The Narrow, Cracked Road to the North

As you may know (or should, if you read this blog's inaugural post) I've been placed in the "City of Shirakawa" in Fukushima prefecture to work as a JET ALT. Naturally, I've been poking around the Googles to learn a bit more about my future hometown.

There's actually not a sizable of info on Shirakawa.¹ This isn't too surprising, given that Shirakawa has a population of roughly sixty-six thousand (Prince George, by comparison, has a population of around seventy-seven thousand). So far, I've found a page on Wikipedia, another page on Wikitravel, a Youtube channel belonging to a Shirakawa local, a couple of videos highlighting earthquake damage (see below), and a few scattered images of Komine castle, which I'll get to later.²



What's weirder is that info on Fukushima prefecture as a whole also appears to be pretty sparse-- besides the glowing green elephant in the room, I mean. The Wikipedia page has a few fairly brief sections on history, geography, culture, and tourism in Fukushima, along with the obligatory sections dedicated to the Tohoku Earthquake and its aftermath, but otherwise it's mostly just padded out with boring old lists of cities, rail-lines, and universities. Almost makes me wonder what Wikipedia's page on Kiev Province looks like. . .

But again, the information available in Japanese probably vastly outweighs that which is available in English, so just I'll just chalk it up to laziness on my part.

Anyway, here's what I've found out about Shirakawa so far:

The "City" of Shirakawa

"County" or "District" would probably be a better word. From what I can tell from Google Earth and a couple of other sources, the region known as Shirakawa is a collection of small-to-medium sized towns, with large patches of countryside. It looks to be quite pretty in the summertime, from what I've seen so far.

Komine Castle

Shirakawa's only landmark, if Google Images is to be trusted. Meaning "small peak castle," it was originally built in 1340, was destroyed in 1868, and rebuilt between 1991 and 1994.

Ramen  

Shirakawa is famous for it's Ramen noodles. I am so there.

Basho

The famous Japanese poet Basho wrote about his travels through Shirakawa as part of his classic poem The Narrow Road to the North.  

Daruma

Dolls. That's all I know. They're dolls. I guess I'll learn more once I'm there.

Radiation

Based on information provided by my Japanese teacher, the highest radiation levels in Shirakawa are just a little higher than that found on a high-altitude flight, so I'm not too worried.


So, yeah. That's what I know of Shirakawa thus far. Not much. Buy hey, suspense!

Until next time. 

1 In English, anyway. What, you expect me to read Japanese? Pssh.^↩
2 I also found a blog called Stephanie's Adventures in Japan which, disturbingly, was last updated in February of 2011. . .^↩