KOCHI
Kochi Castle is one of the 12 original castles, like Matsuyama, but Kochi alone is the real life Swamp Castle! The castle was built where two rivers are close enough to make for a natural moat. The joining point was also a natural swamp. Ignoring this, twice someone tried to build a castle upon this swamp and twice it failed, but trying again this one was finally erected. I tried sharing this Monty Python joke with my fiancée but I don’t think it translated well to Japanese nor did the one about great big tracts of land.
After its completion in 1611 it was the capital of the Tosa Domain and absolutely nothing worth mentioning happened here until it was retired in 1868. Then it became a delightful park.
The primary selling point to visiting Kochi (for normal people) is its completeness as its hilltop citadel retains all of its original structures, but if Matsuyama had the miniature train, then Kochi has the miniature castle keep. The keep and adjoining palace are quite small and contain a small Japanese-language only museum.
The castle’s most interesting part is the big Tsumemon, guardroom or “trick” gate, that obviously leads to the citadel, until an invader breaks through and realizes they are now on the opposite side of the same hill and no closer to getting up to the citadel. It’s a neat trick I’ve not seen in any other castle.
Another stand out point is the main castle gate, which from the right angle can be photographed along with the keep. According to Kochi Castle you cannot shoot the main gate and keep of any other castle in this way. I’m not sure if it’s true, I’ll have to visit a few dozen more castles to verify.
Before leaving Kochi we also stopped by the famous Harimaya Bridge. It’s a tiny red classic bridge over an almost non-existent stream that’s famous for a story about a priest and his lover, and having a movie named after it. My fiancée said that it’s also been rated among the most disappointing tourist spot in Japan, so I had to see if it lived up to the hype. Unfortunately it did not, it was not disappointing, because how can it disappoint if I expect it to? Either way, it was a quick and quirky stop that’s famous for being famous and it was free so I couldn’t complain.
MIYOSHI (KAZURABASHI)
Since we were in a bridging mood, on our way back to Kyushu we took a detour into Tokushima Prefecture to walk across a vine bridge. Tokushima is quite rural and our drive consisted of endless green mountains ending in deep valleys and small roads leading to other smaller roads along said mountains until reaching Kazurabashi, a bridge made of wood and held together with vines (and hidden steel cables) that has hung across the Iya valley for 800 years. Legend holds it was first built by Heike refugees who’d fled to the region after losing the Gempei War in 1185 or by the founder of the Shingon Buddhist sect, Kodo Daishi.
Regretting that I’d left my fedora and bullwhip at home, we paid our yen and got in line with the other tourists to cross the bridge. Gently swaying ancient bridge or not, it’s not as adventurous when you’re in a line going across, well to me anyway. My fiancée carefully watched her footing on the loosely spaced planks and never let go of the vine rail as she crossed a single step at a time. I stopped to take pictures the beautiful rocky river bed that cut through the bottom of the forested “v” at the bottom of the mountains and… now she wants to know how I can stop and shoot with both hands, that’s not safe. So I got a little thrill in handing my camera to another person to take a blurry picture of me in the middle of the bridge knowing full well he could drop it and it would plummet to the river below and I’d be out $1000. I recommend not using a phone for a selfie across the bridge, if you’re willing to take that risk you’re a better traveler than I.
When we finished we took a moment to crawl around the large rocks along the river, which were an odd grey-green color, and enjoy a dekomawashi , a dongo like treat made with soba, konnyaku, tofu and potato and sweetened with an orange miso glaze.
SAIJO
We’d originally planned to spend the night in Saijo and leave early the next morning without visiting any local points of interest. After getting there I discovered our hotel was next to the train station, as the passing trains throughout the night could attest, (Full disclosure- I’m a Sailor and have lived under an active runway, so passing trains are nothing to me) and that train station had an attached railway museum. My fiancée gave me one hour to explore it the next morning, so I had to work much faster than usual to take it all on.
The Shikoku Railway Cultural Center is small but with six trains is worth seeing. Two in particular excited me, a Type 0 Shinkansen and a C57 steam locomotive engine. The two designs are only a quarter century apart in age but demonstrate the rapid pace of technological innovation during the mid-twentieth century. With its bulbous nose and big windows, the Type 0 wouldn’t be considered sleek or fast looking by today’s standards but it was the pinnacle of rail transit in its day. Sitting in the passenger cabin I noticed how little has changed for the passenger, even if the train itself has.
The C57 looked ready to take a load of passengers to Hogwarts or whatever its Japanese equivalent is. (Probably the same, but built in a tasteful early Edo style) These trains ran from the late 1930s until 1975, when this particular engine pulled its last cars for Japan National Railway, and only a year before the museum’s Shinkansen engine was built.
With minutes to spare I returned to the hotel and we were able to get back on the road and finish our journey home. We did a lot more than this on the trip, but to write of it all would result in a small book and besides, where’s the fun if I don’t leave a few surprises for other visitors?
