owlectomy

184 miles, and still a ways to go before downtown Morioka, but I'll begin with posting a few interesting things I found in Morioka:

A four-hundred-year-old cherry tree growing out of a granite boulder may be one of the only individual trees with its own Wikipedia entry.

Houonji houses statues of the 500 disciples of Buddha. It's also where renowned author Miyazawa Kenji used to meditate--he lived in Morioka during his adolescence. And I learned a new thing about him: he was an advocate of vegetarianism. Which isn't surprising considering he was a pretty strict Buddhist, and also, he wrote "The Restaurant of Many Orders."

Ame Ni Mo Makezu, Miyazawa's most famous poem.

Total miles: 174

In Iwate-machi. One of their specialties is blueberries; their home page sells blueberry wine, among other products. The art museum also has some interesting sights. The scenery is also nice.

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Somebody blared their horn at me today; I was going along the right side of a road that didn't happen to have a bike lane, unless you count a stripe of white along the crumbling edge of the pavement. And it got me thinking about Dorothea Salo's recent post about names. She was annoyed at the "last name, first initial" convention in a lot of academic papers; and she was reminded that women may use that convention in order not to be penalized for being women (Much as several science fiction writers have done.)

It’s a “go along to get along” strategy, though, and any such strategy has an unfortunate externality: it divides and defeats the universe of female scientists, because it lets the men go blithely on ignoring and undervaluing those they can quickly identify as female by their names.

When I replied to my colleague that using full names may destabilize the implicit sexism of the current system, she answered, in toto, “Some women just want to do science, not be martyrs.”

And that's not dissimilar to cycling along Tryon road. I feel like, should I use another route? (Not that there's another route I can use; Raleigh's urban design is a bit unfortunate in that most of the smaller roads are in subdivisions and don't go anywhere.) Should I stick to the greenway in the park? It's not as if I like annoying people. And I value staying alive more than cycling advocacy. But... the more people think like that, the fewer cyclists there'll be out on the roads, and the more cycling will be stigmatized.

I guess that's why Critical Mass is called Critical Mass. But I feel like sometimes they're annoying just for the sake of being annoying, which doesn't exactly help their cause (I think).

Total mileage is 160. Have passed through Kotsunagi, site of the Kotsunagi Incident, which is a dispute over land rights that had its roots in the Meiji era.

139.5 miles.

I passed by an onsen and thought little of it, because there are lots and lots of onsen, but then I noticed that the onsen - Kindaichi Onsen - had its own wikipedia entry. Why is this? Because its zashiki-warashi is famous. What is a zashiki-warashi? According to Wikipedia:

The appearance of this spirit is that of a 5 or 6 year child with bobbed hair and a red face. The child could be either male or female, though recently the zashiki-warashi are often depicted as girls. Zashiki-warashi can be found in well-maintained and preferably large old houses. It is said that once a zashiki-warashi inhabits a house, it brings the residence great fortune; on the other hand, should a zashiki-warashi depart, the domain soon falls into a steep decline.

To attract and maintain a zashiki-warashi in the home, it is said the spirit must be noticed, appreciated and cared for properly, much in the manner one would raise a child, though too much attention may drive it off. As the zashiki-warashi is child-like in nature, it is prone to playing harmless pranks and occasionally causing mischief. They might for instance sit on a guest's futon, turn people's pillows over or cause sounds similar to kagura music to be heard from rooms no one uses. Sometimes they leave little footsteps in ashes. There are different variations as to who can see the zashiki-warashi; usually this is limited to inhabitants of the house, sometimes to children.

Author Kenji Miyazawa wrote two stories about zashiki-warashi: "Matasaburo of the Wind" and "The Story of the Zashiki-Bokko".
In Clamp's manga title xxxHolic, a female Zashiki-Warashi developes a crush on the main character Watanuki.

Those who read Japanese can find out more over here, though I have to say that there's very little that's spooky about the photographs. I am, regardless, suitably impressed. And the Ryokufuso page is great - you can see the zashiki-warashi's huge toy collection.

115.5 miles. We pass through the city of Towada, birthplace of (most of the members of) J-rock group Supercar, home of many hot springs and Pony Land. They have a museum and you can ride ponies.
Continuing on highway 4 over the Oirase river...

Total miles: 96
I'm still passing through the southern end of the town of Yokohama--a different Yokohama than the one in Tokyo. Not much to see here besides farmland.

A Japanese travel magazine article with some nice pictures from the Ominato railway line.

Total miles: 69
I am near the downtown of the city of Mutsu. There is skiing and hot springs and festivals around here.

33 miles
I arrive in Wakinosawa, which is best known for its monkeys.

Total miles: 27
Interesting scenery: Hotoke-ga-ura ("Buddha Bay").