Seen on a walk into Nobeoka

After leaving the Saigo Takamori Memorial Museum, I still had a couple of hours walk to get into downtown Nobeoka and the pilgrimage temples to visit. Along all roadsides in Japan you will find statues of Jizo, often well protected against inclement weather.

Far more common in the big cities, I was surprised to see this group of gaisensha, propoganda buses, belonging to one of the far right, nationalist groups in Japan. Blaring martial music and nationalistic slogans at levels decibels above what is legally permitted, these groups seem to get a free pass from the cops....

There were tunnels to walk through, but unusually one of them had a separate tunnel just for pedestrians and cyclist.....

It was still peak cherry blossom season of course....

Close to the castle, a group of pleasure boats.....

A day in tunnels

It is impossible to walk the Shikoku Pilgrimage without walking through a variety of tunnels.

I haven't sat down and calculated how many kilometers of tunnel you walk through, but it must be at least 20k and more probably double that, and in walking that is more than a day of distance.

It is possible to avoid some tunnels by taking a path up and over the mountain, but if you are carrying 20 kilos and/or the weather is bad then the tunnels makes sense....

Some of the tunnels are new, well lit, and with a decent sidewalk.

Some are old, dark, and narrow with just a painbted line separating you from the roaring traffic.

There are also quite a few traffic-free tunnels for pedestrians and cyclists.

How Japanese tunnels are built

Our new tunnel will shorten our drive down the river to Gotsu by a little more than 200 meters. Being straight the tunnel will also be more fuel efficient to drive. A rough calculation says that with present traffic density the fuel savings will have paid for the tunnel in only a few million years. Incidentally, that is my village to the left of the tunnel.

This is the machine that actually drills its way through the mountain. I was expecting to see a huge machine almost as big as the tunnel.... watched too many movies I guess! These smaller drill splay out at any angle.

The next stage is to put up steel arches and then a series of steel beams are driven into the mountain radiating out from the tunnel. Then the tunnel is coated in a thin layer of concrete.

The purpose of the steel beams is to stop the tunnel collapsing under the weight of the mountain, represented here in this demonstration by steel nuts.

Next a thick, waterproof, plastic membrane covers the inside of the tunnel followed by a frame of reinforcing rebar,

The final stage involves this huge machine on rails which is a movable form. Its used to pour the final inner walls of the tunnel.

Tunnel under construction

We are getting a new tunnel!!!
This will make the drive to Gotsu at least 15 seconds quicker.
Well worth the billions of yen it's costing.

On Tuesday the construction company had an Open Day so that members of the public can view and inspect where all their tax money is going.

It was kind of cool, though I would rather have seen it with the men and equipment in operation.

Tomorrow I will post about the construction method.

About 300 meters in, only 363 more meters to go!

Japanese Tunnels

There are a lot of tunnels in Japan. Not surprising really considering how mountainous it is. The Japanese have become the worlds experts on tunnel construction and have built the longest transport tunnel in the world, the 54k train tunnel connecting Honshu with Hokkaido.

In the 1930's there was a plan to connect Tokyo with the rest of the empire with a high-speed train line that would pass under the sea from Japan to Korea. Incidentally, this is the origin of the Bullet Train.

The little train tunnel above is on our local train line and was dug by hand.

This pedestrian tunnel with hi-tech light show connects Tenmangu Shrine with the National Museum in Dazaifu, Fukuoka.

This somewhat older hand-dug tunnel connects the village of Kimach in Izumo with the sandstone quarry on the other side of the hill.

This long straight pedestrian tunnel goes under the sea and connects Kyushu with Honshu.

What japan also has is thousands and thousands of kilometres of road tunnels. Many of these continue to be built on little used roads and simply "straighten" existing roads that follow rivers.

Which brings me to the subject of tomorrows post.....