Uchiko

On Sunday my friend Tomoko came over and we went to Uchiko, which is a little town an hour and a half's drive away. It's primarily known today as a sightseeing spot for machi-nami, or like oldtimey streetscape. Lots of traditional looking houses and such. It used to be a huge town for wax production--perhaps the wax production capital of Japan in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In fact, Uchiko wax was world-renowned, known in Europe and the Americas for its high quality. It was exhibited at world exhibitions (like in Paris, Chicago) and even won prizes. So, the home of Mr Waxmaker was quiet educational. I had always assumed that wax meant beeswax. I had no idea that you could get wax from berries of trees...the sumac tree, in this case. I learned all about the complicated mechanism of hand-making wax, pressing the wax out of the berries, etc. etc. and how wax is used obviously in candles, but also in makeup, hair pomade, etc. Vegetable wax. Very odd. It's tough and hard, not very waxy-feeling. Feels more like soap.

The other thing that was cool was the house itself. It wasn't as nice as Yoshijima-ke in Takayama, but it was different. Many of the beams in Yoshijima-ke were machine-planed, but this house (Haga-ke?) had beams that were basically trees! I went up to the third floor attic sort of thing, and couldn't help but touch them. They were wonderfully crooked and unique and cool-looking. Pictures on facebook soon, I think. No nails, of course, all joinery, which added to the charm.

We also walked to Uchiko-za, a Japanese theater in the traditional style. We went in for free because they were rehearsing some sort of play, Love Letters. Pretty much couldn't understand any of it, but felt kind of nostalgic anyways for the whole tech thing. Like, look! the sound guy! and the lighting guy! well, gal in this case. And the theater was set up rather differently, on account of it being Japanese-traditional style. The balcony on either side was lined with cool looking lanterns.