Inside HITOHAKU

 

HITOHAKU in Sanda, Hyogo is a huge natural history museum.

I covered the exterior architecture in the last post in this series.

In English, it is called the Museum of Nature and Human Activities.

When I visited in 2017 there was little information in English, but now the whole museum is covered with smartphone-readable info in multiple languages.

It is not just a museum,but also includes several research facilities.

The museum's collections are staggering, with 152,000 geological items and more than 2,000,000 biological specimens.

Included in that are 1.3 million insects, 68,000 animals, and 641,000 plants.

The museum is spread over four floors and includes sections on the natural history of Hyogo, and the always-popular-with-kids dinosaur exhibits.

The human impact on nature is also covered.

I found the msueum and its displays surprisingly interesting, and good value. The most expensive entry fee is 200 yen.

The previous post in this series on my walk along the Kinki Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage was on the wonderful exterior of the museum.

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Majima Island. Westernmost point of the 35th Parallel & Abandoned Benten Shrine

 

Majima Island is an outcropping on the coast between Tsunozu and Waki in Gotsu. It may have been a tiny island at some point, but now it is connected to the land by a sandy hill.

There are a few tiny fishing boats on the beach, but no harbour,

Steps lead up to a first torii with a Jizo statue nearby.

When I first visited Majima it had a Benten shrine on top, but now no maps show a shrine at all, leading me to believe it has been disestablished.

After the first torii sand dunes lead to the path to the "island" itself.

After a narrow ridge connecting to the island some steep steps lead to the top. Erosion has seriously undercut the concrete steps.

A second torii stands near the top, though it has been missing some of its parts  for as long as I have been here.

A pair of ceramic komainu stand guard.

In the last day or so I have come across three different sets of ceramic komainu, all in completely different styles. First there was the pair at Ankoku Temple, then the pair at Kantake Shrine, and now these.

The views from on top are fantastic, looking back down the coast past Tsunozu, Ninomiya, & Uyagawa.

Looking up the coast past Waki, Kakushi, then then "downtown" Gotsu with the huge paper factory at the mouth of the Gonokawa River and then past Asari with the mountains of Iwami Ginzan visible...

A sign on the coast road shows that  Majima id the westernmost point on Honshu of the 35th Parallel .

The 35th Parallel pretty much cuts Hinshu in half and passes from south of Tokyo and then south of Kyoto before leaving Japan at this point.

This is also the spot where local fishermen rescued a couple of hundred Russian sailors from a sinking ship during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. The story can be found in this old post of mine.

The previous post was on three shrines I visited yesterday.

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Fujishiro Toge... the Final Pass

 

The final leg of the day's walk along the Kiiji route of the Kumano Kodo from Yuasa to Kainan was over the Fujishirotoge Pass.

It had been a thoroughly enjoyable day, and one of my favorite sections of the numerous Kumano Kodo trails I had walked in the previous week or so....

After leaving Fukusho-ji temple and its glorious display of cherry blossoms, the route heads uphill and offers a view back down on Shimotsu.

Jizobu-ji temple is located at the foot of the steepest part of the trail over the pass. The current building dates to the early 16th century.

The trail now enters a bamboo forest.....

Not exactly sure what this is.... I think it is a rock that the local daimyo thought looked like a giant inkstone and so had a stonecarver "enhance" it....

The bamboo forest was delightful....

Not manicured like the famous bamboo forest in Arashiyama, but better for not being so....

After the pass Kainan comes into view.....

Quite an industrial port, ENEOS has an oil terminal here...

Kainan is the start of the large urban area that spreads out from Wakayama City...

The previous post was on Fukushoji Temple.....

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