grammar note

Why do we get in a canoe, a taxi, or a car, but get on a bus, a ship, or a jet?

Who knows? A student asked me this once, and since then I’ve come up with a few possibilities.  

Perhaps we get in a canoe because once we are in it we pretty much fill it up, where as a ship has lots of room for other things.

Perhaps we get in a canoe and a car because we step into them from above.  It implies concealment within something, to be surrounded.   For example, If mom tells us to go to bed and we get ‘on our bed’ we’ll likely still get in trouble when she comes down the hall and sees us sitting or even laying on our bed.  We’re not actually ‘in bed’ until we are under the covers.  

By this logic, we get on a bus, a plane or a ship because we have to climb up onto them.  In the case of the ship, we walk up a gangplank, for a plane we use the terminal ramp, and for a bus, we climb up stairs.

More examples:  Huckleberry fin and Jim got on a raft and floated down the Mississippi River.  The raft was small, but it had no sides, and there was nothing to get ‘into,’ (except for the lean-to built on the raft, which is only part of the raft and not the raft itself.)

Callan Loves trains, especially kind Japanese people play peek-a-boo with him like this man did (for about ten minutes).

Callan loved having grandma and Grandpa Franklin to play with (and Joey and Melissa didn't mind the break either.

We couldn't have chosen a more perfect day for coming to Miyajima in February. On some of the back streets there was the tiniest amount of residual snow, but the sun was warm and the sky was clear.

As we approached Miyajima Island the ferry went out of it's way to pass along in front of the gate so we could get a good shot of it. The roundtrip train and ferry from Hiroshima station was 1140 yen (about 10 dollars american).

Melissa told me she is tired of boring pictures, so she decided to hug this stone lantern.

This latest version of the great red gate (it is actually orange) was built in 1875, but something similar to it has been 'floating' off the coast of Miyajima since the 12th century.

For three dollars each we were able to enter this shinto shrine called Itsukushima shrine. It is built on stilts and was founded in 593 A.D. Directly in Front of it, out in the water, is the big gate, and at low tide you can walk out to it. Behind is a very beautiful pagoda, painted orange to match the shrine. (As far as I have noticed, painted pagoda's like this are rare).

The great red gate in in Miyajima is supposed to be one of the three most picturesque sites in Japan.

At this shrine on a hill in Miyajima you can see Hiroshima Bay, Downtown Hiroshima, and The great Red Gate peaking through the trees. it was very bright and very cold.

Grandpa Franklin and I took some very steep little steps up the side of a hill and found this view of the bay in front of Itsukushima shrine and the great red gate.

This baby dear was attracted by some oranges we were eating on a break in this park in Miyajima.

Our trip to Miyajima included going to a shingon shrine where we found these little statues. This is the 'I'm sorry' statue and is one of several around this tree that represented a different virtue. One was the 'thank you' statue, one was the forgiveness statue, one was honesty, etc.

This tree is more than 1000 years old and has such large heavy branches that they must be supported by thick wooden posts.

Here is an example of some of the wood working done at these temples.

It's hard to get everyone to look at the camera at once, as shown here in these next to photographs.

On Friday we went to an all you can eat Japanese Barb-b-que restaurant with a grill right in the table that we cooked our meet in. They also had an acceptable salad bar, good japanese grub, and some decent desserts.

The first hundred fifty steps of the Konpirasan hike take you through dozens and dozens of little shops perched on either side of the ascending stairs. It doesn't really get pretty until the second 100 or so steps.

On Friday Night we drove to Takamatsu to see the big city from an observation tower on the thirtieth floor of an office building near takamatsu station. By the time we got to the top, Callan was out. This was the first of several odd-hour naps for our little trooper during Grandma and Grandpa Franklin's visit.

You can see Mom Franklin's head in the bottom left hand corner of this picture. She was counting steps to see how many she would have to do before she could rest again. We were all pretty sore after the trip (incidently this is about 40 of the 750 or so steps we climbed). You can see Grandpa Franklin at the top of the steps holding his coat and Callan and Joey off to the side.