Closer to Home

 The heat has been overwhelming, typhoons roll in and out, COVID 19 is on the rise... so I've been exploring closer to home.

A walk to Hashirimizu beach park is pretty close to home. It's also a good place to drink some delicious natural spring water; it's what this place is famous for. 

Then continuing down the road and over the hill we arrived at the...

The Hashirimizu Lower Gun Battery Site! I've lived in Yokosuka for over 30 years and I did not know this place existed. You can't see it from the road, it's hidden by trees.

The site is also surrounded by a fence and a locked gate that is only open on the weekends and holidays. This may not look very exciting but many years ago there was a large gun mounted here to protect the entrance to Tokyo bay. 

All that's left now are the rusty old studs used to bolt the gun to the ground.

We continued to explore.

Another gun mount site with a better view of the ocean.

The caretaker of this site told us that we were lucky to visit when we did because they had just mowed down all the weeds and grass. Emi is looking at a map that shows where all the guns for protecting the bay entrance were located.

There were a lot of gun sites! Many are completely gone now but some are maintained as historical sites.

As we walked around we found a few more gun mount sites.

This is the entrance to one of the projectile magazines.

After leaving the Hashirimizu Lower Gun Battery Site we crossed the street and visited a small hillside shrine that had this nice viewpoint of the ocean. 

Back down the hill and short walk down the road and we arrived at the Kannonzaki seaside promenade.

As I was taking this picture my wife pointed out to me that there was a large hornets nest covered with busy hornets right in front of me nestled in-between the palm leave branches.  We moved away quickly!

Passing by a sunbather on the board walk.

The promenade leads us to the Kannonzaki Beach Park. 

It's not to busy today.

Some skinny guy pumping air into an inflatable paddleboard. These can be rented thus allowing people to paddle out to sea and get run over by a ship entering the bay! Just kidding 😊

Last shot of the day: We were a bit exhausted by our long adventurous walk and instead of walking back home we caught this bus instead. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Mike

Bonus shots!