Togitsu Town

 

One of the benefits of walking everywhere rather than using a faster method of travel is that you get to see things you would miss if you were in a hurry. You get to see many of the "boring places" thta you would normally avoid.

Heading north out of Nagasaki I had to pass through Togitsu. In essence it is really just a suburb of Nagasaki now and seems to be composed of the multitude of national chain businesses that cover the country.

However, the draincovers of the town showed an intriguing rock formation, a spire of rock with what appears to be a boulder perched precariously on top. The rock was previously known as Tsugi ishi bozu but is now more commonly referred to as Sabaku Sarakashi Ishi after a well known story.

According bto the story a mackerel seller was coming down the road with a basket full of mackerel to sell but when he saw the rock her decided it looked like it was about to fall off the spire of rock so he decide to wait until it did before passing on safely. The rock never did fall and all his fish rotted leading to a variety of "the moral of the story is....."

Not far from the rock was a very large mansion-type building. It is called a tea-house but was in fact one of the buildings making up a honjin, a residence for lords while they are travelling.

It is said that the hinjin was originally about twice the size of the remaining building. Unfortunateky it was not open to the public.

Nearby, Togitsu Town Hall had a statue in front that I felt must surely refer to a local myth or legend, but apparently not. It is titled "Fureai", which is a world of recent origin that refers to a kind of feeling of solidarity between different members of a community. It seems to have appeared in the 1970's after modern Japan's social structure had altered from what had been traditional.

The previous post in this series on day 64 of my first walk around Kyushu was the diary of day 63.