The Tower Of The Sun

Expo 70 Japanese Garden

While most of the pavilions of the 1970 World Expo at Osaka were demolished, a very large exhibit was preserved: the Japanese garden. Located in the North of the enormous Commemoration Park, it's designed as a stroll through the ages, with four sections inspired by different periods, Ancient, Medieval, Modern (Edo period) and Contemporary - kind of like the zones from The Crystal Maze, just without the puzzles and Richard O'Brien.

From rock gardens to ponds and rolling hills, from a bamboo grove to wisteria and maple trees, it hits the notes you'd expect from a summary of Japanese landscape styling, but allows one plenty of room to contemplate each tableau - I'm emphasised how big the overall park is, but the Japanese garden alone covers 26 hectares.

One of the few gripes I have with Koishikawa Kôrakuen, my favourite garden in Tokyo, is that some buildings are close and large enough to appear in the background. With the Expo pavilions gone however, most views in this park don't have that problem. Only the Tower of the Sun and the Osaka Wheel are able to rise above the park in this view towards the South.

Port du Crouesty

We start the new year where we left off in the last, on Presqu'île de Rhuys, but one year later. Or should that be two? The previous post was from the stormy 2013-2014 New Year celebrations, whereas this covers the calmer 2014-2015 change with most of the same friends, and our walk around the tip of the peninsula and Port du Crouesty.

These aren't the best photos given the relatively low light, but also this was before my current camera. Still, point it towards the sunset and the result isn't too bad.

Another quick one today I'm afraid, but some really nice memories from just over 4 years ago: a proper layer of snow and frozen ponds at the Citadelle.

Sarreguemines station

One more border station between France and Germany, with a bit of a twist. Sarreguemines in Lorraine is, as its name suggests, on one side of the river Sarre or Saar, with Saarbrücken some 17 km downstream in Germany. Between the two runs a cross-border tram-train, which serves as urban transit within Saarbrücken, and as a small regional train beyond.

The vehicles used by the Saarbahn are dual-voltage (750 V DC for city tram lines, 15 kV AC for DB train lines) Flexity Link units, made by Bombardier. It's the third type of tram-train we've come across, having seen the Siemens Avanto in Mulhouse and the Alstom Citadis Dualis in Châteaubriant. Most trams in Saarbrücken are wrapped in some kind of advertisement, this one for a former exhibit at the former Völklingen Ironworks (something I definitely should talk about someday) - not only did the exhibit end in 2024, but the wrapping is dark, making the atmosphere onboard very dull indeed, especially on a grey day! They didn't think this one though!

Only the one track for the Saarbahn is electrified, so the French trains are all Diesel units. On the day I was there, three generations of DMU were present: the most recent bi-mode Regiolis, a Diesel-only AGC set from the early 2000s (top picture), and a pair of A TER railcars which are equipped for German signalling. A few direct Strasbourg-Saarbrücken services run each day with these "saucisses" as they are nicknamed. We've seen these trains before too - the design is identical to the BR 641s DB Regio have near Basel, and these are nicknamed "Walfisch" in German.

You can do as you wish @todayintokyo, it depends on how much of a hint you want to give. ;)

Personally, I did tag the city for classification purposes, and I found that 3-4 lines of rambling tags can drown out the rest on the dashboard ("see more tags" appears). This doesn't work on the full-page blog site, though that might be customisable with some HTML knowledge.

As the maths problems take a break, maybe we can have a brief pub quiz. So...

Q. What's that building on the 10-yen coin?

A. The Phoenix Hall at Byôdô-in, Uji.

Initially built as a villa by a member of the Minamoto clan just before the year 1000, the land was sold not long after to members of a rival clan, the Fujiwaras, who turned it into a Buddhist temple named Byôdô-in in 1052. The most striking feature of the temple is the Amida Hall, which with time gained the name Phoenix Hall due to its overall appearance: the two outer corridors are the wings, and a corridor extending behind is the tail.

At the same time, tea production was picking up in Uji, and by the 14th century, Uji tea had become well renowned. I need to go back there someday, my first visit was just an afternoon flick after completing the climb of Mt Inari in the morning. I thought of going back there in the summer of 2023, but couldn't quite make time for it.

Contrasted sunset on Shinji-ko

On the south side of Matsue, there is a famous sunset-viewing spot, overseeing the "great lake" mentioned by Kitty-chan on the train, which would be Shinji-ko, and a small island inhabited only by a torii, called Yomegajima.

It's so famous, that there's a sign to tell you where to stand to get the Sun over the island depending on the season!

While the sunset was gorgeous on the evening I was there (last year to the day), there was also something ominous. To the left in the top photo, one can make out some rain hiding the horizon... and to the South, a thunderstorm was active in the hills.

Still, the showers were kind enough to hold back for us to see the Sun set between the cloud layer and the mountains. But they soon caught up - as soon as I stepped off the bus at Matsue station, it chucked it down!

Strasbourg's tramway's 30th anniversary!

On this day in 1994, Strasbourg inaugurated - or rather, resurrected - its tramway network. Like many cities in France, Strasbourg had a streetcar system until the late 1950s, when it was decided that cars would take over. 30 years of worsening congestion and pollution later, the town chose a tramway, which had made a successful return in the mid 1980s in Nantes and Grenoble, over an automatic metro to revitalise its transit service.

Unlike Nantes and Grenoble, Strasbourg looked to foreign streetcar manufacturers Socimi and ABB, who designed a fully low-floor tram with generous windows. The Eurotram was at first a 33-metre vehicle (original form seen above), which quickly proved insufficient. A lengthened version, with an extra motor module and carriage, appeared in the following years.

Personally, I quite like this tram for the massive windows, the very mechanical sounds as it runs, and the fact that the warning bell is a real bell (later models have an electronic bell which... just sounds worse). A downside I have noticed, though not for me specifically, is that it has a low ceiling.

After losing out in the 90s, national constructor Alstom won the next round of contracts for Strasbourg's trams in the 2000s. The Citadis model, fully low-floor and taller than the Eurotrams, entered service in 2005. More Citadis trams arrived in 2016, with a new design that I really like, and with special adaptations to allow it to run in Germany, as the network crossed the border to Kehl in 2017, a first for a French tram operator.

Today, the network consists of 6 lines, crisscrossing the city centre and heading out into the suburbs. A 7th line is in the planning stages, due to head North towards Bischheim and Schiltigheim. Despite refurbishment, the Eurotrams won't be around forever, and new trams are on order - more from Alstom.

Out of service: the Trieste-Opicina tramway

While the reopening of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris is making big news, and while I'm in a bit of a tram phase on the blogs, spare a thought for the tram line between Trieste and Opicina, closed following an accident in 2016. And it's a real pity, because it was a wacky one.

Trieste is a city by the Adriatic Sea, surrounded by steep hills - and I mean steep. Opicina is 300 m higher, and the tram line features gradients as steep as 26% - link to the Hohentwiel hike for scale. Steel wheels on rails weren't going to be enough...

Initially, the steepest section was built as a rack-and-pinion railway, but in the late 1920s, it was replaced by a funicular system. Cable tractors would be coupled to the streetcars to push them up the hill, and control their descent on the way down - that's the curious boat-like vehicle in the photos (at least I'm getting boat vibes from it). The picture below shows just how steep the climb is.

In the later years of operation, these cable tractors were remotely controlled from the tram. The streetcars themselves date back to 1935, with wooden doors and fittings, making the Trieste-Opicina tramway a charming and technically unique heritage system.

Sadly, the line is not running. Two streetcars collided in 2016, they were repaired, but service has not resumed. One vehicle, coupled to the cable tractor, remains stationary at the foot of the climb, near where the second photo was taken. A look on Google Street View shows that cars are now habitually parked on the disused tracks. The number 2 tram route between Trieste and Opicina is currently served by the number 2/ bus.

The things people write on clocks...

Craignez la dernière - Eglise Notre-Dame de Croaz-Batz, Roscoff

Literally, this means "fear the last". OK, but the last what? Well, you're looking at the sundial for the time, which here, in French, would be "12 heures", so the full saying is inferred to be "craignez la dernière heure" - "fear thy final hour". Reminding people of their own mortality was an important part of medieval-Renaissance Christian discourse, as we saw with the ages of Man passing before Death among the automatons on the Astronomical Clock in Strasbourg Cathedral, built around the same time as this church in Roscoff.

Die Zeit eilt, Die Zeit heilt - Rathaus St. Johann, Saarbrücken

I've only got a close-up of one, but the tower of the historic town hall in Saarbrücken has at least two clocks, each with a message. The meaning of "die Zeit eilt" is similar to "time flies", and could be linked to what we saw above: be aware of what time you may have left. The second clock cleverly adds one letter to that to make "die Zeit heilt": "time heals".

"How to use this sundial" - Piazza della Borsa, Trieste

In the ground in front of the Chamber of Commerce in Trieste is a sundial, but conspicuously, the hand is missing. That is because you are the hand! Taking astronomy into account, one should stand in a slightly different place depending on the season, and apply corrections to the minutes to get official time. It was cloudy when I saw this, so I'm afraid I don't have a nice picture of the sundial in action. The instructions are in Italian on the left side of the base.

Fort National, Saint Malo

Work is starting to pile up on my end, so I have to make this a quick one.

This is Fort National, a building we saw in the post on MV Bretagne. It was built in the late 17th century by Vauban - one of many, many, many projects he designed for Louis XIV's grand plan to fortify the French border. It was called Fort Royal, a name which would stick for little more than a century, before the Revolution banished any mention of royalty. It became Fort Républicain, then Fort Impérial under Napoleon, and finally Fort National after Napoleon III's Empire was defeated by Prussia in 1870. This regular name changing was derided by a local nickname, "Fort Caméléon", but it also give a glimpse into France's political history.

The rock on which the fort sits, known as Îlette (the small island), has quite a sorry history. Before Vauban, it was apparently used as an execution ground by local lords, and during World War II, the occupying Nazis used it as a prison during Allied bombings - fully expecting the fort to be bombed.

Today, the fort is privately owned, but visits are allowed on occasions.