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A Japanese Village, Kibara?I have not been able to find out the name of this village with any certainty yet, but it could be Kibara.On our last night in Japan Ken, Claire, Adelaide, Denece and I stayed in an AirBnB place in a small village near Narita airport. Julia, Shayne, Anna and Beth were flying out of Tokyo's other airport, Hamida; they stayed in Tokyo that night. This was our only experience with country Japan. Our hosts were Scott and Norico. Scott, originally from the USA, picked us up at the railway station the evening of our arrival and, after the night and morning in Kibara, took us on a tour of Narita before dropping us off at Narita International Airport the following day.
This photo, taken around sunrise on 2017/10/28, shows the country around our
accommodation; flat valley floor surrounded by forested hills.
At the back of the house was a forest of trees and bamboo on a hillside – more on that later. Photo taken 2017/10/28
There was a Buddhist temple next door to this shrine. (Buddhists and Shinto seem to get along very smoothly in Japan, in fact the two seem to be blended to some extent.)
Photo taken 2017/10/28
There was a mix of trees, bamboo and creepers. Photo taken 2017/10/28
We saw many of these from trains as we travelled around. This was one of several within easy walking distance of our AirBnB accommodation; it was probably about 40 kW.
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Land-slip
What was even more interesting than the forest was the lie of the land; from bottom to top there was first a steep section – on the right, middle distance – then a relatively flat section – in the centre of the photo, with the rows of trees – then at the top another steep section – the dark area on the left.
Photo taken 2017/10/28
This land-slip may well be relevant to the lack of terraced hillsides in Japan and the retention of forest on all of the slopes other than the very gentle ones. This photo shows the steep, upper bank better (dark slope on the right). There is another house above, one of the retaining walls associated with that house is right on the edge of the land-slip. This type of land-slip (or slump-earth flow) is shown schematically in Figure 1 of a page by the US Geological Survey. Photo taken 2017/10/28
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Shinsho-ji (Buddhist temple),
Narita
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Ken, with Adie on his back, and our host, Scott are on the left.
Photo taken 2017/10/28
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Photo taken 2017/10/28
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Photo taken 2017/10/28
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The monks are aware of the impact of surprise. The services started with chanting and after maybe a quarter of an hour someone struck the big drum, hard. If anyone was dozing it certainly would have woken them quickly; I literally felt the shock-wave pass through my body.
Photo taken 2017/10/28
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Photo taken 2017/10/28
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Photo taken 2017/10/28
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Photo taken 2017/10/28
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I note that the Japanese weather was true to form on our last day, raining again (I don't think it rained in the morning). Lucky we had those umbrellas.
By the way, it happened that I lost my umbrella at the temple. I left it outside when I entered and it wasn't there when I left.
I had previously lost an umbrella by leaving it on a train. It is fortunate that they are available for only around $6.
Photo taken 2017/10/28
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