Towering inferno

     

For those of you not here in Japan, the country is currently experiencing its annual heat-wave. This occurrence may be familiar to you as Summer. The heat I can pretty much put up with. The real killer has been this unrelenting humidity. It’s got me feeling nostalgic for the days when I worked at Hungry Jacks (Burger King) and could walk into the freezer for some sweet relief.

There is certainly no relief to be found at Fukuyama castle. The main tower of Fukuyama castle was rebuilt in 1966 in concrete, as was the fashion of the day, it is also non-air-conditioned. Housed within this massive concrete layer-cake are hundreds of historical items dutifully protected from damaging UV by the shuttered windows.

It seems the resulting sauna-like conditions are a massive turn-off for tourists; the one or two fans scattered on each level just aren’t cutting it. Installing some air-conditioning post haste would save the day (and possibly better maintain the exhibits) but it just isn’t that simple. This is a National Historic Site and the proposal will have to go through a committee before such issues can be resolved.

You know what? Maybe Autumn would be the ideal time for a visit. It looks like I’ll just have to postpone my trip for just a little while longer. No sweat.

*** edit: This post was based on this Asahi Shinbun article – http://mytown.asahi.com/areanews/hiroshima/OSK201009080135.html ***

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  • Toranosuke

    Well, you learn something new every day. I’d never heard of Hungry Jacks before. Educational.

    Those poor artifacts… I hope they’re at least doing something to control the humidity, or else it’ll be a field day for mold.

  • Anonymous

    Hungry Jacks was probably the last job I loved. Ahh, those were the days…

    I’m such a slack… person that I’ve only gotten as far as the Shinkansen platform to take photos of the castle and never actually entered. So, I really can’t comment on what steps have been taken to control the humidity.

    I edited the above post Toranosuke to include a (non-linked) link to the the newspaper article. Perhaps you can get better answers there.

  • http://jcastle-info.myopenid.com/ Eric

    Even when I stopped by last November I remember thinking it was pretty steamy, especially for that time of the year. I definitely wouldn’t be there in August! They had some decent exhibits, but for the size of the floors the contents were fairly sparse.