Japan on my mind

Sitting on the train to Matsue. I left the hotel about 7:45, giving myself plenty of time to catch the 8:52 train. A good thing: in spite of all of Shalmit’s efforts, we were scheduled on some kind of strange train. That time of morning is very difficult at the station. People come off the trains in waves, first from one direction, then the other. It’s more polite than New York rush hour, but just as difficult to navigate. Even though I finally found the right place, I almost missed the train. I was supposed to be in car 3, so I stood where it said car 3, but the train had fewer cars and stopped short of where I was standing. Someone finally told me to get on the train. Shalmit never showed up, but I got on the train, anyway.i figured I’d call her from the next train. This was a beautiful train that was empty. I’m sure it must pick up passengers somewhere along the way, but from Kyoto to Shin Osaka there were only three of us in the car and very few in other cars. The train had a large video monitor at one end; you could see where the train was going.

Shalmit was at the station for the next train and we easily connected. We transferred to a third train in Okayama. Much of that portion of the trip was through beautiful, mountainous country. We were going northwest to the Sea of Japan.

Matsue is a beautiful city on lake Shinji, with a huge moat around Matsue Castle and at least one other river. It is not directly on the coast, but very close to it. They are working very hard to promote tourism. There is a cute bus that looks like a streetcar, and a little boat that makes a tour of the moat, and a number of museums. We took the bus to Lafcadio hearn’s home and Memorial Museum. He lived here only about 14 months. Not the most interesting place we’ve ever been to. It was such a beautiful day we decided to take the boat ride.

It was not the best thing I did in Japan, but it came very close. The boat was steered by a wonderful, funny woman who told stories and sang songs in Japanese, and occasionally interjected English instructions like, don’t put your hands outside the boat, and roof being lowered, as we went under some very low bridges.

Shalmit translated some of the Japanese for me. Evidently she was singing about where we were going, making up the songs as she went along. We passed egrets, groups tortoises sunning themselves on rocks, lots of ducks, and finally she whistled and flushed out several hawks that gave us an amazing aerial show. What a great afternoon.

Tomorrow we go to Izumo. If we get back in time, I hope to take another boat ride.

Boat captain, Shalmit’s photo. I wasn’t sitting in a good place to get this.

Shalmit on the boat. I took the picture with her camera.