Day 8: Tsuruga to Sakaiminato

Today we had a great drive through the mountains from Tsuruga to Sakaiminato, a port city that is the gateway to Vladivostok for us.

We encountered many tunnels and construction sites on the way up. The longest tunnel was 4.1 km (about 2.5 miles)! I love the barriers at construction sites (they use cats too):

 

Elephants in a construction area

Elephants in a construction area (Eileen BJorkman photo)

First we took a back road to the town of Obama, where we sped past the Obama Rope Company:

 

Obama Rope Company in Obama, Japan

Obama Rope Company in Obama, Japan (Eileen Bjorkman photo)

We took a lunch break at the Kasai Service Area and added gas to the Roadster. The Shell station wouldn’t accept John’s Visa or my Master Card — we hope this isn’t an omen of things to come!

 

Luke adding fuel at Kasai Service Area

Luke adding fuel at Kasai Service Area (Eileen Bjorkman photo)

Finally, we stopped at a rest area where we had views of Mount Daisen, which sits inside a national park and is a rival to Mount Fuji, as you can see from this photo.

Rest stop with views of Mount Daisen

Rest stop with views of Mount Daisen (Eileen Bjorkman photo)

 

Tomorrow we’ll be buying provisions for our 1.5 day ferry ride to Vladivostok. I’m not sure if we’ll have WiFi on the ferry, so I may be offline until Monday evening (late Sunday back in the US).

Day 7: A Watch in Tsuruga

Today we visited a museum in Tsuruga devoted to a part of history we hadn’t heard before.

 

Port of Humanity Tsuruga Museum

Port of Humanity Tsuruga Museum (Eileen Bjorkman photo)

The man on the left in the picture above, Chiune Sugihara, was responsible for saving the lives of about 6,000 Jewish people during World War II. When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, many Polish Jews fled to Lithuania, where they were safe until Stalin began arresting them and sending them to Siberia.

On July 18, 1940, hoping for safe passage to Japan, many Jewish people gathered at the Japanese Consulate in Lithuania; however, very few of them met the current requirements to obtain a Japanese visa. Mr. Sugihara decided to ignore the rules and began issuing as many visas as he could and he stamped 2,000 passports before the consulate closed. Because a visa allowed all family members to travel, he was able to save about 6,000 Jews altogether.

Many of the Jewish families crossed Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railroad and then took a boat from Vladivostok to Tsuruga, where Japanese families welcomed them until they could continue their journey, primarily to the United States and Australia. To raise money, most of the refugees sold their watches and jewelry to the Watanabe Watch Store in Tsuruga. The Watanabe family kept the watch below as a keepsake; the watch is now in the Port of Humanity Museum in Tsuruga.

 

The watch in the Port of Humanity Tsuruga Museum

The watch in the Port of Humanity Tsuruga Museum (Eileen Bjorkman photo)

In addition to the Tsuruga Museum, there is a memorial to Chiune Sugihara in Boston, Massachusetts. He died in 1986 at the age of 86.

After lunch, John had to troubleshoot the brake lights in the 1928 Roadster — Leo and I had noticed during yesterday’s drive that they weren’t working. It turned out to be just a fuse this time — an easy fix once John located a spare. Now all we have to do is finish our laundry and we’ll be ready to tackle the ferry to Valdivostok!

Looking for a spare fuse

Looking for a spare fuse (Eileen Bjorkman photo)

 

Luke and John with the Newly Repaired Roadster at the Route Inn in Tsuruga

Luke and John with the newly repaired roadster at the Route Inn in Tsuruga (Eileen Bjorkman photo)

Day 6: Otsu to Tsuruga

We’ve arrived in Tsuruga, the port city where the 1908 racers caught a ferry to Vladivostok. The ferry to Vladivostok doesn’t run from here anymore, so tomorrow we’ll be driving 400 km to Sakaiminato for a ferry from there.

Yesterday morning, we walked from our Otsu hotel, the Prince, down a street on the Lake Biwa waterfront to the Japanese version of Home Depot. Luke and John needed to buy a spring for the Roadster.

Luke and John buying a spring for the Roadster

Luke and John buying a spring for the Roadster (Eileen Bjorkman photo)

We left the hotel parking lot in Otsu about 2pm, but not before we had our first casualty of the trip. Fortunately, it was only a flesh wound.

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The injured parking cone (Eileen Bjorkman photo)

After following our guide van for about 30 minutes, we suddenly found ourselves cutting through back streets in neighborhoods. This is an interesting route, I thought.

 

Back streets of Otsu

Back streets of Otsu (Eileen Bjorkman photo)

Ten minutes later, as we waited at the train intersection below, I said to Leo, “That temple [the one barely visible behind the train] looks a lot like the one I ran by this morning. But it can’t be, or we’d be right back where we started.”

 

Temple and train crossing

Temple and train crossing (Eileen Bjorkman photo)

Five minutes later, we were back at the Prince Hotel, and we set off in the opposite direction. After another hour of back roads …

 

More back streets in ????

More back streets in ???? (Eileen Bjorkman photo)

and a baseball team …

 

Baseball team on the way to Tsuruga

Baseball team on the way to Tsuruga (Eileen Bjorkman photo)

we came to the Hachiman Historical Area, a Shinto shrine rarely visited by non-Japanese. We took a short break here to see the shrine …

 

Shinto Shrine

Shinto Shrine (Eileen Bjorkman photo)

and a canal — no time for a boat ride for us. The area was beautiful and serene, and we were very privileged to have seen it.

 

Canal at Hachiman Historical Area

Canal at Hachiman Historical Area (Eileen Bjorkman photo)

The rest of the journey wound along a rural road and through mountainous terrain.

 

Some of the countryside on the way to Tsuruga

Some of the countryside on the way to Tsuruga (Eileen Bjorkman photo)

Four-and-a-half hours after we left Otsu, we arrived in Tsuruga and enjoyed Italian food for dinner!