Sunday, October 18, 2015

Amazing Tunnels!


When the airplane landed in Japan we were surrounded by level ground, big cities, and beyond that farms and some rolling hills.  Not far away are the mountains.  We were assigned a car from the mission and pay a monthly rental fee which is reasonable.  We drove our car from Fukuoka to our assigned city of Kagoshima, four hours away.  There were a lot of hills and mountains between the two cities.  There are many tunnels through these mountains and hills.  We’ve only gone to Fukuoka a few times.  The last time we made the trip I decided to count the tunnels.  I counted approximately 25 tunnels.  We went through 24 of them in about 30 minutes.  They are various lengths.  Some are very short and some are surprisingly long.  The longest one is about 6 kilometers, which is 3.7 miles.  Some have many lights and feel bright, and some have only a few, and some have only a third or fourth of the lights turned on and feel dark.  What an engineering miracle to have these tunnels.  Without them we would be driving up over the mountains or around them.  Either way it would take many more hours to drive.  The longer tunnels have large ceiling fans circulating the air, and escape exits in case of an emergency like an earthquake.  We are always glad when we see the light at the end of the tunnel.  It reminds me of a talk from our recent General Conference, “Choose the Light” by Elder Vern P. Stanfill. He said “There is no darkness so dense, so menacing, or so difficult that it cannot be overcome by light.”
 ( https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/10/choose-the-light?lang=eng  or Japanese https://www.lds.org/general-conference/watch/2015/10?lang=jpn&vid=4529950234001&cid=9  )

 
Some of the tunnels have interesting pictures engraved, like this one of the volcano.

 
you can see two tunnel entrances.  We drive on the left in Japan.

 
One of the interesting tunnels.

 
This is one of the long 6 kilometer tunnels.

 
You can see variations in tunnel wall tile colors. 

 
This photo is not clear, but one tunnel ends and in a few feet a second tunnel begins.

 
This was one of the bright tunnels.

 
This was also one if the bright newer tunnels.

 
Another view of Sakurajima.  A cloudy sunrise with our awesome volcano.

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