Uchiko

We set out yesterday morning for Uchiko, one of the little towns that has been on Kenny's list for a while. We took a trolley to the train station and bought tickets using our rail pass for the last time - the pass expired at the end of the day yesterday.

The Matsuyama trolley.

Kenny tries his luck.

It was a short trip up, and through, the mountains. We might have been in tunnels more than we were out, and it did make me stop and wonder about the work of building all these railways. That must have been a project.

A view from the train.

Uchiko is a sleepy little town, with an older district that grew up around the vegetable wax industry. Vegetable-wax making is nearly extinct here, but the old streets and buildings remain. And although a few buildings have been converted to museums, the town is occupied, and there are shops and restaurants in the old part of town, and the sense that things here retain a little of how life might have been 100 years ago. Cars, yes, but also bicycles, and foot-traffic.
We stopped first at the Kabuki-za, which was built in 1916 and has been restored and is now a working theater. Our admission ticket allowed us to roam around backstage, upstairs, and down the tunnels that lead to the stage machinery. It's always good to roam around a theater.

The main seating area.

Under the stage.

The main stage.

We visited the Uchiko History Museum, the home of a wax merchant that is now occupied by life-sized mechanical figures who talk when you pass by. Not quite realistic, and a little startling sometimes, but we where able to walk around the tatami rooms, visit the store-house and the court-yard garden.

I help out in the kitchen. (One of these figures is a mechanical dummy.)

We visited a few other places, including a mansion that is also a museum and now serves tea and sells small gifts. The bigger house museum, the Kamihaga Residence, was closed for renovations, but the visitors center was open, and we were able to learn about the history of wax in the area, and the complicated process for extracting wax from sumac berries.

For Mike, from Kenny. Some sidewalk sculpture.

We were looking for a restaurant, which seemed to be closed, and generally starting to head back toward the train station, when we found a small shop that makes and sells vegetable wax candles. The candle-maker was busy in the back, where we could watch him work, and his wife was in charge of the store. Late last night Kenny sent me a link from Frommer's about this candle-maker. He's the last one. We had no idea when we stopped in, and now I think I own some of the world's rarest candles.

The sleep streets of Uchiko.

After the train trip back, and a little rest, we headed out for yakatori, which Kenny tells me was delicious. It was a busy place, and that made it difficult to get anyone to pay attention to my little gluten-free print out.