Blog - Shimura history
Shimura history
This weekend there was some TV program on which someone walked some 50km from somewhere to the center of Tokyo, passing right through places I'm familiar with in Shimura, Itabashi-ku. They showed some sort of historical places, which I then looked up, and today I headed around there.
First I went up 清水坂 (Shimizu-zaka) and found its stone on which the name is written. A bit further was a sign where, in 1792, used to stand one reading 「大山道 ねりま川こへ（川越）みち」 ("Ōyama road - Nerima - Kawagoe") and later in 1860 「是ヨリ富士山大山道 練馬江一里 柳沢江四里 府中江七里」 ("From here Fuji-san/Ōyama road, 1ri to Nerima, 4ri to Yanagisawa, 7ri to Fuchū", gotta love a katakana "yori" and "江" instead of the hiragana "へ"). Now just stands an explicative sign that was placed in 2005.
The 里 ("ri") in the directions is an old obsolete measurement that's equal to 3.9272km or 2.44 miles (Google can count 里's: impressive!). Further up hill, just by the south exit of Shimura-sakaue station, is a place marking the 3里 mark from Nihonbashi (the official center of Tokyo). There's also some stone with an inscription saying it's one of the ten wonders(?) of Itabashi-ku.
Back down the hill, this time using 志村坂 (Shimura-zaka) I think (this one doesn't seem to be marked with a name stone), I found 薬師の泉庭園 (Yakushi no Izumi Teien, the Healing Buddha spring garden(?)), some peaceful garden with a pond and a small statue.
By the pond is a sign saying "Warning: Carp herpes! Don't put or remove carps from this lake! (But carp herpes is not dangerous for humans.)". No matter if carp herpes is safe for humans, I wouldn't try drinking that greenish water.
All of this far from being big attractions, some locals must have thought I'm some famous foreign historian taking photos of all that stuff... or maybe not. :)
Larger size photos, and a few more, at Flickr
Posted on December 12, 2006 at 00:17 | Tweet
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Very educational indeed!
Actually I was kind of expecting some Shimura Ken (志村けん) action since I saw "Shimura history" on the title and "TV" on the RSS excerpt.
Posted by ale/pepino on December 12, 2006 at 01:05
Good - Dr. Livingstone traveling undiscovered Tokyo jungles. Perhaps these are Japanese ninja carp herpes in that like lake and thus the warning ;-).
Posted by Markus Kreisel on December 12, 2006 at 01:16