After so many weeks of silence, here's another entry.
The main reason I have been silent for the last few weeks is because I traveled to Washington for the holidays, which was a nice break from Japan and Japanese hospitality and gave me chance to see the majority of people who read this blog. As soon as I returned I had a round of short papers and final exams, which interestingly were all given in class, instead of during the normal final exam period which Japanese students are allowed. It makes it a lot harder to take them seriously when we have to turn in the homework from the night before on the concepts we learned the day before, immediately prior to taking the final exam for the course. Sometimes I’m shocked that UBC awards credit for any of this.
After that fun week was over, went out for all night karaoke, had a slightly busier weekend than I expected, but was able to meet some of my host sisters friends. It was a refreshing change of pace from being with either senior citizens or university students all the time, and a relief to be able to confirm that not all Japanese families are hoarders.
(All links for photos and videos are posted at the bottom because I'm too lazy to fight with Blogger and get them put mixed in with the text.)
On Monday morning I left with Sunny and Isaac, two friends from school who represent South Korea and Australia/Hong Kong respectively, to travel around the region a little bit. We started by meeting on the platform in Osaka to head for the city of Kurashiki in Okayama Prefecture. Due to heavy snow basically everywhere outside the Seto region, many of the long distance trains were running late, so we got on a late train which arrived in the station at the time we intended to leave on the other train.
One thing about riding a late train in Japan is that they constantly apologize for being late. Thus we had tuned out the announcements by the time we arrived in a small city somewhere between Kobe and Himeji and were told by another passenger who took pity on us that this was the last stop.
So we waited around in the cold for a long time for another train which would take to our original transfer point. It was also late, thanks to the weather in other parts of Japan. We finally got on that train and arrived in Himeji. We asked a conductor which was the next train for Okayama and he told it was the next one. He didn’t mention that to avoid going down an extremely slow rural line we would need to change a few stations ahead, but expectations of my Japanese ability are usually quite low, so he may not have wanted to confuse me. In the future asking more questions and more specific questions would probably be better.
We didn’t figure out that we were heading off the main routes until it was too late and Sunny took the initiative and asked some nice older women who were in the same car as us. When we arrived at the station we asked the conductor for the local line before we got on. He explained that we would need to transfer at Okayama for our destination. Several stops later, at a long stop in Hinase he gave us a little piece of paper where he had written out exactly which trains we needed to take, what times, and what lines they were on. By that point, we were okay and the remaining leg was quite simple, but it made our lives less stressful and was extremely nice of him.
It was strange for me to transfer in Okayama and somewhat nostalgic. I had been through that station so many times before but had forgotten what it looked like until just before we arrived. We successfully transferred and made our way to Kurashiki, which was cold.
We checked into our hotel and ate lunch at a little restaurant which was empty. Most likely it was empty because on Monday everything is closed in a tourist town. I was worried that we wouldn’t have enough to do with all the museums being closed, but luckily the shops were open and the historic district was large enough to keep us occupied until it got dark. Interestingly, there was a Turkish man who had an extremely nice store in one of the old Tokugawa era merchant buildings. He spoke English so we talked for a few moments and he worked on selling me some phone charms in a manner which probably would frighten many of your typical Japanese consumers. Just very direct and what you would expect of someone trying to make a sale in most countries.
That evening we had the local specialty of bukkake udon for dinner, followed by some yakitori at another shop. Then we watched Japanese television, which on that night had a video clip show, which is essentially watching a bunch of YouTube clips with commentary from Japanese comedians. (These clips so often come from the US and so often are crazy car chases, stupid motorsports stunts, and bank robberies. No wonder many Asians are terrified of the US. Luckily, that night there was also a bank robbery involving a pitchfork in Australia.) This was followed by a competition between a man who owns a magnet company and made an extremely powerful magnet, and a man who owns a super glue company. The glued the magnets together to see if the magnets were strong enough to break the glue, or if the glue was strong enough to make the magnets stay together. After lots of epic music stolen from a variety of films and too many commercial breaks the glue won.
The next morning we bought some bento from a convenience store and went to the historic district and the canals to eat. There weren’t many people around, but the ones who were there stared at us. There was also a tour group from Europe, my guess is France. We wandered for a while after that and took lots of pictures of the gardens inside the museum grounds, which were free. Then we headed to the station, bought tickets to Takamatsu, and boarded the train.
We changed at Okayama for the Marine Liner, which runs directly from Okayama to Takamatsu. Takamatsu is on another island with a pretty good sized chunk of ocean in between, so the train runs across the Seto O-hashi (literally the Seto Big Bridge). This bridge is around 14 kilometers long, hops from island to island, and is a mixture of suspension and other types of bridge. I took a video of the majority of the crossing, which I will post at the bottom of this page. With great weather like we had it is probably one of the most amazing stretches of train track in the world and I would be willing to travel out there just to ride over it again. (Which incidentally, you can do for very cheap by buying a cheap ticket, and then not leaving the JR network until you arrive back home or at the next station over from where you started.)
Takamatsu is a surprisingly attractive city, but maybe that’s just in comparison to Okayama. The station and building around the station are quite new. It also has an amazing bike rental system which only costs ￥100 for 24 hours of use. Needless to say, we rented bikes and used them to get around the city.
After dropping our bags off and having the local Sanuki Udon for lunch, our first destination was the lighthouse in the harbor. The travel down the long pier to the lighthouse appears to be a popular place for joggers. (Incidentally, a park in Tokyo is having problems with too many joggers, with as many as 4000 people coming out for a run on weekday mornings between 6am and 9 am.) We took some pictures there and then headed for Ritsurin Koen. In the winter on a Tuesday afternoon there were probably only ten people in the whole park which made for a nice experience. It was quite large and very well kept, as is expected in Japanese gardens. The light wasn’t the greatest, but photos can be found in the album link at the bottom of the page.
After more udon for dinner, we went back to the lighthouse, turned in our bikes, and looked for a way to the top of the Takamatsu Symbol Building. It is a relatively new skyscraper complex with offices and a shopping center. The top floors housed several pricey restaurants. Luckily, the restaurants were still open which meant the elevator was still open. As there were several restaurants at the top they had a lobby area where we could admire the view and take some photos, all without having to pay a single yen.
With an early start, we headed for Naruto a town which is famous for its whirlpools in the narrows outside town and shares its name with a popular Ninja who wears and orange jumpsuit. The town itself was horribly depressing, but the bridge was amazing.
A visitor center has been built in order to collect your 500 yen and pipe either epic music or music that sounds like it’s from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker depending on where you are on the bridge. There was an extremely excited English speaking staff member who rushed up to me as soon as I walked in the door to give me a free postcard and asking where I was from, completely ignoring my friends until they quite plainly stated that they wanted some free stuff too. It was explained that we were all foreign, and because we were together he jumped to the conclusion that we were all American and they managed to get their free postcard and origami with an explanation in English. This demonstrates the usual attitude towards foreigners: white people are much more interesting than other types of foreigners.
The whirlpools were kind of interesting, but much more effervescent than the promotional materials suggest. You have to watch for the whirlpools to form, and then they usually were around for only a few seconds before disappearing. It was, however, and fascinating experience to be able to walk all the way out under a suspension bridge and be able to feel the structure vibrate with the traffic and the wind. It also made for an excellent place to look at all manner of ships which passed under through the narrows on their way towards the Pacific Ocean or the ports to the south of Osaka.
Before heading back towards the bus stop, we visited the museum with information about the whirlpools and the area. It had quite a bit of information on the construction of the bridge and bridges in general as well.
We caught a local bus back to the high way bus stop, which was located underneath the expressway. After buying a ticket we took a small tram up to the side of the highway, where a specific expressway bus stop had been constructed. We managed to get the correct bus back to Sannomiya, in Kobe. This being our last evening together as a group, we wandered Kobe for a little while and had cheap Gyu-don near Motomachi station. Then we went to the third floor of a coffee shop and sat in the cigarette smoke for a bit to make sure we got home after our host families had finished dinner. After a short walk to the Hankyu station, we took the express train towards Osaka.
It was a really fun trip, but by the end I was exhausted. Now I just have to figure out how to fill the rest of my vacation until school starts up again for a while in February.
The photos from this trip are posted here.
And lastly, a short video of the Seto Bridge, some of Rural Shikoku, and the Naruto Whirlpools.
