Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Shiraishi Island to Shikoku

Awashima Taro and his wife welcome our crew from Shiraishi to their minshuku on Awashima Island. From Awashima, Shikoku is only a 15-minute ferry ride.


If you're planning to come to Shiraishi Island and then on to Shikoku, you might be interested in our boat service. Although Shiraishi is very close to Shikoku, there is no ferry to Shikoku from here. To avoid having to take the ferry back to Kasaoka and then a 3 hr. train ride to Shikoku, we can take you from here by boat to Awashima (one hour), and from there you can catch a 15 minute ferry ride to Shikoku.

While you're at Awashima, you might want to stop for a night at Awashima Taro, a great little minshuku with a Japanese style irori for cooking and a stone bath for bathing. There is also a Moooo! Bar II on the beach there, which is a great place to watch the sunset.

Read more about Awashima here:

The Awashima Crab Murders

Retirement--Island Style

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Golden Week accommodations update


An update on accommodations for Golden Week, April 29-May 5th. The international villa is fully booked. San-chan's is fully booked for the 4th, and there is just one room left on the 3rd and two rooms left on the 2nd.

See you at the Moooo! Bar for Golden Week!

Monday, April 20, 2009

White Rock Island

One of the many monoliths dotted around the shores of Shiraishi Island.

Shiraishi means "white rock" in Japanese (shiroi+ishi). Shiraishi Island is aptly named as one of the first things you notice upon entrance to the port is the large rocks teetering on the tops of mountains. Rock mining goes back more than 100 years here and Shiraishi rock has been shipped all over Japan in the form of monuments and statues for Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines.

The above photo was taken on the west side of the island in front of Shiraishi's last surviving stone factory, owned by the Toyoshimas. They are a wonderful family who I have been meaning to write a column about for a long time. They live a perfect Flintstones kind of lifestyle ;)

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Japan Lite: Imagine no possessions


Everyone has heard how the Japanese have no furniture in their houses and how they sit on the floor and sleep on futons.

Many people have the image of the Japanese living a minimalist, Zen existence among simplicity and diaphanous shades of light, as portrayed in large coffee-table books on Japan.

Then there are the Japanese houses no one ever tells you about. The ones that are so full of junk they would never fit into even the largest coffee-table book. Those houses have newspapers and magazines stacked up to the ceiling, Hello Kitty paraphernalia hanging from door knobs, odds and ends occupying floor space and boxes of stuff piled high in the corner because there is nowhere else to put them.

The average Japanese house has no closets to hide things in and no cabinets to store things in, but this doesn't stop people from obtaining more stuff.

Stereos and TVs are stuffed into the tokonoma previously reserved for the display of Japanese art objects.

Genkan are lined with layers of shoes. And all around the house things are left out because there is no "in."

Face it, although Japanese people used to own very little, these days they want modern luxuries such as dental floss and nose hair clippers. But the houses have not changed to accommodate.

And this leads to stacking things. Once a pile of stuff gets so high it sways like a high-rise building, that's when the industrious Japanese put up a curtain to hide it. And this, I am sure, is just to make guests feel less like they'll have to make a run for it should the wall come down.

If you're the type who keeps your tools in a heated garage accessorized with an automatic garage door opener, then don't even think of coming to Japan. There's just not enough space here to share with space hogs. You really must use and appreciate every millimeter of space you have here.

John Lennon in his song "Imagine," said, "Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can." Well, I can. I also suspect John was under the influence of Yoko Ono. There are only so many possessions a space-challenged Japanese house can hold.

But the truth is, despite the lack of storage space, there are advantages to living in these small Japanese houses. For example, my Japanese house is so small, I can mentally picture everything in it. I know exactly what I have in my house should I ever have to fill out the details on an insurance claim form. No storage space means no stuff in cardboard boxes hiding their contents from me for years on end. No extra space means no wondering where I put this or that, or whether to keep or to toss. Everything is at hand.

This does not mean, however, that I don't have a lot of stuff. I do. I have boxes of stuff in my native country waiting for me to rejoin them someday. All I can say is: Don't get your hopes up, stuff. I consider my stuff more like possessions dispossessed.

But still.

Most foreigners have stuff in storage somewhere in their native countries on the off-chance that they might need it some day. What if there's a war or a famine and we have to move back home? Our stuff would greet us like a long lost friend. And we'd be very glad to see it too. So we continue to keep things in storage that we'll probably never use. And those things know that if they wait long enough, and with some luck, they may become possessions repossessed. And so it waits patiently in storage.

The definition of storage, for the benefit of our Japanese readers, is a dark place where stuff can hibernate for years on end uninterrupted. There's a reason storage places are dark: You don't want this stuff to wake up.

Every time I go home to my country to visit, I check on my stuff. I slowly open the door to the storage room, careful to only let in a small ray of light. I look, see that my stuff is still there, and quickly close the door. That's my stuff all right. There is something secure about knowing you have stuff just in case you might need it someday. Even though you know you won't.

Someday I'll get rid of all that stuff. I'll give it to somebody else. Somebody who doesn't have enough stuff. Someone who no longer wants to live a minimalist, Zen existence among simplicity and diaphanous shades of light.


Thursday, April 16, 2009

Ferry prices, etc.

A cat models a Moooo! Shop necklace

The weather is beautiful on Shiraishi Island and Golden Week is just around the corner. We're starting to clean up the beach and get everything in shape! We've already had a steady stream of people coming out to the island already and many people have said they'll be out for Golden Week. It's looking like another great season on the beach! Next week we welcome Japan Lite reader Ruth and her friends who are finally making it out after years of planning. It will be a joy to finally meet them and to share some island experiences.

A couple things you might want to know if you are planning on coming out to the island:

1. The Sanyo Kisen ferry prices have increased. The regular ferry is now 650 yen and the express ferry is 1,130 yen.

2. The Shiraishi Ferry (car ferry) is 520 yen.

3. The International Villa is fully booked for Golden Week (April 29-May 5) but I can book you into one of the minshukus on the beach if you like. Just send me an email at shiraishireservations at yahoo.com
I can also book you into the International Villa for any time other than Golden Week.

I look forward to sharing some moogaritas with you at the Moooo! Bar....!
 
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