Kaub

I promised more impressive views from the hills above Toba, and here they are. They're not very hard to reach: the Hiyoriyama circuit is only a couple of kilometres long around the station and involves climbing around 50 m. Hinoyama is further away, further South and a little higher.

The views of the coastline at Toba were good enough for Hiroshige to use in his Famous Views from the Sixty-Odd Provinces to illustrate Shima province (though there wasn't much else, I presume, Shima province was tiny, it was just Toba and the neighbouring town of Shima - also Shima is 志摩 and not 島 "island").

Beyond the islands near Toba, lies the mainland again, the Southern part of Aichi prefecture across the Ise Bay (Minamichita and Tahara), which the car ferry in the above picture traverses.

I know that a Doge is something else in Venetian history, and I knew it back in 2015 too (though I didn't look into what it was exactly).

But at the time, the meme was in full swing, and I couldn't resist picturing this sign. I don't know if it's a good hotel though, the reviews aren't rave...

ありがとうかぼす！

What to do at Ôwakudani

... or what to do on the summit of an active volcano. As inauspicious as that sounds, as long as Mount Hakone's activity can be described as moderate (localised fumaroles and hot springs) and a full-blown eruption doesn't happen, and that hasn't happened in thousands of years, it's possible to settle some permanent attractions. The Ropeway is undoubtedly one of them, and the Geomuseum, housing explanations about the mountain's history and geological peculiarities, was a very pertinent addition 10 years ago.

However, the summit's biggest draw has to be its black eggs. No, black eggs aren't what you get when you raise chickens at the top of an active volcano, but it's what you get when you boil eggs in the natural volcanic spring water on Mount Hakone.

So a few restaurants have popped up in Ôwakudani to serve these curious delicacies. To be clear, it's just the shells that turn black due to the minerals in the hot spring water; they still protect the inside from those minerals, and the egg cooks perfectly normally, and the edible parts are still white and yellow. Apparently, I don't eat hard-boiled eggs.

The eggs are cooked in the steaming plant next to this fumarole further up the hill. It can be visited via a trail through some less stable ground. If I remember correctly, this trail is only open at certain times for a limited number of people at a time. Although it's only 300 metres from the main part of Ôwakudani, half a dozen shelters have been installed in case of emergency (one such concrete structure can be seen behind the steaming plant).

But how do the eggs get up there if the trail isn't always open? With their own lovely little ropeway! White eggs go up, black eggs come down, ready to be served in the restaurants!

To build or not to rebuild? The case of Heijô-kyô

In 710, the Imperial court moved from Kashihara to Nara. Just over 80 years later, the capital once again changed location, settling in Kyôto where it would stay for a millennium. The palace in Nara was abandoned, and in the 1000 years that followed, the grounds were used for menial things. However, a few structures have been rebuilt in recent years, such as the main audience hall in the background, which was completed in time for Heijô-kyô's 1300th anniversary.

Besides a museum housing artefacts from its 8th-century heyday, the palace is seen here hosting some art exhibits, and a play is underway, just visible in the above photo. Of course, I didn't understand a word of it...

This view of the Suzaku South gate shows how recently interest was given to the site: by the time excavations had begun, a railway was already running through it! This is the Kintetsu line, opened in 1914. As such, trains between Ôsaka and Nara pass directly through this historic site.

Toba Castle ruins

After Hikone Sawayama and Numazu Nagahama, a final entry in my mini-series of castles that are outside the Top 100 and Next 100 lists - until I get to see more! - is Toba Castle, located on the glorious Shima coast, and of which little beyond a few walls and foundations are left.

Now a park, the top level offers some good views of the coastline, only a short climb up some stairs from Toba's attractions sea level. Admittedly, the best views require a longer hike, and when I visited, Shiroyama Park was at the end of quite a long day's walk!

Freiburg's Schwabentor

The Germany city of Freiburg im Breisgau, on the transition between the Rhine valley plains and the hills of the Black Forest, was part of the Duchy of Swabia until it dissolved in the 13th century due to the ducal line going extinct. It was around this time that its "Swabian Gate" was built at the Eastern edge of the town, facing the Swabian heartland.

Like Schaffhausen's Schwabentor, it has undergone upgrades and downgrades, taken damage and been restored over time. The current illustrations on the tower include St George slaying the dragon (1903) on the outside, and a merchant with a cart (first painted in 1572) on the inside, just visible in the picture below.

Freiburg's Altstadt has many gorgeous, colourful houses decorated with trompe-l'oeil facades. An effort has also been made to preserve the little rivers in the streets, known as Bächle. Local superstition says that anyone who accidentally steps in a Bächle will marry a local - unusual to see a place that values clumsiness!

World's Loudest Prius

In 2012, apr, one of the big teams on the Japanese GT scene, decided to do... Well, I'll just tell you what they did, you can make your own opinion: they took a Toyota V8 originally designed for American open-wheel racing, which was due to be used for Toyota's return to the Le Mans 24 Hours, plopped it in a mid-rear position on a race chassis, cobbled together a hybrid system with various parts from production cars in the Toyota range, and covered all this with a Prius-shaped bodyshell with an ultra-aggressive aerokit.

To me, the result is both brilliant and ridiculous in equal measure. Brilliant because it worked: as the first full-time hybrid competitor in the Japanese Super GT Series, the mid-engined Toyota Prius apr won 4 races, scoring 16 podiums, and finishing as high as second in the GT300 championship twice in a 7-year career.

Ridiculous because it's the complete antithesis of a road-going Prius, to the point of being the loudest car in the field! When I first witnessed the Prius apr at Motegi in 2016, I could only gasp and laugh; there's no way a Prius should be this loud! And it was a joy to see it again testing at Suzuka in 2018, in what would be this version's final season.

In 2019, the next-generation Prius apr would not be mid-engined, as per the rules that forced manufacturers to put the engine where it is in the road car, and the screamer was replaced by a growler - still ludicrously loud, and I wouldn't want my Prius race car any other way! By the time I visited Super GT a third time at Fuji Speedway in 2023, the Prius was no more, but I jumped on the chance to get a miniature of this remarkable car.

For more on its history, development and results, Roflwaffle has a 35+ minute video on it.

Eckwersheim rail accident memorial

On the northern edge of the Strasbourg Metropolitan Area, the high-speed railway line crosses the Marne-to-Rhine Canal (of which I've said quite a lot recently) and curves to the South to join the trunk line into Strasbourg. It was here, on 14 November 2015, in the months prior to this section opening, that a test train derailed catastrophically, killing 11 and injuring 42.

The immediate cause of the derailment was over-speed: the crew had failed to brake in advance of the curve and headed into it 90 km/h faster than they should have. The reasons for this failure are a point of contention; as far as I have understood, the accident report hasn't managed to clearly identify them as there was no voice recorder in the driver's cab. The accident has been in the news recently as the trial of the driving crew and the companies involved has just taken place, with the verdict due to be returned in October.

I have been travelling on the accident tracks for years, and possibly since the first time I took the TGV to Strasbourg in 2017, I have made a note of this particular curve, recognising the red bridges from those terrible pictures from the news, not out of anxiety, but out of awareness of what had taken place. Knowing that a memorial garden sits there, and with the court case wrapping up, I decided to go out and see it in person.

Quite isolated from outside noise by the two elevated train tracks either side, and with the canal and paths ahead, the atmosphere there is indeed very peaceful. A large plaque recalls the event, while 11 stones are scattered around the site for the deceased.

"En hommage aux victimes et aux personnes profondément touchées par l'accident de la rame d'essais du 14 novembre 2015, à celles et ceux qui nous ont quittés"

Daylight Saving Time, Edo style

These Edo-period clocks are on display at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Ueno, Tokyo. They are unusual in two ways: the display looks kind of like a ruler, and you may notice on the left example that the marks are irregular. This would seem to suggest that hours in one half of the day are considerably shorter than in the other half.

The basic idea is that the Sun always rose at 6 in the morning and always set at 6 in the evening. In between, the same number of hours, no matter the season. This means that in the summer, an hour was quite a bit longer than an hour in winter, and vice-versa for the nights. It turns out the Romans were doing this too, on a more elementary scale as their clocks were sundials, and soon noticed that they weren't getting as much rest at some times of the year...

Today, most of Europe and the US have Daylight Saving Time, and we're going through the "ugh, clocks forward, less sleep" movement in Europe tonight. But let's take a moment to consider that the owners of these clocks would have owned a set of rulers and changed them each month!

Hikawa Maru at sunset

Moored permanently at Yokohama as part of a park and seafront promenade, is the ocean liner Hikawa Maru, built in 1928-1930. After life as a passenger ship and a hospital ship during World War II, it survives in impeccable condition - the paint is vibrant and there's hardly any rust to notice.

It is a museum ship and a protected monument, as evidenced by the banners:

(happy captain face) 船内を見学できます: you can take a tour inside the ship

重要文化財 日本郵船 「氷川丸」: Important Cultural Property, Nippon Yûsen ship Hikawa Maru

Obviously, I was too late to be able to visit the ship. I had arrived at Shinagawa late afternoon and was hopping over to Yokohama for a sunset walk-around and dinner.

I'm bringing it up because Mike Brady featured the Hikawa Maru on a recent episode of Oceanliner Designs about ships that avoided destruction and that still survive.