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One of the more delightful of the many forms of Japanese bamboo craft are stilts called takeuma (bamboo horse). The stilts are made from lengths of bamboo outfitted with special wooden footrests. It takes some skill and experience to know how to secure the footrests such that they may bear the weight of a rider as large as an adult.

My father-in-law (Suzuki Hiroshi) made 15 sets of stilts for use at our local elementary schools 100 year anniversary festival. Being a retired woodworker (shoji door and window maker) he has much past experience making bamboo and other wooden toys for his four children and two grandchildren.

Apologies: In the video I inaccurately describe the stilts as takeume which means bamboo plum instead of the proper name takeuma. I also mention at the beginning of the video that my father-in-law will be making bamboo helicopters called taketombo. While he did make the taketombo I sadly did not have a chance to film this and was unable to include any promised footage in the final video.

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Sumatakyou is a beautiful mountainous region far up the valley of the Oigawa river on the east coast of central Japan. Emily, Yumiko and I enjoy a fun, relaxing (and wet!) day trip to this region. The highlight of the trip (besides the lovely intermittent rain showers) were the exciting footbridges we enjoyed crossing at various points along the way. This area is famous for tea and the area has many popular hot spring resorts.

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An alternate title for this video could be how to keep a kid happy during a solid month of rain. The Japanese use the word tsuyu (alternately baiu) to describe the early summer weather pattern of extensive rain which affects most of the Japanese islands. In most areas the rainy season begins in early June and lasts until mid July although regional variations do exits. Though it does not typically rain every day during the rainy season it may certainly seem to be the case after many long days of intense downpour. The term tsuyuu literally means plum rain and this name is significant as the rainy season does normally coincide with the time when plums are ripening on the trees.

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A relaxing summer bicycle ride in the mountains of Japan turns into an exciting thunderstorm adventure!

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I met Brian and Eric via YouTube and was excited to learn that they were coming to Japan. I offered to give them a tour of Shizuoka and was delighted when they accepted my offer and we made arrangements to meet. We began the day with a visit to one of the more beautiful and famous Shinto shrines in our area followed by a brief tour of a bonsai tree nursery. We then left the city and headed for the hills where we enjoyed lunch and swimming at a lovely little river and hiking in the deep mountains. We explored several small villages and met some very nice locals who treated us kindly and shared about their life in the Japanese countryside. The day wound up with a dinner party at my in-laws home where my family was happy to meet and spend time with our new friends. It was a real pleasure to spend this day with Brian and Eric and my family and I hope they will return soon.

Video notes: The shrine at the start of this video is the Kunouzan Toushougu jinja located near Suruga Bay in Shizuoka city. The river is a tributary of the Abekawanakakochi river, and the village is called Kuchisenmata. This small community is located in the mountains between Shizuoka City and the town of Ikawa near the Japan Southern Alps. Its a very small community on a lonely little road which has little traffic or visitors.

 

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This interesting structure appears to be a bar and was found under the bridge of the Tomei Expressway near the seaside in Okitsu, Japan.

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My destination was the old and historic community of Yui, located just over the Satta Pass from Okitsu and nearby Shizuoka city. Yui is a small and charming seaside town and one of the original 53 stages of the old Tokaido highway (as are Okitsu and many communities within Shizuoka). My interest on this day though was not the town of Yui itself, but instead the historic old pass which crosses over the once treacherous Satta Pass. The original Tokaido route over Satta Pass is regarded by many historians as having been one of the most dangerous sections of the old highway. The danger was due to the precipitous slopes as well as the many remote and lonely stretches which were once the haunt of bandits. I had hoped to cross Satta Pass on the original route between Okitsu and Yui which is today quite safe and a pleasant place to hike and explore, with several stunning vista points offering spectacular views of Mt. Fuji (when the clouds and weather permit).

I knew a direct route through Shizuoka and Okitsu to the start of Satta Pass, though as I was eager to leave the city I opted to enter the mountains at a location I was only mildly familiar with. After a while I became convinced that the small farm road on which I was riding might in fact be an alternate route over the mountains to Yui. I encountered two dead-ends before finally summiting the mountains and beginning my confident descent into Yui. Upon reaching the canyon below I was surprised to discover a small village next to a fairly large (for the area) river. The sea was nowhere in sight and I could only assume that I had become disoriented and lost while traversing the mountains. I elected to follow the river to the sea from which point I was sure I could regain my bearing. I realized my mistake after reaching the sea and could see the Okitsu side of Satta Pass nearby. I had, in fact, never been on Satta Pass and had instead been wandering through a small range of mountains I had previously never explored. In the end though I was disappointed in my mistake I was happy to have found a new and very interesting area ripe for exploration and discovery. The road to Yui, however, must wait for another day.

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In Japan the story is told of two lovers separated by a great river and only able to cross and meet but once a year. The couple are Orihime (the star Vega) and Hikoboshi (Altair) and the river which separates them is the great Milky Way (called Amanogawa in Japanese). The day of meeting is the seventh day of the seventh month, when it is said that celestial magpies arrive to carry Orihime across the brilliant stream. However, if it is raining on this day then the magpies cannot come and Orihime and Hikoboshi must wait another year. July 7th is thus a festival day in Japan, when the story of the heavenly couple is retold and families prepare special festive displays made of bamboo boughs decorated with colorful paper ornaments and hung with paper strips bearing the family’s prayers and wishes. A traditional poem sums up well the sentiment and atmosphere of Tanabata:

The bamboo leaves rustle, rustle
Shaking away in the eaves
The stars go twinkle, twinkle
Gold and silver grains of sand

In Japanese Romaji:

Sasa no ha sara-sara
Nokiba ni yureru
Ohoshi-sama kira-kira
Kingin sunago

Many communities in Japan will hold a special Tanabata festival where summertime revelers can stroll streets decorated with traditional and modern versions of the Tanabata displays. Food and game vendors make the festival a lively affair, and for some the Tanabata festival marks the start of the true summer season in Japan.

The festival Emily and I attended in this video took place in the seaside community of Shimizu located near Mt. Fuji. Emily and I had a terrific time though sadly Yumiko could not join us this evening. We returned home with toys, goldfish, full tummies and many happy stories to share with Yumiko and the grandparents.

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This video describes a simple procedure for removing leeches from the body. The idea is to break the mouth and sucker suction which the leech uses to hold on to the skin. This can be done fairly easily be simply slipping a fingernail between the skin and the mouth and again between the skin and the posterior sucker (or vice versa). This procedure has some advantages over other methods such as the use of salt, soy sauce or heat as no tools are required and most importantly it avoids causing the leech much trauma, which could induce the animal to regurgitate into the wound and possibly transmit parasites or infections into the host animals body. I have used this method several times since learning about it from a YouTube viewer and it seems to work very well. I apologize that I cannot remember the name of the viewer who suggested this technique to me, though I would like to extend my thanks if they happen to read this.

This video was shot by eight year old Emily and was filmed in a wet and very narrow canyon deep in the mountains near Shizuoka City, Japan. In the video I commented that the leech had not yet had a chance to bite me; however, I soon discovered that I was wrong as the wound began to bleed. Interestingly though, the blood did clot rather quickly which leads me to think that the leech had, in fact, only recently become attached and had not yet had a chance to inject very much anticoagulant. This was one of two leeches which managed to climb onto me during this particular hike though Emily spotted the second on my shoe before it could get to the skin. Fortunately neither Emily or Yumiko were leech victims on this hike.

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