Willie Winkie

Day 11

The plan was to leave Matsuyama early but we still had clothes to dry and that took 3 cycles (1.5h). Jeans are handy when travelling but they take ages to  machine dry! When we got to the train station we had an hour to wait until our train so we looked for breakfast.

I am getting a bit fed up of rice for breakfast and we found an appetising western-style shop with an interesting name so we decided to try.

Me and Jorge overdid it on the bread. It was a mix of hunger and missing our usual breakfasts. Coffee was average drip coffee.

Limited Express Ishizuchi was our train today. It took us to Takamatsu in 1.5h. It is a semi-coastal route so many a times you can see the sea.

Check-in done and we went exploring the city.

There was a long walk to get to our destination: Ritsurin garden. A long walk on a very wide and busy avenue with almost no shops. We started wondering if that was what Takamatsu looked like...

By the time we got to the garden it was lunch time so we decided to eat before seeing the garden. On the other side of the road there was a good looking café with plenty of costumers so we went in. It was managed by two old ladies and it seemed like the cook was an even older lady. There was also an elderly man who we saw alternating between bringing trays from the kitchen and walking into the kitchen with a wrench. Jack of all trades?!?

Their english was bad but we manage to order a vegetable curry, a burger on the plate and a doria (gratin of rice on the base, protein in the middle with sauce and topped with cheese). All are japanised western dishes, aka yoshoku. They were absolutely delicious!!

Ritsurin garden is one othe most famous gardens in Japan. It's  construction started in 1625 but it was improved and extended by successive lords during a period of 100 years, until 1745. It is magnificent and definetely worth a visit!

On the way back we decided to try a different route and descovered the city center. It is pretty much a series of shopping avenues. Have I explained them already? Japanese seem to like what british call arcades. Streets of shops with a roof on top but no doors on the sides. It protects from the rain and snow an makes for a more enjoyable shopping experience. You can find a bit of everything there, shops of all kinds, supermarkets, restaurants, cafés, gaming alleys and bicycle parking as well.

There was a big supermarket with two lanes of bicycles parked in front. Bicycles are very popular in Japan and supermarket shopping with them as well. 

I found a big store full of kitchenware. Typical japanese kitchenware. From top to bottom. I was looking for a ladle with a wooden cable and a metal bowl like the ones we have seen on the temples. 

I walked up to the end of the shop and past a couple of cats. One of them was friendly and I made him a cuddle despite of the fact that his fur was in desperate need of brushing.

The end of the shop smelled heavily to dog and you could hear him bark behind a screened (closed) door. 

I found the ladle and on my way back to the front of the shop the friendly cat looked at my ladle and run off quickly. Clearly someone hits him with a ladle! Not good!

The shop was managed by an extremely elderly man that spoke no english, looked quite frail and at times confused. We had a disagreement on the price of the ladle as he was trying to charge me more than it said on the box. In the end I think he got confused with the size of the ladle. I was bying the smaller and he was charging me the bigger. Then he didn't seem happy with the ¥1000 note I gave him to pay ¥800. Luckily I managed to scrap the right amount in coins. Confused or conman? Anyway, interesting experience.

It was past 20h30 when we decided to have noodles for dinner. We noticed there were many restaurants either closed or almost closing. It seems that in Kyushu island the dinner is usually a lot later than in Shikoku island. We rushed into a noodles restaurant and we were the only costumers. Whilst we ate we could see there was a lot of cleaning going on in the kithen.

On the way back to the hotel we passed a jazz bar. Nice music! Sadly we need to wake up early the next day so we gave it a miss.