The bridge to nowhere

It’s a bright, clear day and yesterday’s cooler weather is still hanging around so I forced myself to get out even though I’d stupidly stayed up until 3am reading. The first order of business was the “Ryujin Great Suspension Bridge” (yes, that’s the actual name on the sign). It looks really pretty in the pictures, but it’s back in the woods a ways so I wasn’t sure how many times I was going to get lost. But apparently this is another great local tourist attraction, because as soon as you’re on the right road, you start seeing signs for it too. Not quite every 5 km, but enough.

It is very pretty – a thin blue bridge soaring high above a steep green valley complete with a dam and lake. But what’s really odd is that it’s (as far as I can tell) a purely ornamental bridge. It’s not wide enough to support a regular car, and there are no roads to it on the other side. I have no idea why they built it except to charge people 300 yen a piece to walk over it (and they really didn’t need to put the plexiglass panels in the road surface every 100m – I don’t want to know just how far I’ll fall if something happens). I was, however, very relieved to see that the footpath from the dam to the bridge was closed. There was no chance of the idiot in me deciding it would be fun to walk up yet more steps.

On the way out, I noticed a billboard for other attractions in the area. One of them puzzled me for the longest time – “Soba Load”. Now, I knew there was an area famous for its soba noodles, but it still took me a while to figure out that this was really “soba road.” You’d think that with 3 alphabets the Japanese could afford a “r”, but apparently not.

Since it was still pretty early (not getting lost helps a lot), I stopped at Seizan-so on the way back. It’s a retirement garden for some local lord built around 1690 – not big on the radar screen, but close to home and free so I wanted to see it. And it hands down beats everything else I have seen here to date. Very cultivated and contrived (exactly what you think of when you think of a Japanese garden) but somehow, even with tons of other tourists, there’s an incredible sense of peace. The irises are in bloom right now, but the hydrangeas are coming along too (don’t know if it’s a blue garden year round, or if it’s just coincidence). The irises are planted in amazingly straight rows, but from a distance, they look like a blue river flowing into the koi pond. Very neat effect. The back 40 is more forest-like and only looks like they sweep every week, not every day.

And one more of life’s mysteries has been solved. I’ve been seeing more high end Mercedes and Porsches here than I really would have expected in a country where the top speed limit is 55 mph. I mean, what’s the point? But take a weekend drive into the mountain back roads and you’ll see the point. Just remember to pull your underpowered little car off to the side to let them all pass. Otherwise they try to pass anyway and that’s just really scary.