DYA717 Japan Kumamoto, Kyushu June 22, 2017
Was drizzling early in the morning, like 5 a.m. I met my tour guide, Helen from “Explorer Kumamoto”, for today at 9 a.m. Pau drizzle. Only overcast sky. Had only one other person on today’s tour. So glad, cause when I signed up I was the one and only. The price goes down with each additional tour member. Helen is originally from the UK, married a Japanese and she proved to be an excellent translator of Japanese we had to interface with. The other member of the tour was Samuel from Denmark on a special intern program. He belongs to a kendo club in Denmark so is interested in Japanese swordsmanship. We first went to the Tatsuda Nature Park which actually belongs to the Hosokawa family. They are the ancestors of the Hosokawa lords who ruled Kumamoto. Four large monuments of the top 2 Hosokawas and their wives are in an enclosed high-lighted area. Lady Garcia is a noted historic figure. A Japanese wife of a warlord who had converted to Chritianism and was named Lady Garcia. The other lower Hosokawa lords and/or later generation lords had smaller monuments nearby. There was a monument to Miyamoto Mushi, the famous sword fighter. We then went to the Reigando Cave where swordsman Miyamoto Musashi spent a year meditating and wrote “Gorin-No-Sho” or the Book of 5 Rings. If you remember your samurais, Musahi was involved in hundreds of duels and never lost. Obviously, he lived to write da book! Kekekeke Along the way we saw some terraced fields. The olden day fiefs were charged taxes for flatland fields. Anything up the mountainside were not taxed so the people in the area got creative and made terraced fields. They could plant anything and use it for themselves. And not be taxed. Then we got to the area of Musashi’s cave. Along the path to the cave, there was a temple built before Musashi visited the place. So that place is also a place of worship. There are something like 500 stone buddhas in the area. Then lunch up a hill at an onsen. Forgot the name of the restaurant already! But, was ONO!
Then we had a long drive to Arao which is a city just at the top edge of Kumamoto boundary. Go over the boundary and you’re in Fukuoka! We went to this master sword-smith Genrokurou Matsunaga. There are about 200 swords-smiths left in Japan and Mr. Matsunaga doesn’t have a successer and he has no apprentices. Mr. Matsunaga, per Helen’s translations, explained how he collects iron particles from the beach. The beach in his area has a lot of iron particles and he just rolls an iron magnet and collects them. The picture you see in my video shows a bucket of iron particles he collected in 10 minutes. He then mixes the iron with other stuffs (I wish I had a recorder to help my memory of the explanation of the process) to make the iron combo. He builds a clay kiln and heats up his mixture so it melts into a metal glob. We go from there to getting the iron into blocks, the pounding, folding, pounding again and again and eventually the pounding into the sword shape. Usually, apprentices would wield the sledge hammers to pound the iron but Mr. Matusnaga now uses an automated sledge hammer (see video).All this was interesting but we had fun after this. We went to Mr. Matsunaga’s fencing dojo and met several of his dojo seniors. One was 80+ years old, another 75 and I forgot about the 3rd guy (I told you, I need a recorder!). They gave a demonstration of cutting wet tatami rolls. Wet tatami rolls give almost the same resistance as cutting the human body. Then Samuel and I had a chance to grab a real sword and had a go at the wet tatamis. Of course, the senior instructor gave us a few pointers. In my case, I made mistakes such as taking my eyes off the target – Hey, I have the same problems with “looking up” when swinging at the golf ball, so I told told Helen to tell them. The sword is heavy, and it was getting heavier with each swing I took at the wet tatamis. I relinquished the sword after a few cuts cause I didn’t want to make a mistake and chop off my knees. My arms/hands were getting tired. After our feeble attempt at cutting wet tatami mats, Mr. Matsunaga showed us his collection of samurai military stuffs. Wow, what a collection! What a great day! Helen dropped me off at the Arao train station and it took me 45 minutes to get back to Kumamoto. I picked up my luggage and went to the Dormy Inn Hotel. Worked on the Youtube video, then went up to the 13th floor for the onsen furo. Nice! Dormy Inn has free noodle snack from 9:30-11:00 p.m. I went for the 9:30 p.m. snack. I forgot to take a picture for you folks. So I waited until 10:30 p.m. and went for 2nds and took a picture just for you folks! Check it out! ONO! ONO! ONO! I had to get 2 bowls of ramen just so you guys can see da ONO KAU-KAU! Of course I went crash after this! Kekekekeke : )