2007-08-10 - 6:58 p.m.
Remember when I said that Hachinohe has an odd feeling to it, as if the city is just barely managing to keep nature at bay? (Probably you do... I haven't been updating as much as I used to, and I imagine that my loyal readers wound up reading that post more than a couple of times.)
It turns out that I'm right. And I share the following story with you in celebration of my being right, an event that most everyone enjoys:
The winter of 1749 was, appearantly, a particularly nasty one, as the speculated result of copious volcanic activity in Iceland. Unfortunately for people of Hachinohe, in the years leading up to 1749 wild pigs had been marauding the farmer's fields, which helped to increase the number of wild pigs living in this area and also, it seems, the number of wild pigs in this area who'd developed a taste for human-cultivated crops.
Consequently, not only was the harvest of 1749 paltry, but most of it was eaten up by pigs, rather than people, and thousands starved to death as a result.
On the bright side though, we now have a fanatastic, shining new phrase to use when explaining to people who don't already know what an oxymoron is. The Pig Famine. How awesome? (Now, seriously, please nobody say jumbo shrimp ever, every again.)
