Shijo Bridge, then and now
posted March 15, 2004
The new steel bridge (with flying buttresses!) over the Kamo River in Meiji 7 (1874) and the same view in Heisei 16 (2004).
The new steel bridge (with flying buttresses!) over the Kamo River in Meiji 7 (1874) and the same view in Heisei 16 (2004).
I wonder when the river management changed. I don’t see much water in the 1874 picture. Cool picture.
Beck
Every year I think, “I’m going to try the beer garden on top of the Chinese place!” (which is on the left in your picture). Every year, beer-garden season comes and goes, and I somehow don’t manage to hit it. Summer. Kyoto. Beer. “This time for SURE!” /bullwinkle
Very cool comparison. I especially like those old-school street lights.
Those street lamps are gas lights, which was a new thing then. I should have mentioned that.
The Chhinese restaurant, Tohkasaikan, was designed in 1926 by an American missionary-turned-Japanese citizen, William Merrel Vories, most recently in the news over the big blow-up and mayoral recall campaign about the school he designed being torn down in Toyosato, Shiga. The town of Omihachiman on the eastern shore of Lake Biwa was his missionary territory, and many buildings he designed still stand. When I went through that town on a bicycle tour in 1995, I was surprised when, thinking I was finally entering Japan’s “country bumpkin” territory, the first person I asked for directions in my broken Japanese responded in perfect English. The legacy of Vories? I don’t know.
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