Saga City

Saga City’s manhole features the venerable mutsugorô (mudskipper), an amphibious fish that can use its pectoral fins to walk on land.

Saga City, Sewage

Saga City, Gas

Saga is one of those prefectures that not many people outside of the region know anything about. I used to joke that Saga was little more than the prefecture you had to drive through to get to Nagasaki, but in all fairness, the quiet prefecture has a lot of charm and quite a few places that are worth visiting. Takeo, a town famous for its hot spring, is rather nice. My favorite Japanese architect, Kingo Tatsuno, designed the gate and building housing the main public bath in the town. Karatsu to the north is also a town with a lot to see. Then there are the ceramic centers of Imari, Hasami, and Arita. So, while Saga City is not the most inspiring of towns, the prefecture itself has a lot going for it.

Yame, Fukuoka

For a city that has so much that distinguishes it from other towns in the prefecture—namely, Yamé cha (tea) and Yamé ningyō (dolls)—they sure did choose a boring manhole design. What is the message they are trying to convey? That the sun never sets in this city? Well, I'm sorry to say, the sun did in fact set on this sleepy town a very long time ago. The origin of the town’s name Yamé (八女, lit. “8 woman”) comes from the Nihon Shoki (日本書紀, also known as The Chronicles of Japan), the second oldest book of classical Japanese history, which claimed that a goddess named Yame Tsuhime (八女津姫) lived in the region.  For more on Yamé, go here.

Yokosuka, Kanagawa

As far as I know, Yokosuka City in Kanagawa Prefecture is the only city in Japan that has a manhole design featuring a gaijin. The foreigner in this case is Commodore Matthew Perry, the American naval commander who played a important role in forcing Japan out of its policy of isolation when he sailed into Uraga Harbor on 14 July 1853. The ship depicted in the background of the manhole is one of the four coal-fired "black ships", or kurobune. These were ships of western origin that started appearing menacingly in Japanese waters in the 19th century.

This is another more common design for Yokosuka's manholes. The star in the center is the city's seal and the flower is the city's official flower, the hamayū (ハマユウ) or Crinum asiaticum (also called Poison Bulb, Grand Crinium Lilium).

An underground fire hydrant.

Another fire hydrant. Fairly standard design, this one.

An air valve, whatever that is. I do like the color, though.

The Commodore, himself.

The Japanese Battleship Mikasa.

I traveled down to Yokosuka for two reasons. The first was, one, to see the battleship, which is the last remaining example of a “pre-dreadnought” battleship. It was launched in 1900, commissioned in 1902 and served as the flagship throughout the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The was restored in the 1950s after years of neglect.

The second reason I visited the city was to get a feel of the place where my father was stationed with the Marines back in the early 1950s.