Thursday, November 22, 2007

Horses of Cape Toi

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, last Sunday my family and I took a drive down the coast of Miyazaki. Our ultimate destination was a Toinomisaki (Cape Toi), which is famous for the wild horses that graze there. Here are some pics of a few of the horses (click to enlarge):









6 comments:

  1. Now that I know what you mean by "death metal," I suppose I can see why you think these are "wild horses."

    For the record, they look pretty tame to me.

    Different upbringings, I would venture to guess.

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  2. Brendan,
    Hey Mr. Smarty-pants (!), I'm just using what other people have decided are the regular terms for the phenomena in question.
    As for the horses, I suppose they mean "wild" in the sense of "undomesticated" and free-roaming. You're right, though, they are pretty tame. But I grow weary of this semantic squabbling...

    Different upbringings...

    What, ours or the horses...?

    ;-)

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  3. a horse is a horse, of course of course, unless of course..

    I had no idea there were/are "wild" horses in Japan. Guess I didn't do enough research.

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  4. I love the mind of a horse. I grew up as a horseman, and horses exemplify courage, loyalty and fair play to me.

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  5. Kyklops:

    I'm glad you got that I was only teasing. I have been working for a couple of decades now to suppress my urge for semantic nit-picking (cf. different upbringing, again), and I now have the habit down to only letting the occasional joke escape.

    When I was rock-climbing in Nevada, there were signs posted all over the place to the effect of: "Beware of Wild Burros. They bite."

    Apparently, the herd formed from abandoned or escaped livestock from an old Army base. It was pretty funny to see them after getting brought up in a country that romanticized its wild horses. For a time, my climbing friends and I would end every cautionary statement with "they bite."

    Maybe you had to be there.

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  6. Taff,
    As far as I know the "wild" horses in Japan are limited to this one protected area (there's not really any "free range" in Japan).

    Daniel,
    I think it's safe to say that humans generally share a love of horses. I hope they like us, too...

    Brendan,
    "They bite" sounds like a good description of the current crop of Republicans in the US (nice "double" meaning, too!).

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