C'est Avec Grand Plaisir Que Je Présenterai Le Mardi 16 Avril à La Maison Universitaire France-Japon

Where I grew up (initially): Great Chesterford

Going back to Great Chesterford with my current eyes was quite interesting. I hadn't realised (as no 6-year-old would) how pretty the village centre was, with many charming houses and thatched cottages. The nearest town, Saffron Walden, is even better, but I'd need to go back and visit properly. This time, we just passed through there to go to the shops - and pick up a bunch of biscuits and sweets I remember from my childhood!

Said sweets and biscuits are very nice, of course, but also a tad underwhelming. I remember feeling disappointed by the size of Party Rings the last time I bought some, and I had a similar sense of underwhelming when passing near the school. The wall along the street was much higher in my memory, as was the hill at the back of the playground - in my mind, it was a proper hill! But take into account the fact that I was so much smaller back then, and it all checks out, really!

The old school building itself was apparently built by a single person between 1845 and 1849. Chesterford has a very rich history, dating back to Roman times (and if nothing else on the topic, I remember dressing up as a Roman at school once), and the church dates back to the 13th century. The village's biggest claim to fame is probably having been the home of Germaine Greer, a feminist author from the 1970s, for a few decades.

Walking in on the Nagoya Basho

While I saw Tokyo's sumo arena out of sumo season, I stumbled on an active sumo tournament last summer. July is the month of the Nagoya Basho, and the flags of the various participating sekitori (officially ranked wrestlers, all the names on the flags ending with the character zeki, 関) welcomed not only the spectators, but also the visitors to Nagoya Castle. That's quite the entrance!

I did see one or two sumo wrestlers out and about, and made nothing of it until I noticed the flags. That's when I put everything together regarding what a man at the subway had asked. "Sumô? Sumô?" That's literally all he said, no other attempt to clarify. Yes, I know what sumo is, but it seemed unlikely to me that was what he was talking about - we were, after all, just standing in the subway tunnels waiting for a heavy shower to pass, the topic didn't fit the context and what I knew, I was just going to the castle. So I just stuck to looking a bit dim, like I didn't understand (which, to be fair, I was, and didn't).

As a footnote, the Nagoya Basho will no longer be held inside the castle walls from 2025. It moves to a brand new arena just to the North.

Approaching 100 posts - yes I know, this one's adding to it, but with asks and reblogs possible on Tumblr, I consider the companion Instagram to be a more reliable publication counter, not to mention I have plans for content that will only be on Tumblr (sangaku solving). I also need to clean up some tags before the task gets too daunting, with the aim to get some major themes rolling and provide direct links to them in the menu bar.

Thanks for likes left so far, I hope you'll enjoy what's next!

Remembering Eddie Jordan

I started watching Formula 1 properly around 1998, which meant that my introduction to the Jordan Grand Prix team, which made its top-class debut in 1991, was with the awesome yellow and black "hornet" liveries. The squad mounted an unlikely title challenge with Heinz-Harald Frentzen in 1999, and, while I was more of a Häkkinen fan at the time, if Frentzen had done it, I'd've been chuffed too.

Unfortunately, I cannot remember seeing any of these "hornet" cars in person. But I have seen a couple of Jordan's cars up close: a Honda-powered EJ12 at the Honda Collection Hall at Motegi (1st picture), and the second, at the private collection of the Manoir de l'Automobile in Brittany. It is painted in the team's 1997 "snake" livery, but it's not a 1997 car (the airbox out of shot is wrong). It has a high nose, which Jordan started using in 1996, so it could be a repainted demo car recycling the 1996 type, but then the sidepods are wrong! I think it's a 1995 car, with a 1996 nose, in the 1997 colours. What a mess!

Ultimately, Jordan was a midfield team that allowed good drivers to beat the front runners from time to time, and that, for one year, looked like it could morph into a top squad itself. Alas, that didn't transpire, but I will remember the yellow cars very fondly.

Cheers, Eddie!

MV Bretagne's final crossing

I haven't got my eye on the Channel as much as I used to, so I only found out last weekend that this ship had its final run on the night of 3-4 November.

Bretagne was Brittany Ferries' first purpose-built cruise ferry, launched in Saint Nazaire in February 1989 and entering service in July of that year. At over 150 m in length, appointed with over 350 cabins and a higher level of comfort than other ferries in service at the time, she was designed to be the company's flagship, sailing the longest routes to Spain and Ireland.

As tourism between the UK and continent became more popular, Brittany Ferries' fleet of cruise ferries expanded further in the early 90s, to the point where Bretagne was no longer the company's largest ship by 1993. While Val de Loire took over the Portsmouth-Santander route, Bretagne became a regular on Portsmouth-St Malo, serving her namesake region. So, in the summer of 1994, it was she who carried my family over to new lives in France.

While not my favourite ferry, Bretagne is a particularly important one on a personal level. So it was nice to catch her by chance departing St Malo in July 2019, around her 30th anniversary. Five years later, and she would pass behind the islands off the Corsair City for the final time, bound for Le Havre to await her sale.

Kenavo, Bretagne!

Hashigui-iwa

Since the news took us back to Kushimoto, it's worth looking at another of the town's attractions, besides the southernmost point of Honshû and the nearby lighthouse. Up the coast is a remarkable rock formation known as Hashigui-iwa, which one could translate as "bridge column rocks", as if a viaduct used to settle on top of them.

These aren't standing stones in the archaeological sense of the term like Stonehenge (a popular spot for the winter solstice that also just happened), they weren't moved into a line and raised. Instead, they were originally an incrustation of magma in an otherwise less hard soil. The magma cooled off before becoming lava, and the ocean eroded the sediment around it. This would have created a wall of igneous rock, up to 15 m high and nearly a kilometre long. The wall was then smashed by a tsunami, leaving these tall rocks behind, and a beach of debris.

In the background of this photo, we see the bridge between the Shionomisaki peninsula and the island of Ôshima, where another lighthouse and monument to Japanese-Turkish friendship is located. There's a story behind that (the wreck of the Ertugrul), and I wish that was a segue, but I didn't visit Ôshima. On a hot day, energy isn't limitless so I had to choose...

I mentioned a train accident that was local to the Strasbourg area - here's an air crash on Mont Sainte Odile that truly shocked the Alsace region. There is a memorial on the mountain, I should visit and pay respects some day.

A year ago, I was taking off for Japan

No such five-week adventure this year, but I have the chance to relive the smell and taste of Japan courtesy of Yuki, Kazu, Asaka and Maiko who I met in Paris last month, and who gave me a lot to eat and drink! So, to mark the anniversary, I decided it was time to have nice things...

Kitsune udon with nori, ebi and yuzu senbei

The kitsune udon floored me. The smell of the soup base was enough to transport me, I couldn't get enough of that savoury scent.

Matcha KitKat, dried nattô and konbucha

I hadn't tried nattô in Japan, but I'd read it had a bit of a reputation. So I was a little apprehensive trying the nattô morsels, but a little less so when I read that dried nattô is actually milder than the real thing. And I like it! And so do colleagues I've shared it with!

The konbucha is... interesting. First, do not confuse with kombucha. I know, I know, it's very confusing. This konbucha is kelp tea, a tea made with algae, combined with plum and extra salt. It kind of tastes like the sea, only milder... It's pleasant in its own way, though I'd probably make the next one less strong.

And if you want to run through last year's voyage, I did a travel blog here, but I'll also go through some places here at a leisurely pace (I've already reviewed Kushimoto, Hikone Sawayama and Nagahama -to name what I can remember- from that trip here).

Three castles above Éguisheim

The village of Husseren-les-Châteaux is a peculiar one: at 1.2 km², it is the smallest commune in Southern Alsace, totally surrounded by Éguisheim. Beyond the vineyards, in the hills above the village and on the border with Éguisheim, are three castles, separated by... nothing.

Unlike other places where several castles can be found, such as Andlau or Ribeauvillé, this was only one unit, with the Dagsbourg and Weckmund being extensions of the original Wahlenbourg in the middle. Each section had its own dungeon.

I visited with my sister on a very overcast day two years ago, with low cloud descending on the hills. It made for some moody shots. We weren't alone up there - which was probably helpful! Also we used a car, and the car park isn't far, so it wasn't a creepy hike up or down.

As for the castle itself, it was destroyed during the Six Deniers War in 1466. The Habsburgs intended to conquer Mulhouse, and used the flimsy pretext of a miller being owed six deniers to start the invasion. But Mulhouse found allies in neighbouring Swiss cantons (before the Swiss Confederation was a thing) and won, taking out the fortress of Éguisheim along the way... as well as the miller whose complaint gave the Habsburgs the excuse they were waiting for.

The Osaka Monorail

The final post in this mini-series on the Osaka Expo 70 Commemoration Park is the obvious: how does one get there? Considering the Expo was all about bringing together the world's shared (or non-shared) visions of the future, the Monorail seems perfect! Except this line wasn't launched in time for the Expo - it was a later project, opened in 1990.

The straddle-beam monorail links Osaka Airport to Kadoma, and is due to be extended by the end of the decade. A short branch line pops out just to the East of the Expo 70 Park station, so a visit to the park is also a chance to see some mighty impressive sets of monorail points either side of the station, as the West side (above) also connects to the depot.