Fifteen million autumns in Miyazu

I was glad to find a woodstove burning in the lounge of Shiogiri-so. Perched on a mountainside overlooking the Sea of Japan, the hotel is high enough up that autumn is well advanced, and the first snows are only a month or so away. A gale was blowing drifts of dry leaves off the surrounding trees when I arrived. However, when given a choice of staying in a room in the main building or in a log cabin, the decision was easy. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll know that I always go for the most unusual option, so camping it was!

The storm had passed when I awoke, and my host, Nishihara-san, had a couple of activities lined up before breakfast. He is always keen to share his knowledge of the natural surroundings in which he grew up with his guests.

We travelled to the next activity by a novel form of transport: sand buggy! It was exhilarating, but I’m glad that I wasn’t driving...

Our destination might look like any old cliff at first glance.

But when Nishihara-san’s father was building the road forty years ago, he discovered something interesting.

The fossils date from around 15 million years ago. They are mainly of leaves and other vegetation, and are found in the dark stripes, sediment that was laid down gradually. 0.1 mm represents one year, so a chunk of rock 10 cm high contains a thousand years of the earth’s history.

To find the fossils, you lever chunks of rock out of the cliff face and then tap them with a hammer to separate the layers. It’s a mixture of technique and luck, but I felt quite a responsibility not to ruin millennia-old fossils with my clumsiness...

I was in luck, however, and managed to find some large leaves that were relatively intact. I had expected fossil hunting to be interesting and fun, but I wasn’t prepared to be so moved. Here I was, in the middle of autumn 2015, unearthing fossilized leaves from 15 million years ago; it’s a length of time that’s very hard for humans to grasp, yet the leaves are almost identical. The distant past suddenly felt very close.

However, I was brought right back to the present by the smell of grilled meat wafting from the barbecue...

And after eating far too much, there was time for another nature-related activity - thankfully, not too strenuous!

There was one more treat in the evening, down at the coast: a firework display! In Japan, fireworks are usually held in summer, so this is a rarity; but for a British person like me, fireworks = 5 November, so bundling up in several layers of clothes to go and watch them felt nostalgic.

The fireworks took place in the bay which is bisected by Ama no Hashidate (The Bridge to Heaven), a long sandbank that ranks as one of Japan’s “three scenic spots”. As well as the fireworks, pine torches were lit the whole way along the sandbank, and so the best position from which to appreciate both was out on the water. I was lucky to be invited to join the local Rotary Club to watch the display from a boat.

More mountainous adventures await at my next destination, but this time, they’re edible...