Pretty Sewage

Manhole covers came up in an earlier post. One may notice that none of the images are mine; I merely linked to other people’s images on the net. Since I was reminded that I have few images for someone who is supposed to be a member of a national photo society, I am trying to insert more visual elements into my writing.

Sunday, a friend and I took a trip to Mino city (美濃市) in Gifu prefecture (岐阜県); a city known for its long history of paper making. When I say ‘long’, that means “more than 1300 years”. I’ll post more about paper soon.

We had a misadventure which landed us at the hospital for a couple hours. Um, that sounds bad… we got on the wrong bus and the easiest way to get back on track was to ride to the end of the line and transfer to another bus. The terminus was the hospital and the next bus was nearly two hours later. We went hunting for food and walked over this manhole on the way. I remembered to snap a photo. (Now, I suppose I should try to remember to snap photos of the ones here, which I tread on everyday.)

After studying the photo at home for a day, the meaning of the logo came to me. Notice the image that looks like three hexagons? The hexagons are stylized forms of the character ‘no’ (の) and the number three is often represented by the sound ‘mi’, so the three hexagons are ‘mi-no’. This is apparently the city logo for Mino city.