I am not sure how I first heard about Hagi, but in researching our trip it seemed
like a good out-of-the-way destination. One guidebook, Essential
Japan by David Knowles, listed it as one of the top ten attractions in the
country. The descriptions of Hagi I read reminded me of Vietri
sul Mare, a favorite town of ours just north of Salerno. Like Vietri,
Hagi is a small seacoast town famous
for its ceramics. Among the Japanese, Hagi is also famous for its role
in the Meiji restoration. I have found a good description of Hagi's
historical significance on the web HERE.
We
spent two nights in Hagi, staying at a Minshuku,
called Higashi Hagi. A Minshuku is equivalent to a Bed and Breakfast in
the US or a Pensione in Italy. Ours was run by a very nice woman who was a
retired history teacher. The only other guest staying with her that first
night was a young Norwegian, who was the first westerner we had seen since we
had left Kyoto. On the second night we were fortunate to meet our proprietor's
son, who was visiting with a friend from Korea. Our accommodations were
very rustic but larger than we had left behind in Tamatsukuri-Onsen. In
any case, Tony loved sleeping on the floor (I mention this because for some
reason I had been worried about Tony's comfort staying in Japanese-style inns).
When
we first arrived in Hagi we tried to follow the map printed on our reservation
form. The Minshuku was actually directly across from the train station
within easy walking distance but for some reason the map lead us astray, and we
ended up walking for over an hour trying to find the place, dragging quite a bit
of luggage with us. Eventually, after asking various people where "Minshuku
Higashi Hagi" was, we found it. The Norwegian told us the next
morning that he had had a similar problem finding the place, and had taken cabs
a number of times all over town trying to reach his destination, which was a 3
minute walk from the train station.
That night we ate at Gusto, one of a chain of family restaurants in Japan
that is similar to a Howard Johnson's in the U.S. except that they serve
potstickers and sushi as well as hamburgers. Later that evening we played
video games in a local video game parlor.
The next day we rented bicycles, which is the thing to do in Hagi. We
tried following the Lonely Planet's (Japan guide) directions to a tourist
office, just to see what they had. We managed to find the right address,
but it had obviously moved. I walked into some kind of office in the
building and asked (how I don't recall) where the tourist office was. A
woman began explaining to me that it had moved to another part of town, and as
she did a co-worker of hers, a man, passed by and made some comment laughing to
her about how she would have to speak English, I turned to him and said
something like "so zyaa nai yo, sukoshi nihongo hanaseru ga"
("that's not so, I can speak a little japanese, but...").
We
continued our bike trek across town (Hagi is very flat with a nice grid of
streets and thus quite nice for bicycles), stopping at a phone booth to call
home. Home (Massachusetts) for us was 13 hours ahead in time, so that when
we called my wife at 10:00 AM it was Eleven O'clock at night for her (thus I am
guessing that this photo was taken at around 10 in the morning).
Eventually we found the tourist office at the "other" train station,
quite near to where we made our phone call. There was no new English
information available to us there.
We ate lunch at a kind of noodle restaurant, I believe part of a chain called
Nagasaki Chanmen,
housed in a small building that the Lonely Planet guide describes as looking a
bit like a New England church.
After lunch we bicycled across town through the old Samurai district,
stopping at a 19th Century merchant's house that is now maintained as a
museum. We made our way through the old streets of Hagi in the direction
of the ruins of the castle. I remember being extremely apprehensive
worrying about Tony falling into the deep, two-foot wide drainage ditches on the
side of the narrow, asphalt alleyways. Fortunately we survived the day on
our rickety bicycles without mishap.
In
the corner of Hagi there is a wonderful park surrounding the ruins of the
castle. I shot a lot of video in the park, sometimes while riding my bike,
and as a consequence I find I have fewer photographs of things we
saw there. The photograph to the left shows Tony standing on a stone
bridge near a shrine in the park. It is especially worth clicking on this thumbnail
to see the full image as it is hard to see the detail in the picture otherwise.
We
sat on the top of the ruins of Hagi Castle as I explained the history of World
War II to Tony starting with the Meiji Restoration. Just as it was
fascinating for him to hear the story of Pearl Harbor I was struck by what an
interesting vantage point this was for us to contemplate the sweep of world
history. In the background of the photograph of
Tony standing on the ruins of the castle, you can see an elderly Japanese
couple approaching the base of the castle. For some reason the man decided
to scale the wall of the castle, somewhat to his wife's amusement. By this
time I was feeling pretty cocky about speaking Japanese, and I yelled out "asoko
de amari abunaku arimasen yo" ("over there isn't so
dangerous") as the man climbed up the 15 foot wall. For some reason I
got no response whatsoever; I still wonder if what I said was wrong.
We
then bicycled a little further through a nice sculpture park and out to a
beach. Although it seemed to us like a perfectly nice beach day, there
were very few people there and no one in bathing suits, I think because this
early in July it was not officially considered to be beach weather. In any
case, we liked it.
Later
that evening we bicycled to a shopping center where I bought some socks. I
was unable to find any men's socks for sale without emblems on the side.
My friend Richard in Shizuoka later confirmed for me that men's socks in Japan
generally all have some emblem on them. It's not important, but it is not
a style of sock that I would normally think to buy. My theory is that the
first western men's socks introduced to Japan had emblems on them, and now to
the Japanese that's what a western-style sock looks like. Of course now I
love the two pairs of socks I bought that night, as a souvenir of Hagi.
We
went to a large electronic department store; something like a Circuit City but
with much ceilings. On the back wall there were dozens of televisions for
sale, as you would see in the U.S., but what interested me were the HDTV sets,
which were so inexpensive that I took photographs of them just to record the
price. I suspect, but don't know for sure, that televisions in Japan are
sold only with a monthly subscriber service fee, and that thus the sets are
cheaper than they would be otherwise. The set on the left is selling for
217,000 Yen, less than $2000, which at least at that time was very cheap for an
HDTV set by U.S. standards. I enjoyed admiring the merchandise throughout
this store but I also remember that the music played in the background was so
repetitious and cloying (a Japanese female pop vocal) that I felt compelled to
leave.
Hagi
