so cantonese has this famous ’inverted’ DOC right (where you can say ‘give a pen me’) and i JUST realised 湖南話 (Xiang) also has it??? wow now i’m mad! why haven’t i ever noticed it before!
To end the "Canal Contraptions" mini-series, here's a brief look at the Keage Incline on the Lake Biwa canal in Kyoto. Located near Nanzen-ji and its famous aqueducts, it's apparently a popular sakura spot, not that I'd know visiting in July...
Boats were loaded onto wagons at one end of the slope, and hauled by an electric engine up or down before being unloaded back into the water at the other end. Thinking about it just now it sounded rather ludicrous to me, but I was picturing long European-style barges, but the boats of Meiji period Japan were probably not that big, as a picture of the surviving wagon shows.
We didn't go down to the incline, it was just something the friends I was travelling with that day brought up between Nanzen-ji and our next destination. Something to go back for...