geocaching – awordfromjapan

I was strolling in the Umeda and Kita-Shinchi area of Osaka this afternoon, looking for geocaches, and came across some oddities.

First, this unusual structure.

At first I thought it was an art work of some kind. But it turns out to be a 1400-year-old temple: 堂島薬師堂　Doujima Yakushidou. Now, I’m guessing the original temple building was not a mirrored-glass geodesic dome. Wikipedia says the current structure was built in 1999.

Next I saw this:

Doesn’t this look like something from a fairy tale? As if time was suddenly frozen and then the house and van were overgrown with ivy.

And then I visited this urban wonder:

This is the Gate Tower building. What makes it special (possibly unique in the world) is that an exit ramp of the Hanshin expressway passes right through the building.

(Picture file source: Wikimedia commons, author: Japanese wikipedia user ユニ)

I have often driven past the Umeda exit ramp on the expressway and seen where the road disappears into the building, but this was my first time to see it from ground level.

According to some accounts, the planning authorities mistakenly gave permission for both the building and the expressway without realising that the two plans shared the same airspace, and the compromise reached was as seen in the picture.

There are some better photos at the “buildingmybento” blog; I highly recommend you click on the link to better appreciate how strange this arrangement is.

A note on the word of the day:

Yesterday I wrote about the Hanshin Tigers baseball team. The Tigers are owned by Hanshin electric railway company, which also owns the Hanshin department store.

More generally, 阪神　hanshin means Osaka and Kobe, for example when referring to the 阪神高速道路　Hanshin Expressway that links the two cities, or the 阪神大震災　Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995.

How can “Hanshin” possibly mean “Osaka and Kobe”? The word is formed by taking one character from the name of each city as follows:

大阪　oo saka -> 阪 (pronounced han)

神戸　kou be -> 神 (pronounced shin)

= 阪神　hanshin

where in each case the “Chinese” pronunciation or on-yomi is used.

There are several other examples formed along similar lines, such as:

京阪　keihan = Kyoto and Osaka
京阪神　keihanshin = Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe
名阪　meihan = Nagoya and Osaka
東名　toumei = Tokyo and Nagoya

[Edited to add: as explained by blogger buildingmybento in the comments section below, this mode of abbreviation is commonly used in China.]

The weather has been fairly chilly recently, but today was amazingly warm for early February. Here in Osaka, the temperature reached 18 degrees, and according to the radio it was almost 20 degrees in Kyoto. We took advantage of the unseasonal weather to pack a picnic and head out for a walk in Tsurumi-Ryokuchi park.

We had set the car navigation to avoid motorways (tolls are pretty expensive) but in hindsight this was a bit of a mistake. I underestimated the distance to Tsurumi-Ryokuchi, and driving in the suburbs is painfully slow, requiring a lot of patience. In the end it took over an hour to get there. I had also overestimated the toll; I thought there was a flat 900 yen fee but in fact it would have been 400.

It made a nice change not to have to wear a coat, scarf or hat. After arriving and parking the car, my first stop before entering the park was to find and log a geocache.

Inside the park, the area around the windmill which will, later in the year, be a vast field of tulips, was just grass.

As soon as we came to a small river, Shiro decided to jump in for a swim to cool off, even though he was still on the lead.

We paid a quick visit to the Irish pavilion,

and then went into the South Korean pavilion for the first time. That’s Miffy looking at the camera.

After leaving the park, there was one more thing I wanted to see in the neighbourhood. Apparently, the electric fan was invented in Osaka 100 years ago, in 1913, by a company called Kawakita Denki Kigyosha (KDK). This company became part of the Panasonic Group in 1956.

The factory is long-gone, but this piece of history is marked by a plaque on the wall of the park where the factory once stood. The picture is the “Typhoon”, the first mass-produced electric fan. The text says:

“扇風機発祥の地”　senpuuki hassho no chi—The birthplace of the electric fan.

Note on the word of the day:

扇風機　senpuuki is the Japanese word for an electric fan. It’s written with three characters: 扇　sen is a fan; 風　fuu is the wind; 機　ki is a machine (as for example 飛行機　hikouki, an aeroplane, or 洗濯機　sentakki, a washing machine).

The first model was called “Typhoon”. I always assumed this word was borrowed into English from Japanese 台風　taifuu. But according to Wikipedia the story of this word is much more complex and uncertain, and the article even suggests the word may have been “reimported” into Japanese from English.

Tag: geocaching

阪神　hanshin—Osaka and Kobe

扇風機　senpuuki—fan