Amanohashidate "Bridge in the Heaven"

Golden Week is a week with three holidays at the beginning of May. It is a very popular time for travel in Japan. This year we had planned to go to a city named Hamamatsu for a huge kite festival on the sand dunes. However, the festival was cancelled in memoriam to the victims of the Tohoku earthquake. Finding ourselves at loose ends, we decided at the last minute to take a road trip to the Japan Sea side of the country.

We have only taken a few road trips during our time here. Usually, we are intimidated by the traffic, tolls, endless tunnels through the mountains and the whining of the children.

Traffic and tolls-its never cheap or easy to travel within Japan!

Picturesque tunnel through the mountain. Most of them are much more utilitarian without much charm.

Our three munchkins

This time we decided to go for it. The trip itself was remarkably pleasant. It took about 2 hours and the kids amused themselves with books and electronics while Matt and I enjoyed the beautiful scenery.

Rice paddy being planted - the tractor is tilling the flooded fields

Ancient burial mound. It was in great shape 

but the road tunneled right under it!

Pretty little town in the mountains

Unfortunately, taking pictures from a moving car is not one of my strong suits, so I don't have any images of the cherry trees lining the flooded rice paddies and looking like puffs of cotton candy as they leaned over the highway. Rows of stone tablets stood in memorial on hillsides overlooking the rice fields. One of my favorite sights was the row of giant carp banners blowing in the breeze. The towns were crammed into every flat space between the forested peaks. It was a glimpse into the rural Japan that we very rarely see.

Amanohashidate is considered one of Japan's three scenic views. It is a sandbar that stretches across Miyazu Bay, almost linking the two sides. The land bridge is about 3.3 km long and is covered by a pine forest on one side and a sandy beach on the other.

Pine forest on one side

Sandy beach on the other

The 3.3 km path down the middle of the land bridge

The land bridge is connected by man-made bridges to either side of the bay and most tourists cross from one side to the other via foot, bike or boat. We decided to walk across and take the boat back.

Drawbridge connecting land bridge to one side of the bay

The bridge itself is beautiful! There are over 8,000 pine trees lining it and many shrines, sacred spots and benches tucked into the forest. The beach is gorgeous! It was too cold to swim during Golden Week but the kids could have spent all day just digging in the sand.

Fallen pine tree

Walking on the beach

On the far side of the bridge was a picturesque little town with a large shrine and a tram up the side 

of the mountain.

Shrine

Little tourist shops lined the roads. They lots of different trinkets and knickknacks. The most interesting were the dried fish.

We finally found an explanation

Dried squid

We took the tram up the mountain in order to see the view of the land bridge from above. This is considered one of the most scenic views in all of Japan. Unfortunately, it was a bit hazy that day but it was still gorgeous! The tradition is to stand at the edge of the mountain and bend over and look through your legs at the land bridge. It is supposed to look like a bridge from the land to the heavens from this point of view.

Our ride up the hillside

Bending over to look at the view

View of the Bridge to Heaven

Right side up

The girls and Matt took swings back down the mountain, while Nate and I rode the tram again. We saw a few other pretty nooks and crannies as we walked back through town as well as a Buddhist monk with his begging bowl. 

Laura riding on the swing down the mountain

Monk begging on the side of the road

It was a wonderful outing. I'm so glad we attempted it!

Barbara Lush - May 16, 1945 -May 6, 2011

In early May, one of my favorite people in the world passed away. My Aunt Barb has been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember and I will always miss her.

My Aunt Barb came to live with my family when I was about 4 years old. She was glamorous and fun and I loved her so much!

Celebrating St. Patrick's Day  with Aunt Barb

I remember dancing in her room to her record albums and singing along into hairbrush microphones. I remember car rides where we spent the entire time trying to get Devin to call her Aunt Barb instead of Dorty.

Aunt Barb with my brother Devin

 I remember one afternoon dancing in the rain and another where we looked for shapes in the fire in our fireplace. She loved the movie Gone with the Wind and because she liked it so much, so did I. When she left to move to Connecticut, I was about 6 1/2 and I was devastated. I remember watching her drive away in the snow. How I hated Norm, the man who took her away from me! However, all was forgotten when I got to be a flower girl in their wedding a few years later. I wore a gorgeous pink dress that Aunt Barb made for me. I felt so incredibly special! She had a way of always making me feel that way.

She came back to Cincinnati a few years later and brought me a new baby cousin to play with! I didn't get to see her quite as often, but she made an effort to reconnect. She "hired" me to help babysit Marie and invited us over to play in the pool in her condo complex. She and my Uncle Norm decided to build a house and I remember her arranging for us to go to Kings Island with their builder's son, who was 18 and gorgeous (or so I thought!) I remember how much she loved their new house, with big deep whirlpool tubs, sun room, sewing room  and the mirror hung on the wall in the living room at just at the right height so that Marie could see herself. I used that same idea when I had my girls. It provided hours of entertainment! We swam in their pond during the summers and ate BBQ on their deck.

We spent lots of family reunions together and Uncle Norm and Aunt Barb even took us on a few special vacations. Although I didn't have much interest in fishing (my Uncle's passion), I remember how gorgeous the lake was at night, drifting peacefully in the light of a huge full moon. I remember seeing the movie E.T. for the first time, sitting next to Aunt Barb as she crunched through a bag of celery and carrots. She even laughed at inappropriate moments! It was sooooo embarrassing to my 11 year old self but her laugh was so loud and infectious that I couldn't stay mad for long!

When I graduated from high school, she and Uncle Norm gave me a paperback science fiction novel with a $100 bill as a book mark! It was more money than I'd ever seen before. When I graduated from college, they gave me a car. 

As I got older, I spent less time with Aunt Barb but we still saw each other around the holidays and for birthday celebrations. When Matt and I got married, our ceremony was in a tiny chapel that only held enough room for immediate family. There was no question in my mind that she fit into that category. She came to the hospital to visit after the births of my children and attended their baptisms. 

7 years ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After nursing my uncle through all of the stages of brain cancer, she must have been terrified. However, she always faced and fought it with optimism and hope.

Recently, I knew that things were getting close to the end for her. Her voice on the phone was weaker and weaker and she had less and less to say. I selfishly hoped that she'd hold on until I was home for the summer, but although I was surprised, I wasn't shocked to learn of her death.  It was incredibly hard to be so far away at such a time. I was able to go back for her memorial service and I'm so grateful that I could. My friends here have been very supportive, listening over coffee, offering support, helping with the kids while I was traveling and scheduling day trips as distractions. None of them knew her though and none of them share her story.

From her I learned about laughter, love and hope.  In her 7 year fight against breast cancer, I learned what quiet courage is:  the ability to keep going day after day, despite pain, exhaustion and disease; to never give up the ability to laugh and to hope;  to always see the silver lining in the darkest clouds.

Unfortunately, most of the pictures I have of her are in Cincinnati. But here are a few from the last few years.

Holding Katie as an infant - Fall 2005

At Marie's wedding - September 2009

 

Snuggling with Marie - March 2007

Celebrating her birthday at Maggiano's -  May 2009

At a family reunion (in the red shirt)- August 2005

Reading to Laura and Katie - Fall 2007

Celebrating my dad's birthday in 2008

 

At Marie's bridal shower - July 2009

Another family dinner - Christmas 2005

Christmas 2006- with Marie

Thanksgiving 2006

Winter 2007

Celebrating the Christmas 2007 season at Scotti's restaurant 

Snuggling Katie - August 2008

Fushimi Inari

http://fitzpatricksinjapan.blogspot.com


Some friends and I visited the Fushimi Inari Shinto Shrine last week. The shrine is located in the hills outside Kyoto and is dedicated to Inari, the god of rice, sake, and prosperity, especially prosperity in business. "Fushimi" is the location. It was founded in 711 AD. The shrine is famous for its 10,000 torii (shrine gates) that arch over a long path up the hill behind the shrine. Each gate is donated and inscribed by businesses and individuals thankful for their prosperity. They are positioned so close together that they form a tunnel up the hillside. 

Beginning of the tori tunnel

The shrine had been freshly renovated and was positively gleaming. These were some of the workers who maintain it.

Our group (Nicole was taking the picture) at the front gate to the complex.

One of the guardians of the gate

Lanterns hanging from one of the shrine buildings. There seemed to be one for each sign of the Zodiac. This  one is for you mom!

Not sure if that is a key or a fish in his mouth!

  Foxes are a major theme at the shrine. They are said to be the messengers of Inari and are generally considered helpful, but they have also been said to bewitch people. The keys that some of them hold in their mouths are for the rice granaries. 

The beginning of the line of tori gates

Kristen, Nicole, Tricia, Tina, and Lisa

This guy was kind of scary!

At one point the path split into two. Each was lined with tori gates.

The symbols on the sides tell the company that donated the gate

These were fox faces that you could purchase from the shrine, decorate and leave as a sort of prayer to Inari.

Some of them were very artistic!

One of the monks (female) working at the shrine.

I love stone lanterns!

The forest surrounding the tori gates

Stone lantern with a fox motif

All 6 of us - Tina Maloney, Lisa Clapp, Me, Nicole Brown, Tricia Thomas, and Kristen McCreery- other than Kristen, we're all P&G wives.

With some of the kids who interviewed us. Getting our picture was  also very important!

It was a beautiful setting and could have been a very peaceful spot. However, they day we were there, the shrine was swarmed with school children who had an assignment to ask a series of questions to the foreigners they saw. They were cute and we wanted to be helpful, but after the 4th interview and 10th photo shoot it got a little old!