Climbing Toba Hinoyama

Running around Koblenz station the other evening, I couldn't resist the cute message on this local train. Instead of a deadpan "depot" or "not taking passengers", this train is "going to bed"!

Contrasted sunset on Shinji-ko

On the south side of Matsue, there is a famous sunset-viewing spot, overseeing the "great lake" mentioned by Kitty-chan on the train, which would be Shinji-ko, and a small island inhabited only by a torii, called Yomegajima.

It's so famous, that there's a sign to tell you where to stand to get the Sun over the island depending on the season!

While the sunset was gorgeous on the evening I was there (last year to the day), there was also something ominous. To the left in the top photo, one can make out some rain hiding the horizon... and to the South, a thunderstorm was active in the hills.

Still, the showers were kind enough to hold back for us to see the Sun set between the cloud layer and the mountains. But they soon caught up - as soon as I stepped off the bus at Matsue station, it chucked it down!

I failed to mention this in the original post, but Meiji-jingû is also a high point of sumo culture. Newly promoted yokozuna, the highest rank in the sport, perform their first ring entry dance there, before their first tournament at that level. This would be their first appearance with the "horizontal rope" (that's what yokozuna means), in the shimenawa style, around their waist.

That's just happened, with the 74th yokozuna making his debut.

NHK WORLD

Hoshoryu performs first ring-entering ceremony as yokozuna | NHK WORLD-JAPAN News

About 3,500 people gathered at Meiji Jingu shrine in Tokyo on Friday to see sumo yokozuna grand champion Hoshoryu perform his first ring-ent

The New Year shrine visit: Meiji-jingû

A common New Year ritual in Japan is to go to a shrine, possibly a large one, a visit known as 初詣, hatsumôde. NHK reported that Meiji-jingû in particular was very busy. Of course, I would avoid that, so here we are with a more tranquil time, closer to the Autumn festival.

Meiji-jingû was, as its name suggests, founded to enshrine the spirit of Emperor Meiji after his death. The first Emperor of the post-Edo period presided over sweeping societal reforms, such as the abolishment of classes like the samurai, as Japan re-opened to the rest of the world and sought to catch up. The Imperial attachment is symbolised by the Chrysanthemum crests on the torii.

One of the things that can be wished for at Meiji-jingû is a happy marriage and family life, particularly at this dedicated spot with two camphor trees planted in 1920, linked with sacred rope - these are called "married trees", 夫婦楠 Meoto Kusu.

I mentioned a train accident that was local to the Strasbourg area - here's an air crash on Mont Sainte Odile that truly shocked the Alsace region. There is a memorial on the mountain, I should visit and pay respects some day.

Schirmeck castle

Overseeing the valley of Schirmeck, the castle, built for the Bishop of Strasbourg in the 13th century, is a short walk and climb from the town centre. As it was designed to protect a corner of the territory, that's apparently where we get the term: Schirm'eck. It was defeated by the Swedish during the Thirty-Years War, with some of the stone from the ruins being used to build other structures, such as the church.

Today, there's obviously not much of it left, though a square tower was restored and houses a small museum (closed when I visited). The Yoshi art was probably not part of the original episcopal aesthetic...

This monument needs no introduction. I just want to show the names of French scientists and engineers that adorn the base of the Tour Eiffel's first floor - just visible at the bottom of the above picture. Similarly to the German names on Strasbourg's Palais Universitaire, if you've studied science at length at any point, you'll know some of these: Cauchy, Navier, Lavoisier, Ampère...

It's been a wild couple of weeks in France, so when it got to a point when I had to go outside, I couldn't set my mind to find somewhere interesting. So I settled on nowhere special, just somewhere across the border with a train station and countryside not too far.

Lahr/Schwarzwald. Perfect.

Actually, there was a slight purpose to the trip given the time of day. I was hoping to see what was running on the Frankfurt-Milan "EuroCity Express". I'd seen an Italian train run it before, and this time it was a RABe 501 Giruno, the most recent Swiss high-speed train. I'd seen it before, but not caught a decent shot of it, so here it is!

The busy Karlsruhe-Basel main line sees a lot of traffic: higher speed like the ICE 4 at the very top and the ECE (I say higher because they can't travel at proper high speed because of everything else), regional trains, international freight... Among the inter-city trains out that morning was this Flixtrain, the same Flix who run buses across continental Europe. They have a few lines in Germany, using some old Inter-Regio carriages.

For an outing where I was just expecting to watch trains go by like a cow in a field, I dare say got more than I was banking for that morning, as a Baureihe 708.3 track inspector (Doktor Gelb?) and a brand new Mireo Smart regional set with no livery, either undergoing testing or out for delivery, made some surprise appearances.

"Those red cars were the bane of my existence" - 2000-2004 Ferraris

When Aidan Millward said something along those lines in a recent video, I felt it, because as a Häkkinen fan in the late 90s and early 2000s, Ferrari and Schumacher were the adversary. And like Aidan does in his videos, I have to admit that, looking back, they were only that insufferable because they were that good. The ultimate adversary of sorts, with generational talents in driving, managing and engineering under one roof: Michael Schumacher, Jean Todt, Ross Brawn, Rory Byrne, Nigel Stepney...

It took a few years and a few attempts, but in 1999, Ferrari won their first Constructors' championship since the early 80s, with Schumacher's first Drivers' title in red, and the first for Ferrari in 21 years, came a year later, with the F1-2000 pictured on the left. The momentum had built up, and for the next four years, the well-oiled machine that was the Scuderia with the aforementioned people in charge, were consistent contenders, always in the conversation to win races and championships... though more often that not, they were the only ones in the conversation. 2001, 2002 and 2004 were write-offs if you weren't Michael Schumacher. 2003 (F2003-GA on the right) was a closer affair, as a tyre war allowed McLaren and Williams to get close to breaking the streak.

But it didn't happen, and Ferrari won Drivers' and Constructors' doubles for five straight years, something no-one had done before, and only an equally dominant Mercedes has done since. All five cars were on display together at the Museo Ferrari in Maranello - the set-up may have changed, but I expect all five to still be shown in some capacity. After all, 2000 to 2004 were Ferrari's best years, even though, as someone who wasn't a Ferrari fan, they didn't feel like F1's best years.

Hormone is apparently short for ホルモン焼き, horumon-yaki, a dish that originated in Ôsaka. It is made from miscellaneous organs, but the organs aren't where the hormones come from... It is marketed as a meal that can improve stamina, but ホルモン is also close to 放る物, read hôrumon in the local dialect ôsaka-ben, which means "discarded things", which is what horumon-yaki is made of. Maybe the latter came first, and was construed in to ホルモン as a kind of joke.

With thanks to @felvass for the hint.

Friendly faces on Dôtonbori

Dôtonbori is the street to go restaurant crawling in Ôsaka (if you have the stomach). As there's a lot of venues, there's a lot of competition, so a lot of wacky stuff to draw the passer-by's attention.

If anyone knows why this restaurant is called Shôwa Hormone, please let me know. Shôwa, I can guess, is nostalgia for the post-war Shôwa era; but Hormone needs a good story behind it!

Is this guy mad at people double-dipping their fried skewers?

By the way, that's two fronts featuring another monument of Ôsaka, Tsutenkaku tower, just in case you forgot where you were.

Finally, we have this guy, a true local hero: Kuidaore Tarô. This animatronic was introduced in 1950 as a mascot for the Cuidaore restaurant, which has since closed, but Tarô and his drumming were such a stable of Dôtonbori, that people clamoured to have him back.

I dunno. I think he looks like Brains from Thunderbirds under the influence of the Mysterons. A figure of his time though.

"Kuidaore" by the way, is from the proverb:

京都の着倒れ、大阪の食い倒れ Kyôto no ki-daore, Ôsaka no kui-daore Spend all your money on clothes in Kyôto, and on food in Ôsaka

Today, "kuidaore" is colloquially translated as "eat until you drop" - so go restaurant crawling if you can!

The abandoned Arzviller station

The old canal we followed yesterday is flanked by the Zorn river and the Strasbourg to Sarrebourg railway. Trains call at Lutzelbourg and/or Réding, while, half-way in between and opposite lock n°6, sits Arzviller station - actually located on the territory of Saint-Louis - closed. Shockingly, I can't find when it was closed (one source suggests the 1980s, though in my mind it was more recent).

Going from the canal to the station requires dropping down to the level of the Zorn river, crossing it, and going under the railway and road. There is a very dark underpass, but if you look closely and sport the light switch... Club Vosgien, the association which manages hiking trails in the Vosges mountains, literally shines through with this installation!

Given that Arzviller station is closed, and not wanting to tread the same ground twice, I decided to walk from one station to the next, Réding to Lutzelbourg, and I can't recommend the part from Réding to Arzviller: not signposted for hikers, really requiring a map if you're trying to avoid roads... and the only real highlight is the chance to glimpse the twin canal & railway tunnels: boats and trains enter and exit together at the West end (no boats on the day I visited though).