Heikedani Valley

　　One hour after leaving Matsuyama, we called in at Heikedani Valley. There are lots of places called Heikedani across Japan. I'm going to tell you about it at first.
　　About 1000 years ago, there were two enormous armed groups and they were called Genji and Heike respectively. They were struggling to take power for a long time. They fought several times and finally Genji won power. Genji were afraid of Heike's revenge and chased up Heike to the last person. On the other hand, Heike got away ready to pay back someday, and they hid in the thickly forested mountains and valleys. These places are called Heikedani ("dani" means valley), where people had lived extremely modest lives not to be found by Genji. On account of this, most Heikedani are located in isolated places. The Heikedani where we visited also hid in such a place. No sunshine comes in Heikedani. The Heike people had to choose such miserable places as their habitation areas, and seekers would never suspect that someone might live there.
　　However, it wasn't all bad. Even in the severely hot daytime, people could survive the heat there. At present, quite a few amusement facilities are located at Heikedani. In the Heikedani where we dropped in, they run a somen shop. Somen is a kind of noodles as you can imagine from the resemblance between somen and ramen.
　　By the way, guess how to eat somen here, judging from the pictures. I'll write the answer in the next entry.

• (Vocabulary)
• chase up（人や動物を）追い詰める
• to the last man 最後の一人まで
• it isn't all bad 悪いことばかりではない

Comments

[KUMO]

Yes, that's right, and where is the somen?

[Peter]

I would suggest somen are eaten with chopsticks.