old woman sitting in a ticket booth across the street from the shrine, we bought our tickets and went in.

The trees are believed to be married, so this shrine is a popular destination for couples.

The first thing I notices was a nice little bridge leading to a wooden walkway that branched to different parts of the shrine. One to the temple, one around the tree, and a few smaller branches of the path to different shrines. It was interesting, and kind of neat.

We walked up to the tree and saw some small shrines around the base as well as a holy rope wrapped around the trunks of the trees.

Sadly, it looks like the trees have recently been suffering from some kind of rot. The two trees have large flat shingles/coverings going up the sides of both the trees.

Out the front gate and to the left there was a short wall with some statues of the seen gods of happiness along with some statues of some monks. There was also a small wooden shrine in front of them in a small yard. The yard was overgrown, though.

After seeing this we hopped in the car and drove the 2+ hours to Matsuyama in Ehime. We stopped at a rest stop along the way. We made it to Matsuyama, Ehime by about 9 pm. We were staying with a friend of mine, Tehya and her husband Derick, who both work with JET. We flew out together on our way to Japan. I love them both, they are amazing!

They gave us a spare room to sleep in. We talked for a bit, but they had work in the morning so we called it an early night. This was ok, because I was worn out from driving all day. So Tye and I crashed soon after.