Holiday snaps

There's nothing more boring than having to look through someone else's holiday snaps. We had such a good time, though, that I can't resist posting a few. Please forgive the self-indulgence....

Kentaro had three days of summer holiday this year. In Japan, for a doctor of his seniority, that's a reasonable amount. His first year after qualification, he asked his superior in the hospital where he was working at the time about holidays, only to be greeted with scornful laughter. "What does someone like you want with a holiday? Who do you think you are?" he was asked, rhetorically. OK, that was the hospital from hell, and where he is now is far better in every way - but holidays are still like gold dust. We treasure every tiny break from work: his unexpected return home before the boys are asleep, the rare Sunday when he doesn't go into the hospital at all, the one day a year it closes to commemorate its foundation.

Those three days, added to the weekend, were enough for us to embark on a 1,200-km road trip down to Yamaguchi Prefecture, at the southernmost tip of Japan's main island of Honshu, and back. On the way we took in caves, uplands, beaches, hills, rivers, and an old samurai town. The high spot for the boys was seeing so many stars - in Osaka they're all but obliterated from the night sky by the city lights, but in rural Yamaguchi the Milky Way spread out across the sky each night. On our final evening we visited an observatory with a 75-cm telescope, through which we gazed enrapt at the craters on the Moon, Jupiter surrounded by its moons, a star cluster, and a binary star. Those we couldn't photograph, but they're the part of the holiday that has engraved itself most deeply on our family's collective memory.



The entrance to the Akiyoshi-do cave system. I took lots of photographs inside, but it was too dark for them to come out properly. The caves themselves are spectacular, but the lighting and signs are desperately drab - they look as if they've been put in by some overworked bureaucrat with neither imagination nor business sense. The nicest thing about the caves was the temperature: 17 degrees, as opposed to the sweltering 35 degrees outside.



Akiyoshi-dai, Japan's largest limestone upland. This grassy landscape may look ordinary to Westerners, but to Japanese eyes it's rather exotic in comparison with the usual steep slopes wooded with cypress and bamboo.





Pony rides.



Kentaro on a sightseeing boat going round Omijima, on the northern coast of Yamaguchi.



The Omijima coastline.



Omijima was traditionally a whaling center, and the town still holds a yearly whaling festival. Kei is looking at a harpoon outside the Whale Museum (really a museum of whaling, exhibiting fearsome harpoons and whale skeletons), with the model whale used during the festival in the background. The shop behind sells whale meat, and will deliver nationwide, but doesn't seem to be doing very good business - a sign on the door announced 40% off all whale products.



Morning over a small harbor up the coast, from the balcony of our hotel.



Dan on the beach.



Kei discovered snorkeling this year. He could hardly bear to be parted from his mask and snorkel, even out of the water.



You can just see him swimming in the foreground. The water was wonderfully clear, with colorful small fish darting around the rocks.



Tsuwano, an old samurai town just across the border in Shimane Prefecture.




A path lined with torii gates climbs up to a shrine.



The ruins of Tsuwano Castle, perched on a hill overlooking the town.



Little samurai coming down from the castle.