Totoro, Tottori!

Finally Miss Ember and Sir S were reunited in a frenzied weekend of passion and cherry blossom-viewing. Huzzah! Swept away by the SuperExpress train to Tottori, I enjoyed the scenes of rural tranquility that zoomed past the windowpane of my little compartment. I spied old wooden farmhouses with curled, Chinese-style tiled roofs, and barns of crooked wood and thatch. Many a farmer was laboring in the patchwork of fields, and I saw old women hunched over cabbage patches, wearing flowing smocks and flapping bonnets on their heads. It was as if I travelled back in time!

Sir S and I marked our happy reunion with strolls amid Tottori`s thick, fluffy blossoms which line the main river in the town. Compared to Hiroshima, this town is indeed "country", with hardly a skyscraper in sight, and the tallest buildings being hotels or a mere three-storeys high. There are many old people and youth is scarce. As it was the peak of blossom season, we indulged in hanami in the evenings, when the river was lined with paper lanterns and families and friends picnicked beneath the illuminated flowers. Sir S and I snacked on sushi and doughnuts (!) and enjoyed umeshu (plum wine). We were amused by the locals` rowdy palaquin race, where two teams of carriers hoisted a palaquin on their shoulders, containing a person who waved a bough of cherry blossom hither and thither, and then sprinted with their load to the bridge, where each blossom-waver presently jumped off and ran to the finishing line in a flourish of blossom-waving.

Pictures of Tottori blossoms can be seen "here". Stories of sand dunes and temples to follow shortly.