I Mentioned A Train Accident That Was Local To The Strasbourg Area - Here's An Air Crash On Mont Sainte

Ryôgoku Kokugikan

It's sumo season in Tokyo! Though, to be fair, it's sumo season three months per year, as this arena, the Kokugikan in Ryôgoku, on the East bank of the Sumida-gawa two stops from Akihabara on the Chûô-Sôbu line, hosts half of the year's six major tournaments.

It wasn't open when I visited Tokyo, so I didn't see inside, but even then, there are apparently, and unsurprisingly, a lot of sumo-related places to visit in Ryôgoku, like Ekô-in temple... and I missed them all! Well, apart from the odd statue.

I went to Ryôgoku area without a real plan, I wandered around and found some interesting places I'll get to another time, but one thing I think I planned was to try the "lunch of champions", the classic stew for sumo wrestlers: chankonabe, or chanko for short. It was rich and copious, as you'd expect, and, as I remember, I didn't quite finish it.

Here we are: Miminashi-yama

When I visited Kashihara, looking to explore some deep Japanese history in the former province of Yamato, I expected to move around a bit, but there was actually enough in Kashihara itself to make for a busy day.

First up was this curious green round space in the middle of a residential area on the town map I'd picked up. It just seemed conspicuous to me, I decided to check it out.

This is Miminashi-yama, one of the Yamato Sanzan, or Three Main Mountains of Yamato. Though it stood out on the map and it does stand out in the plain around it, it's not huge, and it's a short climb to the top where a shrine awaited.

In that shrine, a sangaku geometry tablet is displayed. By chance, based on a whim, I had found one! Nearly six years on, I've finally solved it - it's not very difficult mathematically, it's just taken me this long to get on with it, having said that, even today I'm still figuring out extra things on it! - and will be presenting it at a conference tomorrow. I wouldn't have thought it at the time... I guess curiosity didn't kill the cat that day!

I can't remember riding a steam train before, though deep inside, I feel I probably had. Anyway, now I'm sure! This is the Chemin de Fer Touristique du Rhin, a short line near Colmar which runs steam engines and a set of old Austrian carriages, of which I'll say more in another post. Meanwhile, it's been a busy time for me recently, so this is just a few photos from the ride while I wind down.

I failed to mention this in the original post, but Meiji-jingû is also a high point of sumo culture. Newly promoted yokozuna, the highest rank in the sport, perform their first ring entry dance there, before their first tournament at that level. This would be their first appearance with the "horizontal rope" (that's what yokozuna means), in the shimenawa style, around their waist.

That's just happened, with the 74th yokozuna making his debut.

NHK WORLD

Hoshoryu performs first ring-entering ceremony as yokozuna | NHK WORLD-JAPAN News

About 3,500 people gathered at Meiji Jingu shrine in Tokyo on Friday to see sumo yokozuna grand champion Hoshoryu perform his first ring-ent

The New Year shrine visit: Meiji-jingû

A common New Year ritual in Japan is to go to a shrine, possibly a large one, a visit known as 初詣, hatsumôde. NHK reported that Meiji-jingû in particular was very busy. Of course, I would avoid that, so here we are with a more tranquil time, closer to the Autumn festival.

Meiji-jingû was, as its name suggests, founded to enshrine the spirit of Emperor Meiji after his death. The first Emperor of the post-Edo period presided over sweeping societal reforms, such as the abolishment of classes like the samurai, as Japan re-opened to the rest of the world and sought to catch up. The Imperial attachment is symbolised by the Chrysanthemum crests on the torii.

One of the things that can be wished for at Meiji-jingû is a happy marriage and family life, particularly at this dedicated spot with two camphor trees planted in 1920, linked with sacred rope - these are called "married trees", 夫婦楠 Meoto Kusu.

While some wait for cherry blossoms as a sign of spring (and this includes me), another sign of the season in Alsace is the stork. Saw my first one in the sky this week - but this photo is from a previous year.

Some amusing art in Matsumoto

In my previous post, I mentioned I was taking the train from Nagano to Tokyo, but my destination for the day was actually Matsumoto. There's quite a lot to see there, mainly the castle, but I'll get to that another time. For now, I'd just like to share some lighter, more amusing details.

This awesome statue depicts two samurai frogs riding on toadback - the poor thing seems to be overwhelmed! That would be because the street by this river has adopted the frog as a mascot. According to local history, the river used to have loads of frogs, making it a rather noisy place (I bet, if my memories of Futami, Mie, are anything to go by!). But after a typhoon caused a flood, the frogs left for higher ground and didn't go back to the river, so loads of frog statues were erected instead.

On the bridge near the entrance to this street and near the castle, other creatures could be found: "Y-cats", created by Yamazaki Takashi. I think this was a temporary exhibit.

Oh alright, I'll tease the castle...

A few more odds and sods from Triberg. I'm not going to show much more because someone commented on a previous post saying that they will visit Triberg in June, so I'm not going to spoil everything for them, particularly regarding cuckoo clocks.

The Black Forest is well known for its cuckoo clocks, and Triberg is home to the most extreme: the largest, which is a possible stop on the Railway Adventure Trail we covered yesterday, and the smallest, which are housed in the Schwarzwald Museum. But there is also a "first biggest cuckoo clock"... in Schonach. This would be the first clock to be recognised as the biggest by the well-known record book, but it has since been overtaken by the one in Triberg.

It's closed on Mondays, so all I have is this photo from the main road between Triberg and Schonach - in which I've cropped out the clock on the left. The clock is on the old road between the two towns, which is much nicer and at times bucolic. Schonach has a ski jumping hill which I'd like to visit, but didn't manage to fit it in on my one-day trip.

Between the waterfalls and the first biggest cuckoo clock is the Bergsee, a tiny lake with a simple café-restaurant on its edge - decent food, calmer* and not as pricey as downtown Triberg. The lake served as an alternate venue for ice-skating competitions in the 1920s, when Berlin wasn't cold enough!

The train to Kushimoto: a JR West 283-series Kuroshio express. The sets are getting on a bit, they were introduced in 1996 and the livery could do with a refresh, but the "dolphin nose" is distinctive, and I, for one, really like it. They're also quite rare, only 4 sets exist.

The Kisei Main Line is essentially the coastal route from Nagoya to Wakayama. The full trip around the Kii peninsula takes 8 hours by express train, with a change required at Shingû or Katsuura, but it's definitely scenic as it gets very close to the sea (photo between Kii-Tahara and Koza).

Kanazawa-Tsuruga Shinkansen extension open!

Since yesterday, these beauties (seen at Takasaki on the same trip I had that "race" into Omiya) have another 120 km of track to play on, as the Hokuriku Shinkansen extends further West along the coast of the Sea of Japan into Fukui Prefecture.

Of course, the best news here is that travel times between Kanazawa and Tsuruga are slashed - let me rephrase: halved - compared to the previous fastest express services. The dream of completing the route to Kyoto and Osaka is in reach, and if you add the Maglev line, there could, in the long-term future, be three full high-speed Tokyo-Osaka lines: the historic South coast route, the scenic North coast route and the ultra-fast route straight through the middle.

But there are other consequences. As has become the standard along the Hokuriku route, the old line has immediately been sold off to a "third sector" company - largely run and subsidised by local authorities for as long as they're happy to keep the line open. Only all-stop trains are operated by these third sector companies, so there are only two options: very slow local trains, or very fast, but all the more expensive, high-speed trains. No rapids, no expresses.

The express trains which used to go to Kanazawa now all terminate early at Tsuruga, including the Thunderbirds - of course, technologically advanced Japan has more than the five Thunderbirds Gerry Anderson could muster! This display board seen in 2016 is not likely to be seen again. And if the route to Kyoto is completed, will the name disappear altogether, or continue as an omnibus Shinkansen service to Toyama? Maybe resurrect the original name Raichô (yes, similar to the Pokémon)?

Train geek notes aside, the future's hopefully bright for the region this new stretch of line serves, which was hit hard by the New Year Earthquake.

北陸新幹線おめでとうございます!

Sangaku Saturday #1

In this series, I'll try to put something up every Saturday or Sunday (depending on my plans and/or your time zone), either with a puzzle, a solution or some historical info on sangaku. If people find this interesting (and editing maths on this probably will be), we can work step by step to solving full sangaku problems.

Let's start with a puzzle, one of the most basic tools of the genre. Two circles, with radii r1 and r2, are tangent to each other and tangent to a same line.

This means that the distance between C1 and C2 is equal to r1+r2, the distance between C1 and A is r1, and the distance between C2 and B is r2. Moreover, the lines (AC1) and (AB) are perpendicular, and the lines (BC2) and (AB) are perpendicular.

Can you prove that the distance between A and B is equal to

???

Hints below the cut, questions possible in the reply section.

Take your time, I intend to show the solution next weekend.

Hints. Place the point H on the line between A and C1 so that the distance between A and H is equal to r2. Then the triangle HC1C2 is a right triangle with two sides of known length. A famous theorem gets the third length, which is equal to AB.