Port Du Crouesty

A ceux qui pensent "on n'a jamais essayé": si si, on a essayé. Et ceux qui en sortent nous laissent assez invariablement les mêmes messages.

Mishima Skywalk and the zip line with a view of Mount Fuji

I jokingly suggested a zip line over the Rhine in the tags of a previous post, but here's one that does exist: two zip lines, 300 and 260 metres in length, over a valley in the slopes on Mount Hakone.

It's one of the many fun activities on offer at Mishima Skywalk, along with segway tours, tree adventures... But first, one must cross the 400-metre suspension bridge, which is already not for the faintest of hearts...

The kicker is the view of Mount Fuji. On a good day, of course, the usual terms and conditions apply, and I had been unlucky previously when it came to seeing it. This seemed a better day than most, but not quite there...

Until I embarked on the return zip line. I turned around on the way up and saw Fuji-san as clear as can be. I didn't take my camera on the zip lines for fairly obvious safety reasons (and I should mention that my friend Megumi who kindly drove me to the Skywalk that day took the top picture), so what could I do but enjoy the breathtaking sight while gliding back to the start slope!

The clouds allowed this clear enough shot after crossing the bridge back to the entrance. Again: this view from a zip line. Not just a highlight of the trip, probably a lifetime highlight!

Another edge of a fog bank on the bridge between the Port du Rhin and Citadelle sectors of Strasbourg. The railway is a freight line, I'm not sure if it's used much. The river, however, regularly sees barges passing by. Anyone or anything on the river had to be on the lookout that morning...

The train to Kushimoto: a JR West 283-series Kuroshio express. The sets are getting on a bit, they were introduced in 1996 and the livery could do with a refresh, but the "dolphin nose" is distinctive, and I, for one, really like it. They're also quite rare, only 4 sets exist.

The Kisei Main Line is essentially the coastal route from Nagoya to Wakayama. The full trip around the Kii peninsula takes 8 hours by express train, with a change required at Shingû or Katsuura, but it's definitely scenic as it gets very close to the sea (photo between Kii-Tahara and Koza).

Views from Ôwakudani

As the volcano's activity isn't explosive, and there's a whole hot spring business around it, humans have been trying to tame Mount Hakone, as evidenced by the many consolidation structures seen at Ôwakudani.

These continue down the valley to contain landslides which could happen if things get more intense. Nonetheless, occasionally, a gas vent juts out, placing a distinctly natural form amongst the organised, man-made network of walls.

The yellow deposits are typically sulphur from a very pungent gas. Depending on the direction of the wind, the smell in some locations on the summit can be quite literally breathtaking.

The views, meanwhile, are figuratively breathtaking, from the striking contrasts in vegetation in the foreground to Lake Ashi and the outer mountain range of the Hakone caldera in the background.

And, of course, it is possible to see Mount Fuji from Ôwakudani. Terms and conditions apply, as always, but what little I could see on that morning gives a sense of scale to the great mountain. However, later that day, we would be treated to a much clearer view of Fuji-san.

The things people write on clocks...

Craignez la dernière - Eglise Notre-Dame de Croaz-Batz, Roscoff

Literally, this means "fear the last". OK, but the last what? Well, you're looking at the sundial for the time, which here, in French, would be "12 heures", so the full saying is inferred to be "craignez la dernière heure" - "fear thy final hour". Reminding people of their own mortality was an important part of medieval-Renaissance Christian discourse, as we saw with the ages of Man passing before Death among the automatons on the Astronomical Clock in Strasbourg Cathedral, built around the same time as this church in Roscoff.

Die Zeit eilt, Die Zeit heilt - Rathaus St. Johann, Saarbrücken

I've only got a close-up of one, but the tower of the historic town hall in Saarbrücken has at least two clocks, each with a message. The meaning of "die Zeit eilt" is similar to "time flies", and could be linked to what we saw above: be aware of what time you may have left. The second clock cleverly adds one letter to that to make "die Zeit heilt": "time heals".

"How to use this sundial" - Piazza della Borsa, Trieste

In the ground in front of the Chamber of Commerce in Trieste is a sundial, but conspicuously, the hand is missing. That is because you are the hand! Taking astronomy into account, one should stand in a slightly different place depending on the season, and apply corrections to the minutes to get official time. It was cloudy when I saw this, so I'm afraid I don't have a nice picture of the sundial in action. The instructions are in Italian on the left side of the base.

I'm a bit low on inspiration and time today (work starting to pile up), so here's a train in the snow from the recent trip to Mulhouse and Thann. The train itself is a bi-mode Regiolis B84500 set, waiting at Mulhouse as the Sun sets.

The Osaka Monorail

The final post in this mini-series on the Osaka Expo 70 Commemoration Park is the obvious: how does one get there? Considering the Expo was all about bringing together the world's shared (or non-shared) visions of the future, the Monorail seems perfect! Except this line wasn't launched in time for the Expo - it was a later project, opened in 1990.

The straddle-beam monorail links Osaka Airport to Kadoma, and is due to be extended by the end of the decade. A short branch line pops out just to the East of the Expo 70 Park station, so a visit to the park is also a chance to see some mighty impressive sets of monorail points either side of the station, as the West side (above) also connects to the depot.

After that news post, back to Thann, for this view of the Thur valley and the Vosges mountains. On the day of my visit, I climbed here first, before continuing along a ridge to the Grumbach summit and down to the Grumbach pass, before circling back down to Engelbourg Castle which I posted about first. A nice hike, not too difficult - most of the climbing is done when you've reached the Roche Albert viewpoint. There's something to be said about why it's called "Albert's Rock", but I'll save that for another time.

Sangaku Saturday #5

This is it, we've reached our first full sangaku problem! (At least one that I've seen on a real-life tablet.)

We set up the tools in previous posts, so I'll let you work this one out by yourselves: given two circles which are tangent to each other and tangent to a same line, what can you say about the radii of the three smaller, light-coloured circles?