Hi everyone, I'm Emily. And I'm Vince. And this is the Lighthouse Lowdown!
Your microphone stands sagged on you. It did.
That's tighter. That's looser.
Punched me in the face.
It's...
The audio has that, it's like this...
Okay, Vince and I are using some new microphone stands today, so...
That's right.
We're figuring it out. We're also getting a new audio interface, but it doesn't want to do what is right and make things easy for us.
So we're using our old one today, and we'll figure out the other one by the time we...
I mean, hopefully, by the time we record our next episode.
Yeah, we should.
Oh, things could just go smoothly. That'd be nice.
No, that'd be too easy. How are you doing?
Oh, I'm fine. Vince and I are going to be covering, I guess, Landsorts is the one before this, and we're recording this one as well.
So we have a series of two international lighthouses going on.
So we'll be visiting both of them, most likely. We're a little...
We haven't had plans finalized, but we're going to Sweden, and then I'm going to Japan, so you can guess where we're going to be covering our lighthouse today.
Very excite.
I am excite.
Just so everyone is clear, I don't know where that accent is from other than right here and right now. Very excite.
I am really excited. I don't think we've told the podcast yet about our trip. I don't know if we've mentioned it.
So I don't know when this is airing, but yeah, we're going to Sweden, and we're going to talk about that.
Well, the way that I've set this up is that the episode will post while we're in the country that the lighthouse is in.
Oh, nice. The episode is over. So we're covering these lighthouses before we visit them.
So if there's any adjustments that need to be made, because this is very difficult.
The lighthouse stuff of the one in Sweden is all in Swedish, and the lighthouse in Japan is all in Japanese.
And so then all of my faith is in Google Translate. But if they tell me it's like...
Torlites.
Anyway, that's kind of the struggle that's been with these lighthouses is that I'm going by Google Translate,
which obviously is not complete English when it's translated. It's broken up, and Google does its best.
But sometimes it translates things wrong or things that don't need to be translated, like the name of something is a Swedish word.
And it translates it to like our last lighthouse translates to rural lighthouse or country lighthouse.
But it's just a name. It's not supposed to be translated.
Garlic. Yeah, that was another mistake. It's not.
The more you know. Yeah, we're going to Sweden, and then this will post while we're in Sweden.
So if you're listening to this, this will post while I'm in Japan.
Never mind. Still, I'm going to say it anyways. Think of us.
It's mixed up because we're recording the Sweden one tomorrow and the Japan one today.
Oh, my comes out before before Japan. I am all mixed up.
You're also not going to be here for the Japan one. So it's kind of. Oh, so I shouldn't even be on the podcast.
All right. This will be a pretty short episode, but we can get into it because I do have a history buoy.
It's pretty broad. It's a pretty broad subject, but I can't rush a good time.
Oh, yeah, we got this. So I'm going to cover for my history buoy.
The history of lighthouses in Japan, because we'll be covering a Japanese lighthouse.
OK, we know the general history of lighthouses. If you listen to our history of lighthouses episodes,
there's two of them, one number one and two of our podcast.
And we've dabbled a lot in talking about, you know, the US LHG, the lighthouse board,
how things have changed over time in the US, but things are really different between countries.
And you will absolutely see that between Sweden and Japan. Very different, very different growth of lighthouses
and its history in either country. I'm excited. Especially compared to the US. Yeah.
It's like for different reasons. I mean, US is a fairly new country, which is why we have fairly new lighthouses.
Japan is also have fairly new lighthouses, even newer than the US, but not because the country is young.
It's because they resisted and I think you're going to say because of World War Two or something.
Oh, no. Oh, like, oh, you mean like they used to have them, but they're obliterated. No.
No, I'm glad that's not what you said. That would be sad. So lighthouse, a lighthouse in Japanese is called Todai.
That's it's T-O-D-A-I. Todai. That's lighthouse in Japanese.
Lighthouses were considered to be a very Western thing to have. So the Japanese didn't have lighthouses for a long time.
And also in the 15th centuries, we're going, you know, like 600 years ago, Japan passed a law that forbid Japanese from leaving their country,
which started like many centuries long era of isolation. And this was mainly based around a fear of westernization,
which is basically it started in West Britain, their culture and ideals and everything spreading to the rest of the country,
which there are downsides to it, of course. And culture is awesome.
And so it's it was like the first time that culture started to be shared between countries.
You know, it included like the importance of dental health, like it's just like random things like that. It's like technology advancing and construction advancing.
Yeah. Concrete was one of the things westernization included concrete. So it's just a bunch of things like of modern life today were very Western.
And Japan resisted that for a long time because they obviously they value their culture and they didn't want it to get stamped out by westernization,
which in Japanese history, you can see kind of where that line was drawn, where the Japanese would wear suits and wool coats and things to work.
But when they came home, they would put on their traditional garb. It's kind of like it became a political thing and not so much.
You know, it's a whole yeah, I don't understand it totally because I'm not a historian.
Well, I don't I'm going to do it. I'm going to go on a tangent. OK. You said this is the fifteen hundreds.
This was the beginning of westernization. No, the for the law.
The 15th century was when Japan said fourteen hundreds. Yeah.
Wow. Japanese cannot leave the country because we want to preserve the culture that we have in Japan.
Yeah. Fourteen hundreds. Man, I want to read further into that.
That's really interesting on its own. It's just as an idea.
I'm I'm I was recommended by a listener and friend of ours that I should listen to this audio book.
Well, read this book. But he said listen to the audio book because the author or rates the book himself, which is always great.
But is he good? He's well, the person it's so it's a biography and he is good.
The person that's about is an Englishman and they're talking about the seventeen hundreds, I believe.
I believe. Yeah. Seventeen hundreds because the United States is founded during this time period where this guy is alive.
OK. Not that that's relevant, but they mentioned 1776 on.
But in the seventeen hundreds, there's these wonderful tangents this author goes on that are super long.
Yeah. And he talks about one of the book. He wrote these.
Yes. Oh, my gosh. And because he's already it, it's like like I was out mowing the yard earlier listening to this.
And he goes and talks for, you know, 20 minutes on a subject that is not exactly relevant.
So interesting. Obviously, I'm a fan. Yeah, we're we're all about that.
But but one of the tangents he was talking about was I don't know what to call it westernization.
I'll call it for the moment of people.
They started to worry about things they hadn't worried about before.
Yeah. All of a sudden, because of schools existing and education and we had enough food and civilization and laws in England in the seventeen hundreds, hundreds was when people started to worry about philosophy.
Yeah. And they started to delve into it.
And a lot of people were picking up different sciences and studying things that hadn't been studied before.
And this person that the biography is about is studying geography and also geology.
So he eventually will come up with the first geology map of the island of England, Britain rather.
Wow. So it shows by layer where fossils are, where different coal resources are.
So this is not you said this is a biography. I didn't process that.
So this is not just a story that is true. It's like, OK. Yeah. Yeah.
And so it's the point was this kid growing up in the seventeen hundreds had the access to a lot of things that weren't around before.
And part of that, you know, people started exploring different things.
Fashion changed. Plumbing and construction changed. Sciences changed.
Faith played into, you know, God created the earth.
And that's the end of the story until now. This guy was pushing that. Yeah.
Now we're seeing like evolution and stuff. Yeah. Challenging evolution.
He didn't get burned at the stake. Darwin's theory didn't come out for another 30 years after this person.
Oh, my gosh. So now that I see it, I just can't believe that that I just said.
I'm pretty sure that's what they said in the book.
But either way, westernization, they're talking about this in Japan and a law had been passed.
So obviously it wasn't the origin, but rather something that's going on in the fourteen hundreds.
Fifteen century. Is that right? Yeah. Fourteen. That's just crazy.
So give it give the mic back to you. But this isolationism continued until like the eighteen hundreds.
So I had a solid four hundred years of keeping within their country borders.
You know, nobody was nobody was coming into or out of the country, which I'm interested about.
Like if what shipping was like, like, did they share goods with other people?
Like how how isolated were they actually from the rest of the world?
Or was it just that people couldn't go out or in to the country and but they were still open to sharing?
Because like I'm talking about is lighthouses didn't actually occur in Japan until later in the eighteen hundreds.
And that's super, super late for lighthouses to show up in a country that's existed long before.
It's an island. Yeah. I mean, the whole world's islands. Right.
So I guess I don't know anything about that.
But I don't know if commerce was a thing between Japan and other countries before this.
I wonder if commerce is what drove the westernization of Japan.
How would it not be? I mean, how would you because Japan is fully, absolutely fully developed today.
If not pushing the boundaries of technology and stuff, there really any development anywhere.
Right. They might be the best.
I mean, from what I know, but there obviously was a shift somewhere.
So what kicked that off? That's in lighthouses being a technology and a practice.
Yeah. And obviously a very useful tool, especially into, you know, the United States got really into lighthouses in eighteen hundreds.
That's when we hear a lot of the origins. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah.
So really the invention of the steam engine and growth and transportation kind of spurred conversation and relationships with Japan,
because now we're starting to be able to go anywhere in the world at any time with anything.
And so Japan is like starting to be like, OK, maybe like we should not be so concerned about that and instead be concerned about growing our country in the way.
Like not they're not really wanting westernization, but you want dental hygiene. You want stronger buildings.
You want to be able to look after your people to keep up in that way. Yeah.
And especially like technology and education and stuff like that.
It all kind of played into this like them starting to be open to the idea of westernization because there are downsides to it.
It's like the politics, not like, you know, one of the.
So I looked up downsides of westernization and it included like bad money handling.
That was just something that came along with the times. Yeah.
The importance of political correctness, you know, you're it's very likely that if you watch the news or whatever, there's political.
It's like a facade that you can't you can't be real.
Yeah. And that's obviously something that would have been valued a lot in places like Japan.
It's where you can authenticity. Yeah. Yeah.
Anyway, that I do have a link in my show notes of how westernization came about in Japan.
And it talks a lot about why and what that meant for Japan.
Upsides, downsides, all of that. But we're focusing on lighthouses in this in this podcast.
So that's what I focused in on. It was it was a little chunk.
But so if you are interested, you should go ahead to my show notes. I have a have it in there.
I will. I'll look at that. That's and we may talk about it again. Yeah.
So Steam Engine brought upon some relationships building.
And it wasn't until the eighteen fifties that the U.S. and Japan signed a treaty of friendship, which I thought was a cute name.
But it's basically like we're open to it's like a commerce treaty.
They're signed with the U.S. Yes.
And like the British and other countries, they kind of just were like, OK, we're going to dive in and do this thing.
We're going to trade and be in it and it to win it.
And so Japan began began to westernize in earnest in the mid eighteen hundreds.
And Japan didn't have engineers that understood concrete and like building lighthouses, building town centers.
I'm pretty sure their town like their town hall or whatever.
What is it like? Capital building kind of thing was built by other engineers because they didn't.
They needed some they needed people from other countries to come in and teach their engineers how to make these buildings that were as well strong and safe.
Yeah. So they brought in engineers to build schools, banks, railroads, which is also interesting.
And lighthouses, because now their ports are open and they need people to be safe coming to their country.
And so they have to build lighthouses.
So first lighthouse lit in Japan was in 1869 by Scottish engineer Richard Brunton.
And this is the weirdest circle closure of information that I've ever seen.
It's you're the little Ross episode. Yes.
Part two, I want to say I talked about Joseph Dick and he's the guy who went to Japan to build lighthouses and ditched his wife and kids.
He was an assistant, right? Or no, he wasn't. He was an engineer.
No. Yeah, he was an engineer. And he started a new family.
And he was sent by the Scottish or maybe it was the Scottish to build lighthouses in Japan for five years.
But then he wanted to stay. And so his wife and children went back to Scotland and he took a Japanese lover, had children and died there.
Wow. And so I'm looking at I'm looking up Richard Brunton, who is the one who built the first lighthouses there.
And it just I was like, oh, yeah, I remember that guy that I talked about. I wonder if they coincided.
They were partners. So Richard Brunton is working with Joseph Dick.
They both went at the same time in 1868 to build lighthouses. I was like, what is going on?
Mr. Dick, he was this, you know, my chance was this his first project was this one of several.
Was he already far established at this time? This lighthouse we're going to talk about.
I think he was well established because he was selected to go to Japan.
It wasn't like, OK, who wants to sacrifice? You know, but I mean, once he was in Japan, his tour in Japan.
Yes, he has. Well, he was also very generous.
And so Japanese, the Japanese loved him because he in times of hardship in Japan, he would come out and help, you know, supply people with food and money and stuff.
So it wasn't that he was a bad guy, but to his wife and children, I think it was a little low.
Well, they really loved England. He really loved Japan.
Yeah. So he he has a monument for him over there. Yeah, he's he's pretty high up there.
He's a. You know. Big, big dick. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. But anyway, I just thought I was I read this good, the Scottish engineer and I was like, oh, we've covered another Scottish engineer.
I should go take a look. And it's just that they were partners. He's not mentioned in any of the you know, it's all in Richard's name.
Yeah. But yeah, Joseph, Joseph was in there and I was just I just think it's wild. It's completely unrelated.
Yeah. Anyway, Brinton built another 25 lighthouses in Japan as the country wanted to illuminate their new ports for foreign boats and other countries to start visiting and doing trade and all of that.
And in fact, one of the lighthouses he built was the very first concrete structure in Japan.
That's crazy. The earliest instance of concrete is the lighthouse.
And I can't remember the name. It's not the one we're covering today. This one came in a little bit later than that.
I have a potentially unanswerable question. OK. Is Japan a volcanic formation?
I guess a rock ground structure so they didn't need concrete for foundations.
I want to say yes. Mount Fuji isn't that dormant. I believe so. Yeah.
Let me check. Because that would that would align with saying they don't know how to they don't they did not at the time know how to manage concrete and I mean, yeah, that's interesting.
I don't know how else to say it. I think you're right. Because I also think Japan has trouble growing crops.
Oh, I think that's why they're so my cultural knowledge is so short.
They're so they eat so many fish. It's a cultural history of not being able to support crops and therefore animals as well.
What am I trying to think of livestock? Oh, my gosh. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
The animals in the backyard, the things that walk around. Yeah.
So it is a volcanic island. OK. So that is a volcano.
I'm going to I'm going to presume assume that's the history behind their concrete experience. Yeah, maybe.
We'll see. That's interesting. That's a good thought to have you smart person.
I love guessing and having no one to tell me I'm wrong.
Except for the Internet. It's just me. And I'm like, oh, yeah, maybe. Oh, it'll be the Internet.
Thanks, guys. Yeah, we're starting to get people telling us that we're wrong, which
I like it after it. The hurt wears off.
I have the garlic, the constructive criticism.
I have an initial reaction of sadness. And then I appreciate it.
You know, I just got to sleep on it. And then I'm like, oh, thank you for enlightening us.
We always appreciate it.
So, yeah, feel free to tell us if we're wrong, maybe gently for my own constitution.
So I interrupted. We're talking about the first concrete structure.
So the first several lighthouses in Japan are obviously extremely similar to Scottish and British style lights, which it makes logical sense that the Scottish engineers come in.
Yeah, we still do that today.
They're they did a good job because no two lighthouses look exactly the same, obviously.
And the one we're talking about today is obviously a Scottish light. It's like the Scottish design lived on.
Yeah. OK. The one that we're talking about today is Scottish style.
And I have never seen one like it because it's very skinny.
Like normally Scottish lights are they're domed and they're white and they've got like like cross hatching going on the on the outside of the glass.
OK. The frontal lens. And they're usually a little bit more stout and wide.
But this one's pretty tall, but it has the same aspects of I think that's probably the Japanese influence.
This one's built like 50 years later from when they started.
So it's probably the Japanese influence coming in. Japanese design influence.
The light room is tall or the tower. The tower is tall, tall and skinny.
Yeah. Cool. I'm doing a lot of hand movements today.
I'm all over the place. I'm like circle of information.
We're going to need cameras in here before long. I don't want anyone to see this.
Do I get to see the lighthouse? I really want to. Yeah, not yet.
I'm looking at our cat, Joey. Yeah, we got Joey up on the screen right now because I couldn't find our logo to put up.
Another disclaimer before I say this next sentence.
I am not I don't know. I don't know Japanese pronunciation.
I don't know how to read it. I don't know how to say it.
I already struggle with English pronunciation. I'm glad you're doing it.
So I'm just going to blaze ahead and just do my best.
I thought I looked up all the pronunciations that I could, but I see now that I have missed a couple.
Let's just dive in. Just confidently dive. We'll have people correct us.
All right. The Meiji government prioritized the Izu Peninsula due to a large number of maritime accidents.
So that's where you see that most lighthouses pop up early on. This peninsula.
Nowadays, there are over three thousand lights in Japan, not all of them running, but at least that many built.
And they're overseen by the Japan Ghost Guard. Whoa. Japan Coast Guard.
I was going to say that is the coolest thing. Ghost Guard.
It's like a special forces. The Japanese Ghost Guard. Yeah. Sorry.
It was interesting because it's just like we have the US Coast Guard and then we have the Japan Coast Guard.
I never considered that it would just be the Coast Guard of another country. Yeah.
That makes sense. Yeah. But that's that's what I got on the history.
There's a lot more. It's hard to find in the US trying to look up Japanese history without a special person to talk to.
Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, my parents are over there.
Maybe they can help me with some. Maybe they can listen to my pronunciations and be like, oh, that's bad.
They'd be like, you should have asked us beforehand. We could tell you what it's supposed to sound like.
Yeah, I'm going to do my best. All right. Getting into the lighthouse. Now you get to see it.
All of the pictures I could find. Very few pictures of this.
It's mostly people visiting and they post pictures online. Yeah. Google Google trips or whatever. Yeah.
So they're they're really small pictures. So not great quality. Nice quality photos, but not high res.
Yeah, we see before I describe the photo or we describe it.
We see a lot of good information on American United States Lighthouses. Yeah.
And it's difficult because I don't know of another podcast, maybe Light Hearted does.
I'm not sure that explores international lighthouses.
Yeah, I think we were the between us and Light Hearted.
OK, Light Hearted does not cover international.
I believe because they are from their root is in the US LHS.
So they're going to cover US Lighthouses. So I think that's something unique to us. We're big fans.
Don't get us wrong. Oh, yeah. No, we love the US. America. USA. USA.
There's a heart on it. This lighthouse. Yeah. So I've pulled up a picture of the lighthouse for people that want to go to our YouTube and take a look.
Or you can go to our Instagram. We also post the pictures there.
You can kind of I don't really put them in any specific order, but I do label which picture like what's in each picture and what I was referring to when I was talking about.
They're good to look through, especially after an episode. Yeah. Can reflect on it. Yeah.
We're going to try and do better about describing pictures that we put up on the screen.
But so right now that's this lighthouse. We are heading to the town.
Here we go with some of our pronunciations of Mihama, Chita District, Aichi, Japan on the Chita Peninsula in Issei Bay.
Wow. I like that. Thank you for the specificity.
Specificness. Thank you. I never felt so stupid until I put a microphone in my face. That you could be right, but I would just if I if someone asked me to say what I was thinking is be specific.
So may I or you go for it? Describing? Yeah. Sure.
So first off, it is not that tall from this appearance, but it is up there compared to the fact that it is right on the water.
I'm talking maybe 50 feet to water's edge from the base of the tower.
Yeah. And that's that's probably plays into what you were just talking about is if you look up the lighthouse, you can see that it's very rocky.
It's not sandy beaches, and that would make it safe to put this lighthouse right up next to the water because you don't plan on rock eroding away the same way that sand does.
Like talking about Nosset Beach having to be moved so often because of the sand erosion and like you have cliffs, but it's not they're not rocky cliffs.
They're beachy cliffs. So this would it would explain why it can be so close to water and it's not it doesn't seem like something that would be moved often.
Well, we could we could actually have a civil engineer come on and talk about this.
But some projects I work on at work have piers just like you'd have a pier in the water and ocean is a column of structural column that would go down to a solid piece of rock, a bedrock where you're building a building on stilts on the water.
Yeah, that is also true in the middle of South Carolina. Sometimes the project I'm working on has piers that go down. I want to say 50 feet. Oh, wow. Because the ground it's on is technically sandy soil.
So it needs to reach it needs to anchor to something solid. So it's it's on an ocean of sand essentially. Okay, which is crazy for what we're looking at right now on screen.
There appears to be concrete, maybe just as the surface pad. But who knows that foundation could go down several feet. Yeah. But the yeah, it looks like it's a rock shore.
And you've got a granite sign that looks really nice. Obviously, I don't read Japanese. It is in Japanese. The water looks pretty. It looks a little rougher than I would have guessed.
The nice thing about this lighthouse is it's bright white all over. It's not. Yeah. You know, normally you have a you see like a black or red lantern room. But in this case, is it white up there? Yeah.
I'll show another picture of something that's in front of the lighthouse in the background. It's the light in the lighting is better for you to see what the lighthouse actually looks like.
But it's I don't want to give it away right now. And in the far distance, it could be a shipping barge, could be a cruise ship, but obviously near a shipping lane, which makes sense for a lighthouse.
So pretty photo. Yep. It's 66 feet tall, currently has an LED beacon inside of a fifth order lens, I believe. There's there is not a lot of information on the on the worldwide web about this lighthouse.
And I think the only way to really know what's up there is to go see yourself, but you can't.
Because that little fence there. There is a fence. We hate fences. We hate fences. We're lighthouse people. We hate fences. We're Americans. Down with fences. We hate fences.
We should be able to go wherever we want, whenever we want. Yeah. I like that. I don't know anything about it, but there's a little heart near the door.
That plays into what's special about the lighthouse. Not a lot of information, but there is some information and it's special. But you can't touch it. You can't touch it.
No selfies. So I think it's inside of a fifth order lens. They talk about how they did a renovation and in some sources it says because it's translated from Japanese, it's hard to figure out what it's actually trying to say unless you speak Japanese or read it.
But I think that it now has a fifth order lens switched over from a different order lens before that. But there were some that were saying that the fifth order lens was removed, replaced with something, but I couldn't figure out what it was trying to say.
The range is 15 kilometers right now and its characteristic is ISO W6S, which means ISO is another thing we haven't encountered yet and I've noticed it a lot more that I'm doing international stuff.
It's basically equal phases of light and dark. So it's not flashing and it's not group occulting. It's equal phases. So you're not seeing moments of darkness or moments of light. You're seeing equal switching. It's like alternating black and white is kind of what it's like.
And it's white light, three seconds of white, three seconds of dark.
Cool. And it's right on a beach is what I mentioned. There's actually a lot of stuff along here and there are beaches. So the land that it's on is rocky, but if you drive down just a little bit, there's beaches. My mom said there's a really nice beach that we're going to go see because they're humoring me and taking me to this lighthouse.
Is it like a tourist area? Is it a fishing area? I'm not sure. Nagoya is pretty, my mom said it's pretty, there's a lot of English going on. So it's friendly towards US. It's westernized. People living there. So I don't know if that makes it touristy or if it just makes it, you know, there's more US people walking around.
So this is in Nagoya, which is a region. This is near Nagoya. Nagoya is where my parents live. It's a city. Okay. I think this is like 50 minutes away. Okay. Cool.
So going into the history that I could find on this cute little lighthouse. It was built, oh, here we go. Here I need to reference my, built during the Teisho period and first lit March 10th, 1921. Isn't that crazy? That is crazy. That was our first lit lighthouse, 1921. No, this is not the first lighthouse.
That was 1870. 1869, I believe. And so this one's, it's, if you think about it, it's not that much later. It's only 50 years-ish. Yeah. But that's what I was saying is that it's very clearly Scottish style inspired.
But it's obviously, it's picking up some different aspects of design. It's the oldest lighthouse in the Aichi prefecture. Prefecture. It's an English word that I actually didn't look up.
I don't know. I think, yeah. I know what it's saying. It's basically a region. I'm just going to say region. I think it's more, it's more political. It's more of a political separation, not like a region, which kind of, region, I always think of like geological, you know, like it's separated by regions. It's not really, oh, I just don't, I'm sorry.
Geographical. Yeah. In 2008, it was extensively renovated and its lens was replaced with an LED beacon with the fifth order lens. I'm not sure what it was before. Okay. If that's, if that's how it is now. This reduced the power, it was originally 25 kilometer range. And so I don't know if that was on purpose or if they just didn't need it as much anymore. So they want to keep it. Yeah, I don't know.
Weird to reduce power. But the former lens is now on display at the museum at Deiyosaki Lighthouse in the Mie Prefecture. All right. Okay. Great. Moving on. You can go see it. Type that into your Google Maps.
By the way, this lighthouse is called the Noma Lighthouse. I haven't said yet. It's the Noma Lighthouse or the Nomazaki Lighthouse. Noma. Very sorry for getting almost all the way through this episode without saying what the name.
It's going to come up sometime.
Okay. Yes. It's Noma. So here's where the lore comes in. The Noma Lighthouse is actually a place where effectively love went to die. It was like if you came to this lighthouse, your relationship was going to be in jeopardy. Your relationship was no more.
It was like, no, no, shame, shame, shame. Good one. Thanks.
Basically, there was a superstition that this lighthouse was cursed and it was going to jinx your love life. The heartbreaker. So a tradition, which we see a lot here in the US as well, was born of placing locks on the fence that was around the lighthouse. And basically, if a couple went to the lighthouse and placed a padlock on the fence together, then their love would prosper. And it's actually the number one attraction in Mihama, which is the peninsula that it's on.
That could be wrong. Mihama is the city.
It's a town. Okay, so it's the number one attraction in that town in Japan.
So before leaving the couple that just placed their lock would then ring the bell, which is called the Bell of Bonds in front of the lighthouse and it faces water. It's quite nice. Cool. So here, let me pull up a picture for you to see that. Do you have audio or no? No. Okay. There's barely anything. I mean, I'm doing my absolute best.
Here's where the locks are placed. I'll talk a second about why it's not on the fence anymore. You can probably guess why. So here's the locks. Here's how they look now. And then the bell looks like this. Yeah, the Bell of Bonds. That's a dramatic angle someone took that photo at. Yeah, I know. But this is the picture I was talking about. You can see the lighthouse is completely white beside the railing. Yeah. Everything, including the lantern room, all of that is all white. So very pretty. Cool. Yeah, it's a beautiful spot. What's on the left? Is that a boat?
I wonder if that's why they took the photo this way. Looks like a fish head. They're holding up a fish. If you look at our photo, you can see that the padlocks are not on a fence. They're on like bars that have musical notes on them. And so obviously the problem with adding padlocks to fence is that eventually the weight is going to be too much and the fence is going to give out. Which you see that every time there's a lock attraction, people put it on
bridges and stuff. Eventually the fence just gives out because it's too much. So it was rebuilt several times before 2000 when Mijama declared the area to be a protected park. And the oh, this one doesn't have a pronunciation. So I'll do my best. Queen No Mizu Shrine.
Set up branches to hold the padlocks instead of all the fencing. So you weren't putting it on chicken wire and instead putting it on something that was actually built to handle it. And then in 2011, the Mijama school, Nihon Fukushi University, set up the musical. It's like it has musical notes on it. Something special about it where it's kind of part of the attraction as well.
And so now the padlocks double as another cool thing to see around this lighthouse. Oh, cool. And that is the No Mizaki Lighthouse or Noma Lighthouse. Okay, so that's what I got. There's a bell here. Yes, that you ring. There's a plaque on the ground. It probably says Bell of Bonds. There's a heart with a music, some music notes on it. Turning around the jinxing of the lighthouse. Yeah, so you're going to this without me.
Yeah, love can be family can be familial love. But you don't want to jinx either any of those situations. So what are you talking about? You're telling me that I'm. So what do I do? I am going bring a lock and ring the bell by yourself, like.
I guess.
No!
Yeah.
Find another lighthouse to go to.
I cannot believe you planted that in my brain.
This whole time I didn't think about
just how I was jinxing anything.
You're, you are jinxing this.
I feel like you just told me about this lighthouse.
It's my responsibility to respond in that way.
Oh.
Well then maybe I'll bring a little lock
and Carly and I will put it on there.
Or my dad.
My dad will be pseudo you for this purpose.
Okay.
Okay, what are these things we're looking at
on the lighthouse?
Are those lights and windows?
I don't know.
The picture is not clear enough for me to see.
I think they're windows into a stairwell or something.
I would think these, the big ones are windows
and these little things are lights.
Yeah.
But I guess, I don't know.
It's a pretty good picture.
Yeah it is.
For anyone else to check it out.
It is right on the water.
I know it.
That is like, you can barely walk between the water's edge
in some areas and the fencing that goes around the lighthouse.
Hopefully that's their high tide.
I don't know.
And that's, cool.
I like the little platform it's built on.
Stairs up to a platform.
Yeah it's like tapered.
With a totally unnecessary rail there.
They do have signage on this,
you know this little railing thing going on.
Yeah.
So I am excited to see and see what it looks like
in person and I'll try and take some better pictures
so when I post about it, you can see all the details.
Yeah, cool.
Which I could find more history about this one
but it's still got cool, cool information.
So this is not the first, just to be clear,
not the first lighthouse.
It was not the first lighthouse lit,
also not the first concrete structure.
No.
Just one where you're gonna go.
That was just part of my history, Bowie.
It's all white.
Yep, all white.
Which is unusual.
I don't know if I've seen that before.
I know.
I'm saying it looks really clean.
Yeah.
As long as they keep it clean, which obviously they do,
but if it were to get dirty, it'd be really obvious.
It's like wearing white shoes.
You know what, yes it is.
Ocracoke lighthouse was white and thick.
Yeah.
I don't remember the top of it.
I don't remember the light room.
Was it black?
Yes.
Oh, okay.
Well then nevermind.
I've got a picture of Ocracoke Tower in North Carolina.
It's gorgeous.
What do we got to go there?
Really cool.
It's got a long story you should look into
if you're a listener about why it's that white color
and texture.
Yeah.
It's very interesting and not something I've heard before.
So it's kind of fun if you wanna go listen
to our Outer Banks Lighthouse's episode.
Can't remember what episode number it is.
Maybe 10.
But I won't be held accountable for if it's not.
All right.
But that's it.
That's what I got.
Hopefully when you guys listen to this episode,
I will be there and we'll be able to post pictures
of us there and you can see what it actually looks like.
Our first Japanese lighthouse.
I know.
Very cool.
Yeah, that's right.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
So go into our show notes.
I have a lot of references for this lighthouse
that and as well for the lighthouse history in Japan.
It's like 150 years of history,
which it's like a baby compared to everybody else.
A little baby.
It's like a little baby.
Very cool.
Also in my show notes will be our Linktree link
where you can follow us on Instagram
or look at our YouTube or LinkedIn,
basically any of our socials
and can also go to our website from there
where you can listen to our podcast
at basically any branch of where you listen
to your podcast.
Cool.
And thank you everybody.
We've been gaining a lot of followers lately
and having people reach out to us.
Send us stuff and it's really fun.
Yeah, we've had people send us some swag
from different lighthouses.
That's really cool.
I've heard some feedback, both positive and negative,
which is really cool.
Yeah, and we're always learning and doing our best
because we love lighthouses
and we just want everyone else to get to learn about them
as people that don't get to research
or don't have a reason to.
I will just deliver it to you.
Well, it's building speed for me
because I have a list that keeps growing
of things I wanna talk about.
I've got some surprises for you.
Have you seen our Google Sheet recently?
Our Google Sheet?
I'm not familiar with it.
Where you list what our plan is.
Oh yeah, our episodes.
I added tabs so that we can put in what our prospects are,
our episode prospects.
Wow.
And I'm writing in there
why I'm interested in each lighthouse.
Not so you can look at it,
but so I can organize them appropriately.
So we have everything plotted out.
We've got the next year of episodes coming at you.
Yeah, honestly, I think I have like 20.
You probably do, every year.
It's kinda sad.
So we'll have some guests on in the next couple.
I don't know when they'll air,
but in the next couple recordings,
I've got some guests coming.
Okay.
I've got a surprise for you, at least one.
Yeah.
Sounds like a blast.
I don't know, I just wanna say thank you everybody.
We don't acknowledge you too often.
So we appreciate you listening and hanging out with us.
Yeah, just listening is good enough.
We love it.
Hope you enjoyed this episode.
Hope you will go to our Instagram
so you can probably see me at this lighthouse.
And you can hopefully enjoy it vicariously
through me as I visit.
Yeah.
Yeah, so we hope you listen into our next episode on
The Lighthouse.
Yeah.
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