On The Road

This photo of a rocky beach was taken on the very beach where three Portuguese travelers landed on Tanegashima. If you really must know, it was a bitch of a trek down a slippery hill to find this nasty bit of rocky shore line, but this is indeed the very place where the West was first encountered by the Japanese. In fact, the 14th Lord Tanegashima of the Island ended up buying 2 muskets off the Portuguese and the rest of it is history. It's also the Island where they do a more refined version of ballistics known as 'rocketry'. I even had the pleasure of speaking to the descendant of the 14th Lord, one Mr. Tokikuni Tanegashima who still owns the original musket on display in the musket museum - just so that we could get permission to shoot it. Apparently he would have been the 29th in line.

I've now been on the road for 23 days. It's quite a hoik getting around remote islands off the mainland of Japan, getting in and out of planes, vans and hotels. Needless to say I have in most part been in one IT blackhole or another so it hasn't been quite so simple as to just post up where I am on the road. To date, I've been up and down the island of Okinawa and up and down the Island of Tanegashima. We've flown through Kagoshima twice and Nagoya twice. I'm now in Nagoya, looking out a window overlooking the central hub of the city but boy is the sky dreary and the streets quiet and dull.

When I get back to Metropolis, I'll probably post up detailed accounts of where I've been and what I've seen, but for now, please accept this photo as a token of my thoughts for you all. :)