Takamatsu

Takamatsu was our next stop after Shodoshima. This is a big port city on the north east of Shikoku. I had booked us four nights here, thinking it would be a good base for day trips. Hindsight is 20/20 and we didn't need that long here and the day trips through the wind-y mountains were not worth it for one day. Alas! 

Colourful man-hole cover in Takamatsu

I think after the slower pace in Shodoshima, we were also ready for a bit more get up and go. Maybe I didn't research enough too. On top of that, after the super comfortable stay in our Shodoshima house, the AirBnB in Takamatsu was a little disappointing, which probably coloured our view of things too. We still "made the most of it". 

Anyway, we went to the top of Mt Yashima for some views and nature, which was fun. There was a temple there, which we walked around, and then a random art gallery too. The views were nice, though the day was a bit rainy. The girls saw lots of dangomushi, bugs that curl up into balls when they are scared, and the cicada were out in full force. So loud! 

Then we went down to Shikoku Village, which is an open air museum of old Japanese houses. It had a very cool vine bridge to walk over, which was stressful for the girls, but cool to do. 

The village had lots of displays of traditional style Japanese houses which were fascinating to see and was surrounded by beautiful forests at the base of the mountain. 

It also included another random art gallery and this interesting step/waterfall installation in one section. You could walk all the way through it, and the water was fascinating to see flowing over the different sections. So noisy though! 

This second water feature was much more traditional style and peacefully surrounded by nature. 

After that, we took a drive out to see the Naruto Whirlpools off the coast of Tokushima Prefecture. These are naturally occurring whirlpools that happen because the ocean on either side of the coast are flowing in opposite directions and crashing on rocks and what not. We walked out on that huge bridge. The top is for cars, and underneath is an enclosed walkway for spectators. 

The bridge was open at the top with huge glass windows so you could look out. It was a bit tricky to see things as you got further along because the steel of the actual bridge could get in the way. Being able to see straight down to the water below was pretty incredible. We watched the waves crash and turn and make whirlpools all over the place. 

You could also be out on the water viewing the whirlpools from a boat, which we could see on the water as well. I don't know if the view would be better though, that close up. It was inconceivable to me, just how the boat drivers managed to get so close and then pull away before disaster. Especially when we could see the boat tilting when all the passengers crowded over to one side to see the whirlpools. The day had turned rainy and the wind out on the peninsular was so strong, so we were happy to jump back into the car and drive home again. 

The next day we went to visit the gardens at Takamatsu, the Ritsurin Gardens. Compared with Okayama, these were beautiful! I don't know if it was just because there was more water features, or different nature to view, but we loved these gardens. 

When we got there, Rachel picked up a stamp collection sheet at the front desk. Just like at Okayama castle, she had to wander around to different locations getting the stamps. I think that would be have been enough for her, but you could also hand it in at the end for a prize. As soon as she picked it up, Rachel studied the map and was ready to go. 

She and Sophie ended up planning our route and leading us around the gardens. Maybe we liked it more because the girls were actually on board with being there, while in Okayama, they were ready to leave from the moment we entered. I don't know, but we were having so much fun we let them get some fish food for the koi too. 

What was less fun was when on the way to our final stamp collection point, the girls got a little too far ahead and we lost them around a bend. Not 100% sure which way they had gone, Steve and I split up to look for them. We were in no way worried about finding them, or their general safety, but it was a hot day, and I didn't want to end our lovely morning with a stressful search and rescue. 

So I just asked everyone I saw if they had seen the girls and eventually we tracked them down. They said that someone at a shop had talked to them in Japanese but they didn't quite understand, but the tourist I had asked from Hong Kong had stopped them and told them which way we had gone. We did spend time going over the "What to do when lost" plans and walked back to the shops I had stopped in at to say thanks and that we found them. 

We went down to the main shopping street and enjoyed some delicious udon for lunch. This is what Takamatsu is famous for and it was indeed amazing. Steve then went off to the doctors to get what we hoped was a final x-ray on his hand. The girls and I wandered around and over to a local park where there were summer festival stalls set up. 

The rest of that day and the next were very meh to be honest. We had pretty much exhausted the things we wanted to do in Takamatsu itself, the heat was not fun and the news of Steve's hand not being healed just made us all want to cry. Well, mostly me. We decided to take it easy, played some DnD with the girls and walked out to see the fireworks over the water for our final night. 

I was really glad we got to see another fireworks festival. I had two organised in Tokyo, but Steve came back from Fuji-san on the day of the first one, so we didn't go then, and the second one was the day Rachel came home from school camp, so she was wrecked. We did end up going, but between the heat, crowds and exhausted Rachel, we didn't stay long. In Takamatsu, our AirBnb was right near the water, so we just had a short walk to the beach, got a great spot to view the fireworks and had a fantastic time. It was a really nice way to end what had been a bit of an up and down four days. 

Shodoshima

Hope you are all enjoying following along the travel adventure part of our six month stay in Japan. After leaving Tokyo where we stayed for four months, we went to Nagoya and then Okayama. Each of those places was a three night stop, but our next was four nights. Our destination was Shodoshima, which is an island off the coast of Shikoku. 

Shikoku is the smallest of Japan's four main islands. It's a bit hard to describe the islands, because Shodoshima is so small it doesn't show up on a map of Japan, but when it comes to the islands off the coast of Takamatsu it's one of the bigger ones. Even in the map above, there are so so many tiny islands that are not there! We were looking forward to it so much because we'd booked a place right near the sea and after the somewhat uncomfortable experience in the smokey hotel in Okayama, we were ready for some fresh sea air. 

Shodoshima did not disappoint. 

We had to get their via a ferry, honestly with no real idea about how to do that with a car, but we loaded up as quick as we could out of Okayama and did our best to make the 10:10 ferry. If we missed it, we missed it. We pulled into the parking lot at exactly 10:10 as the ferry crew were putting the chain across to wrap up boarding. Seeing us though, they frantically waved us over and asked if we wanted to ride. I was so happy for helpful Japanese people right then, since the next ferry wasn't until 11:20. 

I leapt out of the car to sort out tickets and Steve drove the car on. The staff in the ticket booth saw us coming and did all the button pushing for me, which made the ticket purchase so quick. When we had been driving in, we had honestly resigned ourselves to having to do the hour wait, but suddenly, everything was sorted and we were on our way! 

Being our first time riding a ferry with a car, we weren't sure what was ok to do, so we stayed in the car for a bit listening to an audio book and snacking before we got out to stretch our legs and look around. So glad we did, because the view of the ocean and islands was pretty magical. 

The ferry ride was about an hour and a half, so we were soon off the boat and onto the island. Given that we had some time to kill before we could check into our place, our first stop was a lookout that was nearby to the ferry terminal. I think Steve and the girls would have been happy with a different lookout, but I think it was worth the stress. The road up was a very windy, one lane with no gutter edges to offer support. Steve was driving with one hand, since he was still sporting his broken hand bandage at this stage too. 

When we got to the parking area, I asked the lady at the tiny refreshment stand which way to go. She very kindly told me straight up, 380 stairs and then a scramble over the rocks to get to the top. Apparently it was only a ten or fifteen min walk. It was 11:30 by this stage, so pretty peak heat, but I was confident we could manage it. 

The trip up was painful but short and the views! Oh my goodness. The islands and the ocean were just stunning. So different from the Japan we had experienced in all the big cities so far. Tokyo, Nagoya and Okayama - nothing was like this. Despite the heat, the beauty was undeniable. We tracked back down the mountain and had a cool drink from the refreshment stand. Steve tried his best to cool his bandaged hand off, but it was pretty uncomfortable for him. 

Then we went off to find some lunch. Ended up at a little place with gyoza and somen noodles. We ordered three types of gyoza: seafood, olive oil and wild boar. Pretty delicious. We had noticed all the olive trees on the island as we had been driving through. It was a bit nuts to see them in Japan; something so iconically Mediterranean. 

Then we found a beach for a swim. This was the "Olive Beach". I can't say much for the actual beach sand, Australia is better there, but the ocean was so cool and just amazing to be in. Again, we all felt sorry for Steve who only went in up to his knees before retreating into the shade. The girls and I got to experience the bliss of the cool water on the hot day. 

Such perfection. We were pretty worried about sunburn, especially for our pale daughters, so we only stayed an hour or so before getting out of the water. 

We went to a grocery store for supplies and then on to our place for the next four days. This house ended up being the biggest one that we would stay in for Japan. It was a beautiful old Japanese house that had been renovated. The kitchen sink stood at a modern height and we had a table and chairs to eat at. There was also a small couch in the living room as well as huge tatami rooms to sleep in. I loved that it came with a backyard and the hosts had a composting system for us to use too. 

The owners ran a small coffee shop on the street in front of the house and lived close by. We saw them during our stay and even met the owners parents when they were around in the evenings. The whole community vibe of Shodoshima was beautiful. Everyone greeted us as we walked along the water front, which was so different to the cities where there is much more "avoid eye contact" going on. 

We were trying to take it a bit easy here, so we didn't do a lot some days. The first day was a bit rainy anyway, but we went out to an "Angel Walk" in the afternoon. 

This is when the tide goes down and you are able to walk the sandbar connecting the main island to other smaller islands. It was pretty fun to do this walk in the cooler evening. Steve skimmed rocks on the water, and Rachel enjoyed looking at all the sea creatures. Lots of crabs, snails and fish in the water. We also saw a stack of jelly fish (just like in Ponyo!) 

The water was again beautiful to be in. 

After this we had some more grocery shopping to do. As we drove over this bridge to get to the shops, I noticed the sign said "World's Narrowest Strait". Steve and Rachel went back to get a photo. There were a number of places where if the tide was high, the water would cut off one side from another, so Shodoshima seems to be a few islands that are connected by bridges more than just one island. 

The days are a bit of a blur, since we enjoyed a few home days, or broke up days with mornings at home and arvo out, or vice versa. We explored the Olive centre of Shodoshima more and had this olive flavoured soft serve. Strangely good!

And we took a cable car to the top of one of the mountain ranges for this view. A bit cloudier than when we first arrived, but still beautiful. It was amazing to see beach and ocean and then huge mountains. I wish we had done more walks in the mountains, but the days were still pretty hot and Steve couldn't do anything that might result in him falling and needing to save himself with a broken hand. Better to be safe. 

At the top of the mountains we had maple flavoured ice cream. This was Rachel's favourite. Possibly Sophie's too. 

I went for a mountain walk near where we lived one evening, slightly traumatised by a less than well maintained trail that had me turning around because it was so over grown it was un-walk-able, and then the subsequent trails being inaccurately represented on both Google Maps and Pokemon Go. I did consider, more than once, that I might be the next Australian to make the news because I've gotten lost and needed a chopper rescue, or worse, fallen right off the mountain and died. I'm not sure the view was worth it that day, but I did feel like I had achieved something by putting my joggers on and giving it a go. 

The girls recorded their Soran Bushi dance at the beach in front of our house one evening. I was so proud of them being brave enough to do it as locals were walking their dogs along the water front. The cafe that the owners of our AirBnB ran had kakigoori (shaved ice), which we enjoyed one afternoon. This was hands down the best we had in Japan. It was enormous and had real fruit on it, rather than just flavoured syrup. Amazing. 

There was a soy sauce factory museum on the other side of the island, so we went out for a walk through there too. It was super interesting to learn about the soy sauce making process (it takes over a year because of fermentation and what not) and also compare traditional to modern production. The girls were not impressed at us dragging them here, but Steve and I had a good time. Rachel joined me for the dress up photo shoot at the end where we pretended to be hard working soy sauce factory employees. 

Outside afterwards we were brave enough to try the soy sauce flavoured ice cream. Kind of caramel-y, like when people add miso to brownies. 

That evening was our last day, so we had an extended play in the water at the beach. Rachel caught all manner of animals, including this fish. Sophie sketched some landscapes of the mountains and ocean. 

I made dinner and brought it out for us to enjoy while the sun set. We could not have been more thankful for this time. 

After the girls were in bed, I was packing up things in the living room and noticed the bookshelf had some picture books of fish, so I pulled them off the shelf to see if I could find out what kind of fish Rachel had caught earlier that day. Turns out she caught a poisonous puffer fish. Ops! Is it bad parenting that I didn't consider the wildlife could be poisonous or that I encouraged her to try to catch the fish in the first place? Both probably. 

Anyway, I had a mild panic and Steve asked Gemini how worried we should be. Gemini told us to seek immediate medical attention, but calmed down slightly when we told it that the fish was not ingested. It's a funny story now, but I did check on Rachel early the next morning to make sure she didn't die in her sleep from my neglect. 

Whew. We left Shodoshima with the same amount of daughters that we arrived with. I can 100% see us returning to Shodoshima one day. It was such a beautiful little getaway place and I hope other people can enjoy it as much as we did. 

Okayama

I realised that I talk a lot about where we are and if you aren't familiar with Japan, it can be a little confusing, so here is a rough map. We started our time in Tokyo and then went down/west to Nagoya (about three hours on the shinkansen). You can see Japan has four main islands that I've labeled too, which will make more sense when I talk about where we go after Okayama. 

Next stop on our journey was Okayama, which is to the west of Nagoya. The shinkansen only took an hour and a half to get here. This is a largish port city along the south coast of Japan's main island (Honshu). 

I love traveling via shinkansen especially because you can get great lunches to eat on them from the station before you go. I was sorely tempted by these kids ones that come in reusable shinkansen style lunch boxes. 

After leaving Tokyo, we had noticed a significant difference in the demographic of tourists. Tokyo had been full of every kind of person; German, French, Indian, Aussie, American, etc. Nagoya had a stack load of Chinese tourists along with the European mix. Coming to Okayama was different again; we only saw very few foreign tourists here. It was still a big city though, so easy to get lost in. Strangely, even though the tourist numbers were fewer, the local department store could have been Australian there was so much English around. Every shop had an English name, from the typical ones like Subway and Starbucks to other random ones like Strawberryholic and Wego. 

Our first stop on day one was to visit Okayama Castle and the gardens there. We wandered through the gardens first, trying to do outside things before the day heated up too much and we needed to retreat to aircon. The gardens were nice enough, but I wouldn't actually rate them too highly (even though they are on some "Top Ten Gardens in Japan" list). 

There were actually a number of light displays set up for illumination in the evening, so maybe it would have been better to come back then. Oh well! We had fun wandering around the various parts and enjoying the views. 

Okayama is famous for its fruit, so I picked up this peach mochi to enjoy there and it was delicious. Then we went into the grounds of Okayama castle. No idea why these enormous fish were on display, but it was likely some festival had just happened. 

The castle was pretty fun because they had a Pokemon event running with lots of cutout Pokemon displayed. Rachel picked up a sheet at the gate that she filled out as we visited each one. You had to write in the names of the Pokemon you found and then use certain letters of each name to answer a question. At the end, you handed in your sheet and got a sticker for your troubles. 

The castle looked cool from the outside, and different to other castles we had seen (like Himeji Castle last year), because the outside was panels of wood painted the dark colour. The castle (and the outer buildings) had been completely destroyed in 1945 but the main building had been rebuilt. They had a model of what it all would have looked like pre-destruction, and it was cool to see all the different buildings that would have filled the now open spaces. 

Inside was five floors of museum that you could take your time walking through. They had a number of displays that were interactive, like this box (below) used for carrying nobles around. There was some support for English (QR codes that you could scan), but not on every item, so it was a little harder to engage when you couldn't read what it was all about. 

And the view from the top was pretty good too. Okayama castle seems to sport a very similar gold fish to Nagoya. 

The air-conditioning of the castle was nice, when we went back outside it was heat city again. So we stopped in to do an hour of karaoke on our way home. Lots of fun singing in the cool aircon. If you are ever in Japan in the summer, I can recommend karaoke as a way to avoid the heat. 

The next day we went to Kurashiki, which was about twenty minutes from Okayama on the train. Kurashiki is an area known for its traditional indigo dying, and when Japan became obsessed with jeans, it was a big production base. As a result, there are all sorts of denim shops clustered together in Denim Street. You can also get a blue soft serve "denim" ice cream. Which we did. 

It tasted mostly of blue Powerade, but was a cool snack on another hot-ish day. I was tempted by the denim, but didn't buy any, still thinking about how heavy our bags were and how far we still had to go with them. We wandered around the area, enjoying the smaller town vibes and old school streets of low Japanese style houses with tiled roofs. 

Okayama is where the story of Momotaro, or the Peach Boy, was originally from, so there was loads of Momotaro things all around too. We went into a Momotaro museum, I was hoping to get pictures and different versions of the story for classroom resources. What it was instead was an optical illusion museum with a Momotaro theme. 

A little strange, but the girls and Steve had lots of fun with all the illusions and tricks. We picked up some Momotaro themed kibidango which is a rice ball sweet similar to mochi that the area is known for. These were delicious and I wished we had more of them. Then we headed back to our hotel in Okayama for a chilled afternoon of D&D playing. 

To be honest, our accomodation here was not to best. It was a pretty standard business hotel, but at one stage must have been fine for people to smoke in. I guess maybe you still can smoke in some of the rooms, because the cigarette smell was quite strong. Steve and I tuned it out pretty quickly, but the girls are so not used to any kind of smoke, and they made their discomfort very clear. 

Anyway, we managed to survive another night there. Steve and I went and picked up a hire car in the morning for our next adventure, which gave us a rather delightful break from carrying all the bags around on trains. Stay tuned! 

Nagoya

When we left Tokyo back at the end of July, Steve was taking some time off and we had a two and a bit week chunk of travel planned. Our first stop on the journey was Nagoya. Steve had never been, and there were lots of fun things to do there, including Legoland. 

Given that we hadn't gone to any theme parks in Tokyo (not even Disney!), we felt it was time we did something a little fun with the girls. Legoland was actually a delight, even though it is designed for younger children and the weather was a whopping 40 degrees. 

The huge Lego sculptures all around the place as well as the giant sized Lego characters were just so much fun to see and marvel at. They also had a whole area where there were displays of scale models of various things made in Lego. I took loads of photos of so many of them, hopefully to use in my classroom. 

Lego themed kids lunch that I had. The brick shaped potato chips were nothing to write home about (I gave mine to Rachel), but everything else was pretty tasty. We had done some brief research before we went and noticed there were two water play sections that would be good to cool off in. To enter, you needed to book a time slot. We missed all of the morning slots, but managed to get a 3:30 slot for one area and a 4:20 time for another. I was booking at the same time as Steve so we got a couple of extra times later on (after 5) too. 

Cooling off in the water was so good, even for Steve who could really only stand up to his knees on the edge, not wanting to venture too far in just in case someone bumped his hand. The girls had fun in the first play area which was a splash pad with some slides and lots of things that dumped water on you or squirted water out. 

The second water play area was a huge inflatable maze area with jumping castle vibes, but because Japan have a completely different approach to water safety, the kids were only allowed to walk through it. They weren't allowed to sit in the water, or jump on the inflatable things. And to go up and down a slide, they needed to wait in line at the bottom for the people in front to go up and over and clear out before the next person was even allowed up. Our girls were not amused. 

We ended up leaving that area so they could go on the dragon roller coaster that they had found fun a bunch of times. It had been long and hot, but a really great way to kick off the holidays. 

The next day we started a bit slower and then found our way to a shopping street celebrating tanabata. Even though the star festival is usually celebrated in July (7th of the 7th), some areas celebrate in the first week of August. This street had heaps of decorations hanging from the roof, including contributions of giant character displays. These were made by local businesses or schools and were part of an annual competition. 

We had some shaved ice to cool off as we wandered down the street. Steve wanted to try some local green tea beer, but they didn't have it in a can to take home.

This sumo was one of the funnier things hanging from the roof. There was onigiri, pandas, fuji-san and Ghibli characters too. 

We left this fun street to go find a spot at the World Cosplay Summit. This happens every year in Nagoya and I'm only sad we weren't able to figure out more about the event before we got there. There was lots of stuff happening in various venues, but information was sketchy. We managed to narrow it down to there being a cosplay parade through the main shopping street at Ozu, so we just went there and hoped for the best. 

It would have been good to be an hour earlier and on the other side, because then we would have seen the actual contestants and winners of the Cosplay competition, but as it was, we got a pretty good spot in the crowd lining the street and saw the parade of anyone who wanted to walk in their costume. It was pretty awesome to see so many people dressed up. Such a huge variety of costumes and characters walking the streets, each group separated by a truck/float with music and dancers. Vibes were good and we were happy to be there. 

The last morning, in Nagoya, Steve and I got up early and took a quick train ride out to try to see the castle. Unfortunately it's well hidden behind the walls and didn't open till 9. So we went to see the Nagoya sign and the Oasis building instead. 

That Oasis building has water in the roof helping to keep the open space underneath cool. It was pretty impressive to see. Then we went back and packed up all the luggage again. We had found when we left Tokyo, even though we didn't have a particular shinkansen booked, we did rush a bit trying to get to the station. I think we thought if we make the time carrying the luggage shorter it will be easier. Not true. We were all very sore from lugging everything at a fast pace (well, except Steve, but that's because he has BJJ muscle that the rest of us are lacking). 

Giant fish with teeth.
These are everywhere in Nagoya because they are on the roof of the castle. 

So we went slower and it was better. Caught the shinkansen to Okayama and that is where the next part of our journey is.