Chichibu - April 2013

Valley of the Yokoze River, Yokoze Township, Saitama Prefecture.

Sakura performer, Chichibu City, Saitama Prefecture.

Shiba zakura, Hitsujiyama Park, Chichibu City, Saitama Prefecture.

Shishi dancer, Chichibu City, Saitama Prefecture.

Shishi dancers, Chichibu City, Saitama Prefecture.

Mt. Bukko, Yokoze Township, Saitama Prefecture

After the discovery of nylon doomed the silk industry, Chichibu's core industry became cement production. Materials companies blasted Bukko, the limestone massif overlooking the city, to powder (one resident said one of her earliest memories was traveling to another town and finding out that not everyone had white roofs). The resulting product was shipped off to armor the coastlines and line the rivers (and play a role in better-considered construction as well, of course).

The blasting has ceased, leaving behind a peculiar half-mountain as Chichibu's scenic backdrop.

Chichibu is trying to reinvent itself as a center for tourism: a role for which it is eminently qualified. The city faces limits, unfortunately, in its poor transportation links. There is no major no airport and no nearby Shinkansen line. The valleys leading into the city from the south are only wide enough to accommodate two lane roads, and access from the north takes a lengthy looping route via Yorii -- a sleepy burg whose own fortunes are set to skyrocket when the new super-efficient Honda assembly plant opens.

The already poor transportation situation could become dire if the Seibu Group wins permission to close down rail service on the Seibu Chichibu Line. Seibu managers seem to have wanted for some time to unload the Chichibu line as well as four other minor lines. They have cleverly used a bid for board seats by U.S. based Cerberus Capital as an opportunity to make public their desire to dump their least profitable rail operations. (Link)

To be fair, Seibu has tried to promote travel along the Seibu Chichibu line, publishing, for example, a library of trail maps for hikers. Two of the trails, the one up to Kanhatsushumiharashidai and the one from Ne no Gongen to Takedera (Hachioji) are classic beginner-level day trips.


All photos: MTC

Abenomics In The Wringer

Watching newly appointed Council On Industrial Competitiveness member and Koizumi revolutionaire Takenaka Heizo get batted around by the panel on this morning's Asa Zuba! program, after a long segment on Shimane Prefecture (#1 in public works spending per capita of all of Japan's prefectures) construction company executives exulting at the Abe government's proposed economic stimulus package -- a report played absolutely straight so as to infuriate viewers in the Tokyo Metropolitan District, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, Aichi, Kyoto and Osaka -- one had to wonder whether or not the fix was in from the beginning: that the news mediaverse treated the Liberal Democratic Party with kid gloves and piled scorn upon Democratic Party of Japan-governments because it missed having a party in power so transparently stupid and self-serving in its ways that the stories just write themselves.

As for the articles skeptical of Abenomics, they keep arriving over the Intertube. (Link and Link and Link)

Meanwhile, its favorite party back in charge of the Prime Minister's Residence, Pravda-by-the-Palace has resumed its abject sycophancy, portraying the impossible (or at least highly improbable) as likely. (Link)

Japan's Anti-Missile Defenses -- Where They Are

To intercept an off course DPRK rocket-that-is-actually-a-long-range-ballistic-missile™ (roketto jijitsujo no chokyori dando misairu) or the an off-course jettisoned first stage of said rocket-that-is-actually-a-long-range-ballistic-missile™:

Patriot PAC-3 Missile Batteries

Protecting the Capital Area = 3

1) Ichigaya, Tokyo Metropolitan District
Grounds of the Ministry of Defense

2) Asaka City, Saitama Prefecture
GSDF Camp Asaka

3 Narashino City, Chiba Prefecture
GSDF Camp Narashino

Protecting the Nansei Islands and Okinawa = 4

1 and 2) Okinawa, Okinawa Prefecture

3) Miyakojima, Okinawa Prefecture

4) Ishigakijima, Okinawa Prefecture


Aegis Destroyers Equipped with SM-3 Missiles

Sea of Japan = 1

1) MSDF Myoko (DDG 175)
Left Maizuru Port on December 6, 2012

East China Sea = 2

2) MSDF Kongo (DDG 173)
Left Sasebo Port on December 6, 2012

3) MSDF Chokai (DDG 176)
Left Sasebo Port on December 6, 2012

Deploying three SM-3 equipped Aegis destroyers is a wee bit of overkill. For a comparative, three SM-3 equipped Aegis destroyers would be sufficient to protect all of Europe. But a) you can never be too sure and b) it is election season.


Later - The above will, of course, be supplemented by U.S. Navy anti-missile missile-bearing ships (Link).

Suffice it to say that Japan and South Korea will be over-protected from a rocket (or pieces of thereof) attempting to lift a satellite or a dummy payload weighing as much as a nuclear device.


Sources:

Fuji Terebi
http://www.fnn-news.com/news/headlines/articles/CONN00236607.html

The Asahi Shimbun
http://www.asahi.com/politics/update/1206/TKY201212060449.html

Mainichi Shimbun
http://mainichi.jp/select/news/20121206k0000m040091000c.html

Hiking - Japan's New Extreme Sport

The Tokyo Shimbun has begun printing a series of helicopter surveys of concentrations of Cesium 134 and Cesium 137 in the prefectures of the Kanto Plain. Unsurprisingly, they have shown for the most part that the highest readings are found along the spines of the mountains, where the earth touches the upper atmosphere and where rainfall was the heaviest in the days following the explosions of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors.

Gunma Prefecture


Chiba Prefecture

Saitama Prefecture



They have not printed the images for Kanagawa, Tochigi, Ibaraki and Tokyo. I expect them to appear over the next few days.

The dark, almost burgundy spot in the Oku Musashi corner of Saitama Prefecture adjoining the tip of the Tokyo Metropolitan District pretty much guarantees that like my longtime dream of climbing Kumotoriyama, the highest mountain (2017 meters) of the TMD, will be a much hotter trip than it would have been before.

I cannot wait for boot decontaminators to hit the electronics stores or to see signs posted at train stations, "Hikers! Please thoroughly wash your boots before entering the train cars!"

Images courtesy: Tokyo Shimbun

To Ogose

Somei Yoshino and the Hill above Yamazaki Village
Hannō City, Saitama Prefecture
April 12, 2008

Chert and Water below Tengu no Taki
Ogose City, Saitama Prefecture
April 12, 2008

The Oppegawa flowing through Kuroyama Village
Ogose City, Saitama Prefecture
April 12, 2008

Courtyard of the Katsuragi Kannondō
Ogose City, Saitama Prefecture
April 12, 2008

Summit of Kanhatsushumiharashidai
from the summit of Ōtakatoriyama
Ogose City, Saitama Prefecture
April 12, 2008

From Nishi Agano Station to Ogose Station over Kanhatsushumiharashidai (770 m) and Ōtakatoriyama (376m) via Hanatatematsu no Tōge, Kuroyama Santaki and Katsuragi
15 kilometers (give or take a few)

Saitama District 9
Representative: Ōno Matsushige, LDP, 4 elections to the Diet, 72 years of age
Seiwa Seisaku Kenkyūkai (Machimura faction)

After We Take Off the Masks of March

The country has millions of hectares of pollen-spewing biological deserts of cedar and false cypress, the wood of which is so worthless that when loggers thin the forests, they leave the downed trunks just lying on the ground...and no wood-burning thermal power stations on the drawing boards.

Am I missing something here?

Just as a means of rapidly destroying a health hazard, incineration seems a reasonable way to go. Do it up under a boiler, send the steam to generator, shovel the generated electricity on to existing transmission grid (no comments about AC versus DC please) collect the creosote as raw material for a chemicals industry and somehow work out the carbon sequestration—and off we go.

Or so one would think.

So again I ask—what am I missing here?

By the way, I spent much of Saturday in Ogose, in Saitama Prefecture, where the residents and local authorities make a concerted effort, or so it seemed at least, to make use of locally available wood in housing construction, furniture and road and trail reinforcement.

Bravo for the good people of Ogose.

Hiwadasan

In Black & White







and in Color







Hiwadasan walk - all abilities, 8.2 kilometers, 267 meters of vertical gain
Access from Koma (高麗) Station
52 minutes out of Ikebukuro on the Seibu Chichibu Line

Hidaka City, Saitama Prefecture
Saitama District 9
Representative: Ōno Matsushige, LDP, 4 elections to the Diet, 72 years of age

All images from April 5, 2008
Image courtesy: MTC

Haru Ichiban

Fukujusō - Adonis ramosa and hoverfly
Yorii City, Saitama Prefecture
February 11, 2008