A lot of the local trains that head out of Hiroshima Station on the JR Sanyo line that takes you past Miyajima terminate at Iwakuni. Iwakuni is famous for its picturesque Kintaikyo Bridge (I should really take some pics of it to post on Liketu), the US Marine base, and… wait for it…
Nine-holed lotus roots!
All lotus roots except those grown in Iwakuni are said to have a mere eight holes, but, as you can see in this photo, Iwakuni lotus roots boast NINE holes:
Source: https://kankou.iwakuni-city.net/itn/iwakuni-lotus-root
As that website explains, the Iwakuni lotus root is noted for,
its crunchy texture, the chewy viscosity of the starch that turns stringy when you bite, and its exceptionally good flavor.
And if you ever happen to visit Iwakuni, then “lotus root chips” (deep-fried slices of lotus root) would make an excellent, cheap, lightweight, and noteworthy souvenir.
But why all this talk of Iwakuni lotus roots?
Well, the tenth Iroha Karuta “kotowaza” (proverb) is all about the lotus, not necessarily the Iwakuni lotus, and, I admit, not so much about the root as the flower. It goes like this:
沼池にも蓮の華（ぬまいけにもはすのはな）
Numaike nimo hasu no hana
Which is to say,
Marshy pond even lotus of flower
In other words,
Even in a turbid pond the lotus blooms.
That is my considered translation. When I put ChatGPT to the test, it rendered it thus:
The Japanese kotowaza “numaike nimo hasu no hana” can be translated into English as: “Even in a mucky pond, the lotus blooms.”
Not bad at all, and I quite like that “mucky.” It reminds me of a good old English proverb, which was applied to the Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, back in the 1960s:
“Where there’s muck there’s brass.”
Harold Wilson was known as “Muckybrass” as he was from oop north where the rich folk made their money (brass) grovelling in the muck for coal, or, I should say, paying peanuts for other people to grovel in the muck for coal.
ChatGPT proved absolutely useless in helping me trace the origin of the “muckybrass” appelation to Harold Wilson, but Google pulled up a book review on Amazon which led me to the source, which was a cartoon strip in the Daily Mail newspaper, which was called “Flook by Trog.” The cartoon featured a Prime Minister character called “Mr Muckybrass” that looked a bit like Harold Wilson.
I must admit I quite like “Where there’s muck there’s brass” as a “dynamic equivalent” of our “lotus blooming on a muddy pond” proverb. For one thing, it turns on its head all the ChatGPT generated rot about how “beauty and goodness can arise even in unfavorable or difficult circumstances,” and makes those circumstances the fertile soil of profit and success.
Right, that’s it for today. Time to think about dinner. How about fried slices of Iwakuni lotus root, with all nine holes stuffed with minced meat?
Cheers!
David Hurley
#InspiredFocus
P. S. This blog post was originally posted on the Hive blockchain-based photo-sharing site https://liketu.com/@hirohurl
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