By Rich Hendele

The direct route to Hiroshima

The roads in Shimane were pretty grim. From Yokota, where I lived, it was alwaysfaster (and safer) to take thetrain. Up in the Inaka (countryside) you could always tell when you had reached the prefectural border because the road was now paved. Shimane-ken was very rural, in some places desolate and very poor.
I know that Pachinko is as popular as ever in Japan, but in 1973 there was no such thing as a power assisted machine. All the machines were operated manually by flipping a lever with your right thumb. The skill was in keeping the rhythm going while keeping the pressure consistent, so the stream of balls would hit the same sweet spot, (providing that you found one). Unlike today, there was a built in fatigue factor. Most of the parlors were small affairs of 30 to 100 machines.
Women would work behind the walls, reloading the balls. As always, there was a little cubby hole down the block where you could cash out your prize tokens.

The first photo is Yokota-cho station, 1973. The second is looking across the tracks from the platform. The third & fourth are taken a few blocks up the track from the station.

Here's our group of students. We were in Shimane with a cultural anthropology professor, as guests of the Ken-cho (Prefectural government). We were sponsored by our college (TESC) in Washington State, in association with the Japan Foundation. We were spread from Izumo-Taisha to Matsue, and from Yokota to Etomo. We all had "Cultural Research Visa's, which allowed us to both work & study. Each of us had ourselves placed in a traditional Japanese craft, (Indigo dying, Pottery, Daiku-san (carpentry), Nogyo (agriculture, Ryoshi, Sake koba (brewery) , Taisha bokushi gakusei, Jiin gakusei, etc., etc.). Other than the 17 of us, and two or three missionaries who would come & go from time to time, there were no other English speaking expats living in Shimane-ken in 1973-74, (just a handful of Spanish nuns). None of us drove, so it was trains & busses everywhere. Telephone calls were expensive, and of course there was no internet. I personally spent a lot of time reading books related to my research. How times have changed,...

In the Photo, I'm in the green tee shirt. Our professor is wearing the pink blouse with the red collar.

Here is one of the Steam Locomotives (Kisha) taken at Shinji station.

In 74' they were still running themup and down the coastal railway line, hauling strictly freight, fuel, grain, etc. They stopped using them for people some years before, and took them out of service altogether sometime in the late 70"s. At the time they were an everyday sight. They were awesome to watch and even more fun to listen to,. Note the photo with the Locomotive parked next to the "Modern Kisha".

There was an old, old, train line that ran between Taisha and Matsue through the valley just north of Lake Shinji. It was a rickety old thing that rocked & rattled and probably never made it over 30 mph. Most of the passengers were local farmers who lived in the area it traversed. I've heard that it's now gone by the wayside.

Here is also a photo of a typical Kisha car that we all rode on a daily basis.