roganjosh

So, in my rush to describe the madness of the Hadaka Matsuri I missed out a couple of stops I made on the way. After Hiroshima I spent two nights on the island Shikoku, firstly in Matsuyama and secondly in Takamatsu. Matsuyama is apparently famous for being mentioned in a book about turn of the century Japan called Botchan, and according to the tourist information the city is attempting to be a living museum to the age in which the story is set. This involves having trams that look like steam trains, restoring lots of historic buildings and making a big deal about Dogo Onsen - the oldest onsen in Japan. A nice little city to visit, but I think that having people standing around in period costumes so you can have your picture taken with them is taking things a bit far. Cool trains though, and the Dogo brewery beer is excellent!

On the way from Matsuyama to Takamatsu I decided to hope off the train in Saijo, home of the Asahi brewery in the area. My guidebook had told me you needed to phone in advance for the tour, but since I was only planning on stopping at the beer garden for lunch I didn’t bother. Arriving at the train station though I realised that Saijo isn’t much of a tourist destination - no tourist information, no signs in English, nothing that hinted at how to find the brewery. I was feeling a bit stumped until an Asahi logo-ed minibus showed up and the driver and I had a very tortured conversation in Japanese. The upshot was that he phoned the brewery to book me in for the tour, but I was told that there were no English guides available. I figured following a Japanese tour group around would be okay so long as I made it to the beer tasting at the end, so I went along with the plan and the minibus took me to the brewery where I signed in. By not phoning ahead I had obviously upset the system a little, but when I arrived I was told that one of the receptionists was going to show me the brewery, and so I got my own personal tour! Unfortunately all the machinery was closed for cleaning that day, so there wasn’t much to see, but once I got to the otherwise empty beer tasting room there was a little table set up with my name and a union jack on it! I got to try three of the different Asahi beers and was even giving some snacks to nibble on. All this for the grand total of - nothing! They didn’t charge me a penny! Needless to say I’ve been drinking as much Asahi as possible to recompense them.

Takamatsu was a fairly unpromising city. The only accomodation I could get was a business hotel near the railway line. I nearly left the city straight away the next morning to get to Okayama early, but train schedules were a bit erratic. Just as well they were though because I would have missed out on visiting Ritsurin Park if I had skipped out early. Apparently Ritsurin Park isn’t one of “top three” Japanese gardens but if that’s the case then the others must be very, very good! Japanese gardens are designed to reveal different views as you walk around them and Risturin is full of lakes, herons, red bridges, pine trees, plum trees - pretty much every view of japan that’s ever been painted onto a plate can be found around some corner or other. Nice way to spend a sunny morning, before it starts to snow on the way back to the train.

Okayama was the naked man festival, but also a city with another nice castle and a pleasant place to stay. After Okayama I managed a lunctime stop over in Himeji to see Japan’s most famous castle, but I’d reached castle overload at that point and wasn’t too impressed, and then carried on to Kyoto! Didn’t actually get up to much in Kyoto, but it’s a nice city to just hang around and watch the world go round. I’d seen most of the touristy things last time I was in the city but going to the Fushimi Inari Shrine was really good - thousands of torri gates covering paths leading up into the hills. I didn’t know about the hill at the time, but it was a really cool place to walk around, and I’m sure my legs will recover at some point!

 And now here I am in Tokyo again! I’ll let you know what fun things I find…

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 6:50 am and is filed under travelling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.