Hungry for information the greedy English Parents ask to see some museums.  Originally, the plan was to visit the Awa Washi Paper Factory to make a bit of washi but the road/pass over the mountain freaked the English Parents out so it was abandoned.  ‘We don’t need to drive 2 hours to make some paper! We’re aquainted with washi and paper making and there is no need to go all that way at all.  Let’s just go to the library ad have a look around there.’  So.

Bunka no Mori Park.

The library at Bunka no Mori is a good place.  They have an abundance of magazines and a lovely periodical section.  My stomach was making disgusting squelching noises in the gardening section so I knew it was time to eat something.  We ate at the Tanto Cafe and I had a fairly stodgy katsudon and we were all fairly unimpressed with the food but it filled a hole, which is always nice.  Moving on to the Tokushima Prefectural Museum, the machine kindly supplied us with a ticket and the assitant kindly with brochures.  We walked towards the great slabs of fibreglass rock…

The World’s Oldest Known Rock.  Just shy of 4 billion years old.  3,960,000,000 years old.  Staring into it I begin to see small insects and realise that I am, in fact, looking at eternity.

“Even fossils in Japan are cute.”

Stare down.  Two fossils.

Little guy, stuffed.  Sad muffin eyes.

(Above) This intrigued me.  What is this? Tanukinoshokudai, you could find them around here, in Kamiyama it seems.  They look tasty and cute.  Little fungoid people who live in forest dirt.  I’ll find one of these soon.  I can feel it.  I’m sure they bring you luck.

And this (above), on Debajima island, a place I visited last summer with Adamu and the Shikokujira team to make a film.  We stumbled across the place above, (the swamp in the picture) looking for a creature that only lives in this swamp and four other places in the world.  We couldn’t see it then, but we were all raving from beer and sunburn, dehydration and mosquito bites.