Oya Stone by the Parking Lot
One summer day I visited the Oya History Museum in Utsunomiya Tochigi Prefecture.
The former Oya stone quarry has been opened as a vast underground space that stays cool even in summer, and the chill of that space was beyond anything I had imagined.
When I learned that Oya stone has long been valued as a building material because of its properties, I felt a small spark of curiosity even though I had little knowledge of or interest in rocks until then.
By the parking lot the rock face lay plainly exposed, and I could examine the Oya stone from up close.