Quiet day - Mar 27

Today was a quiet day. Sean came around about 10:30 am and we went shopping in Shinjuku and then had lunch there (Korean). I took no photos of anything. But it was a nice day anyway.

Hanami - Mar 26

Sean got us this morning and we went to Asakusa, where we needed his help with a gift. We had a pancake breakfast together (and they were just fine). After breakfast Sean had a date with his friends who were all going to Ueno Park for hanami (cherry blossom viewing). Today is the weekend, the cherries are blossoming, and hanami is the thing to do. I believe Sean and his buddies picnic in the park, as it were, and visit, and perhaps drink. Dave and I did a little shopping in the Asakusa shrine area, then we went to Shinjuku Gyoen Park to take part in cherry blossom viewing ourselves. Shinjuku Gyoen had guards out checking bags in the hopes of enforcing their no drinking policy. Our shopping passed inspection, and we strolled - as did thousands of others. Picnics, walking, taking a lot of photos, and even an Easter egg hunt were going on all over the huge park. Massive crowds to look at trees in bloom seems very Japanese. I guess it is the event that says "Spring is really here."

Sean's office - Mar 25

Sean picked us up for an early lunch and then escorted us to his office. We got to inspect his desk (which was clean and pristine, but so were all the other desks) and met his boss, a couple of managers, and several co-workers. A lot of handshaking and bowing and nodding. They said nice things about Sean and we tried to say nice things about Japan, but kept mispronouncing every name and place.
After this excitement Dave and I carried on to the Edo-Tokyo museum. This required a change from a subway to a train, and the reverse on the way back. We managed the transfers but each time ended up going outside and walking a block. I'm pretty sure there was a more efficient manner in which we could have done things. Partly our inefficiency was likely caused by our efforts to avoid long flights of stairs, and we ended up doing stairs anyway.
The Museum is right beside the Sumo Stable. I think referring to a place where men live and work as a stable is dehumanizing and thus wrong, but it doesn't seem to bother anyone here.

The Edo Tokyo Museum is interesting, but we wore out after the Edo part and didn't learn about modern Tokyo. As we managed to enter for a half-price ticket (due to our senior status) we didn't feel bad about skipping a portion of the museum.

East Gardens of the Imperial Palace - Mar 24

Dave feeling quite a bit better today. So after breakfast and a rejuvenating post-breakfast nap, we went out and about again. It is quite chilly today, but it appears to be colder back home again too.
We went to the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace. It was also our intention to view the Museum of the Imperial Collections, aka Sannomaru Shozokan, but although the website told me the usual opening hours, it did not tell me it was temporarily closed until Mar 25. The Gardens themselves were quite interesting, several old guardhouses, wonderful stone walls, moats, etc. And in season there are various gardens - a slope of plum blossoms, a rose garden, a tea garden, and so forth. We saw some cherries blossoming.  There is a cool tower called Fujimi-yagura - for viewing Mt. Fuji. The view of Mt. Fuji is interfered with by skyscrapers and a haze in the distance (not bad enough to be called smog, but in the way of 100 km views.)
We came home from the gardens and ate a bland lunch (ham and cheese sandwich at Subway, with tomatoes, green pepper and olives - no miso, no funny little pickled things, no fish, no rice - quite a treat!) Lunch was kind of late, so it was nap time again. Sean came over after work and escorted us to someplace else to eat. After wandering around a bit we ended up across the street at a beef barbeque place across the street - cook a few pieces of raw beef and veggies at a brazier on your table - yummy. I am beginning to think wasabi and soya is the best go to sauce for everything.
We choose to have a slow day to aid in Dave's recovery, and it seems to be working.
For some reason my shared photos haven't been shared yet, so I'll add a couple in later.

Quiet day and local shrine - Mar 23

Yesterday Dave developed a cold. We went to a pharmacy and got some cold medicine, with Sean's help, then waited until morning in Canada and phoned the kidney clinic to check if he could take it (he could). This morning we got up late and went to the restaurant complex near Akasaka subway to get breakfast, and whiled away some time, and went for coffee at Tulley's. This was all to give the staff time to clean our hotel room. Came back to the clean room and Dave laid down.
I got bored so went out to visit our local Shinto shrine. As you can see from the two tori gates to it, it is now located among a lot of high rise office buildings. It is the Hie Jinja shine and has been around forever, moved to its present location in 1659 by shogun Tokugawa. It was burned down in the 1945 bombing of Tokyo and rebuilt in 1958. So I'm not sure if it's old or new. I think it counts as old, because it is the same plan and the same place as before. Some shinto shrines are rebuilt every 20 years, as a part of the belief of the death and renewal of nature and the impermanence of all things and as a way of passing building techniques on to the next generation. Its surroundings definitely count as new.
I saw the wonderful escalator and was so pleased! It wasn't until I got to the top that I realized it only went up. There were two long escalators and one shorter one, so I had a lot of stairs to trudge down.

Kabuki Theatre and Tokyo Tower - Mar 22

Sean was at work all day today, so Dave and I had to navigate our own way through Tokyo. Thanks to Google Maps we were fine - though I neglected to look at my i-phone compass one time and took us a few blocks in the wrong direction. And Google Maps doesn't say "this station has no escalator or elevator" so I did a few more sets of stairs than I prefer to (my Fitbit says I did 15 flights).
We arrived at the kabuki venue, called Kabukiza Theatre, in good time for the second act. On the day of a kabucki performance you can purchase a ticket for a single act, which lasts around an hour, and is enough for most neophytes. It is at the top of the theatre - 60 seats and standing room for more. Most kabuki shows, in a one-half day performance, have one traditional formal act, one dance act, and one domestic soap opera type act. We got the dance one, which was in two parts. Thank goodness for that. The Kabukiza theatre was made for shorter people than us - my knees were screaming with pain pressed up to the seat in front, but I got to stand up for a couple of minutes between dances. They are very stylized plays, with traditional Japanese music and singing (the orchestra/chorus is onstage too), a lot of white face make-up and beautiful kimono. Unfortunately photography is forbidden during the performance.  A good experience, but I'd opt to stand if I went again. We had an English translator machine, which told us what was going on onstage.

We had a quick snack after the theatre, and then took the subway to Tokyo Tower. (No prizes are offered for a correct guess as to what famous tower it is modeled after.) We took the elevator up to the main viewing platform. There are more tall buildings in this part of Tokyo than in Asakusa area where we went up the Skytree, so the view was more what I expected it to look like. Right below Tokyo Tower is Zijo-ji Temple and grounds, so there is a patch of green in all the concrete.
After we came down from the tower we went to visit Zijo-ji Temple - it was the family temple of the Tokugawa shogunate, and the Tokugawa mausolea are there - 6 of the Tokugawa shoguns are buried there. There is also an unborn children garden where rows of stone statues of children represent unborn children, including miscarried, aborted and stillborn children. Parents can choose a statue in the garden and decorate it with small clothing (most have hats and bibs) and toys (a lot of whirly-gigs) and fresh flowers. They are known as Jizo statues, as Jizo is the Buddhist god of unborn children. Quite touching. After this we took the subway back to our hotel, arriving in time to be here when Sean came by after work to accompany us to supper.  A busy day.

Sean's apartment - Mar 21

Sean came and picked us up in order to escort us to his apartment. It is a fairly long, but quite direct, subway ride. That's apparently when he gets his reading in. From the subway it's about a 15 minute walk to his apartment.
On the way to his apartment we stopped for lunch in a Western steak and burger restaurant. The waitresses were dressed like cowgirls, but it wasn't particularly American western food, just non-Japanese (except for the fact everything was served with rice). Burger means what we used to call Salisbury steak. Sean had a burger with curry, Dave had a burger with pineapple, and I had a burger with cheese sauce. In Japan burgers in a bun are hamburgers, burgers without a bun are burgers.
It is a high rise building in a complex of similar apartment blocks that used to be public housing, and as such, is fairly new and well planned (grocery store, post office, etc. included) and is right next to a park. Sean is on the 5th floor.
His apartment is really quite spacious, particularly for one person. It has an LDK (living dining kitchen) which runs across the building from side to side, so he has a smallish kitchen window (on the walkway) and large living room and bedroom windows (on to a narrow balcony, largely used for drying clothes). His LDK has wood floors, and his bedroom has tatami mats. His bedroom furniture consists of a futon (in Japan, futon means "mattress" for sleeping on the floor). His living room has a large TV (also used as computer monitor) accompanied by computer and game console, exercise bike, hand weights, "couch" (kind of - a mattress that folds up into a couch shape), and low coffee table. When he needs more furniture he can take a legless chair out of the closet. His dining room contains a wood table with two normal height chairs. His kitchen is much larger and better equipped than I envisaged - he has a frig, microwave, toaster over, and rice cooker of his own, and it has two built in burners. And both open and closed shelves for storage (he did purchase some of the open shelves himself).  His bathroom contains a shower/bath room, a toilet room, and a sink room with his washing machine. Everything a single man could need!
Sean then escorted us back to the subway station, and our train. We managed to get the rest of the way home by ourselves. We celebrated with a Starbucks! 

Yoshonogarikoen Historical Park - Mar 19

We got up and said good-bye to Blaine and Debbie who had been touring with us, but left the group this morning to carry on touring on their own for a few days.
We caught the train to Yoshonogarikoen Historical Park, which is part way between Nagasaki and Osaka. The park is an archeological site and contains a reconstructed village of Yayoi period, 3rd century BC to 3rd century AD. Just as May was buying our entry tickets a volunteer guide came up to us and started chatting. He first asked where we were from, and upon hearing Canada said he was in Vancouver and Victoria last year. He'd been in San Francisco a couple of years earlier, and was a helicopter pilot. By this time he was our friend, and when May came he carried on giving us our tour (I think he wanted to practice his English). Sometimes he spoke to us in English, and sometimes he spoke to May in Japanese and she translated, but the two together ended up giving us a very good tour of the reconstructed village. So good that we ran out of time to see the burial grounds. We did look at their little museum and saw the huge pottery jars they buried people in.
After a lunch at the cafe in the park we cabbed back to the station and carried on to Osaka.
At Osaka May left us (she had a high school mini-reunion tonight) and Mike (the owner, who had been our van driver) took us to the hotel. He later met us and took us for dinner at a very nice meal, a little more modern Japanese cooking than the keisiki meals we have had. This time the rice was flavoured!
When we check out of the hotel tomorrow we are on our own again - we've got train tickets back to Tokyo tomorrow afternoon.

  

Hashima (Gunkanjima) - Mar 18

Another Japanese breakfast at the ryokan. Today it is raining, so it was rain jackets and brollies for our tour. We took a "cruise" to the island of Hashima. It was a barren shelf of rock out in the ocean when coal was first discovered there in 1810, in 1869 mining began there and in 1890 full-scale seabed coal mining operations began when acquired by Mitsubishi Corporation. In 1916 they started building concrete apartments on the island to accommodate the people living there. They built schools, a hospital, shops, cinemas and pachinko parlours on the rock (which they kept enlarging). At its peak the island's population density was 5 times that of Tokyo - 5300 living on a space 480m by 160 m. With it's surrounding sea wall and multi-story concrete apartments it resembled a large battleship, and became known as Gunkanjima Island - Battleship Island. All very cool and I really would have liked to see it, but it was rainy and the boat was crowded.

I will finish with a photo of the actual view through the plastic window, and another one the limber guide managed to take out the back of the boat. The boat was meant to dock, but the sea was too rough so we just circled the island and then went back. The circling of the island was the downfall of many passengers and the crew was busy handing out barf bags. Luckily our family has iron stomachs. This afternoon is a free afternoon, so we had lunch at the mall (katsu) followed by a visit to Starbucks. Dave is now napping on the floor (he put a futon down first). Tonight we have one more kaisiki dinner (formal Japanese dining) at our ryokan.

Nagasaki - Mar 17

Thank goodness I'm finally up to date with the blog. Today we had a Japanese breakfast in the ryokan again. Fish, miso soup, rice, pickles, tofu for breakfast is getting old. I want yogurt and blueberries. After breakfast we went to the Nagasaki Peace Park and Museum. The museum was excellent, including a mock-up of the bomb that was HUGE! The peace park included a black monolith marking the hypocenter of the blast, and a huge statue meditating on peace, and the bomb, and the victims of it (photos). We went to Nagasaki's Chinatown for lunch, and had a couple of Nagasaki Chinese / Japanese fusion dishes. After lunch we went to Dejima, which was a man-made island in the port of Nagasaki where the only remaining Westerners lived and traded during Japan's two centuries of isolation. The island has now been joined to the mainland, and has residences and warehouses, etc. with displays in them. Today it included a number of young women in their rent-a-kimono outfits. Finally we went up the hill to Glover Gardens. There was a great view from the top, including The Queen Elizabeth in the harbour. We had been running into English tourists and tour groups all day (which is a change, we have seen few other white foreigners in our travels around these Southern islands.) Glover Gardens is on the hill where Western residents settled down after Japan's period of isolation ended, and includes a variety of residences of the early Westerners in Nagasaki. We were tired after the park and took a cab back to the ryokan. Then we searched out Western food for supper (a McDonald's hamburger has never tasted so good,)

 

Kumamoto Castle and Suizenji Garden - Mar 16

We travelled to Kuamoto by bullet train.
We went to Suizenji Garden, an example of an Edo period stroll garden. It has a miniature Mount Fuji in the middle, and a large pond filled with koi fish.
Then we went to Kumamoto Castle. The photo is of the only original turret left standing, the rest of the castle is reconstructed. Large and interesting - lasted through a 50 day siege in 1877 - the castle builders had included lots of wells.
Traveled by train to Nagasaki. In Nagasaki we are staying for 3 nights in a ryokan where we sleep on the floor. We requested that they stack an extra "mattress" under our bed and that helped a lot. We had a much better sleep than the last floor we slept on.

Sakurajima volcano and Kagoshima - Mar 15

After breakfast we drove to Sakurajima, one of Japan's most active volcanoes, that has multiple eruptions several times a day. You can see it coughing up some ash in my photo. Until 1914 Sakurajima was an island in the bay, but a powerful eruption and subsequent lava flow connected it to the mainland in that year.
After viewing the volcano we took a ferry across the bay to Kagoshima.
We started in the Senganen garden, a Japanese style stroll garden that incorporates the views of Sakurajima and the bay into its garden vistas. It was built in the 17th century. Besides all the usual garden ponds, sculpted trees, rocks, vistas, etc. there was a Shinto shrine to cats. For some reason this shrine had the style of tori gate reserved for the Imperial family. I know that is how cats view themselves (as Emperors) and I guess the Japanese agree. Although our Japanese tour guide had no reasonable explanation for it.
There was a museum just outside the garden showing the clan here as one of the earliest adapters of Western technology in the 1800s.

Takachiho Gorge and Aoshima Island - Mar 14

Today we once again had breakfast in our hotel, but managed to avoid fish and rice because it was a buffet and had some more or less Western foods.
It was raining this morning, so the first part of our walk through Takachiho Gorge took place in the rain. The Takachiho Gorge is narrow and cut through the rock by the river below. There is a waterfall, we saw people out rowing to the waterfall in small rental rowboats (in one boat they were holding up umbrellas as they rowed along). We walked along the edge of the gorge for about 1 kilometer - it was quite beautiful.

We next went to see the Amano Iwato shrine for the sun goddess who hid in a cave. Because she is the ancestor (mythologically) of the Emperor, the tori gate differs from the usual in that the second cross-bar doesn't extend beyond the support posts. We had a nice young Shinto priest show us around, including the private locked back portion where you can see the cave she hid in (no photography allowed here). Then while the rest of the group walked down to the cave where the rest of the gods gathered to lure her out by dancing, Dave and I sat in a tiny spot and sampled the Shitaki mushroom broth sold by a little old Japanese lady. The rain had totally ceased while we were there, so she was busy taking in the umbrellas she had cannily been selling before while it was raining.
Then after more driving, and a stop at a roadside rest stop for lunch (Dave found a machine that dispensed french fries, I had rice balls stuffed with chicken), we ended up at Aoshima Island. It is surrounded by a unique rock formation known as the Devil's Washboard, and is covered with palm trees. It also, of course, has a Shinto Shrine (with the usual tori gate). I thought the place was one of the most interesting, geologically speaking, I had ever seen.

Travel to Kyushu - Mar 13

We got up and had breakfast at our lovely ryokan, then drove to Yawatahama to catch the ferry from the island of Shikoku to the island of Kyushu. We will be spending the remainder of our tour on Kyushu. The Japanese ferries are quite interesting. This one had a very small seating area with tables and chairs (which were handily chained to the floor), and a large area with mats and cubby holes, where you could lie down, or just sit on the floor and chat. The last ferry we were on had more seating, but it still had the area to lie down on the floor in.
The ferry landed at the city of Usuki, and just outside the city we saw Buddha statues that were carved into the stone cliffs. There are 60 statues, carved during the 12th to 14th centuries, but we had to skip a few that were under restoration (putting roofs over them, etc., so they don't deteriorate.) Quite impressive, located on a mountainside in a bamboo forest.
We then drove via expressways and single lane mountain roads to Takachiho. Takachiho is full of Japanese mythology. It is the site of a legend where the Shinto sun goddess hid in a cave to get away from her brother's cruel pranks, causing the other gods and goddesses to try to lure her out by dancing. She left the cave to see what was going on and so returned her light to the world. After dinner at the hotel, we attended a Yokagura dance performance which is supposed to be examples of the dances used to coax her out. The performance is held in a tatami mat theatre, so Dave and I found pillars at the side we could use as backs, and stuck our legs out in front of us, rather than sitting Japanese style. Interesting culturally, the music and dance totally foreign to our Western kind.

Matsuyama - Mar 12

We were served a Japanese breakfast in our groups private dining room in the ryokan.
Then we took a taxi to the temple of Ishiteji - #51 on the Shikoku pilgrimage we started the other day. It included a 3 story pagoda and a cave lined with statues.
Then we took a bus to Matsuyama Castle. We approached the castle first by a ropeway (gondola) up Mt. Katsu, part of which overlooked cherry blossoms, then by zigzag inclined paths up to the castle through high stone walls.
We followed this by a street car ride back downtown, and a visit to the Emperor's rooms in the Dogo Onsen, the first onsen (public baths in hot springs) in Japan.
Dogo Onsen was terrifically crowded, so we left Blaine and Sean there for the baths (because it is famous for anime/ manga reasons). The rest of us returned to our ryokan and bathed in its onsen, which is better equipped and less crowded. This meant Dave was segregated off by himself, and Debbie, May and I went to the women's side. There was an inside bath, and one outside with a bit of Japanese garden and fresh air (no photographs allowed in onsen so you can't see it).
We then had a Kaiseki-style dinner at our ryokan. This is a meal of many small courses made of high-end ingredients. It was very tasty! One does have to like raw fish, Japanese pickles, tofu, miso soup, etc. and not mind eating totally unknown ingredients.

Vine bridge and boat ride - Mar 11

Well, today I got the keyboard working, but for some reason the i-cloud isn't delivering my photos. Technical glitches. Edit: photos showed up, so I'll add them.
Anyway, yesterday we went to the Ritsurin Garden, a very beautiful garden that took more than 100 years to create. They worked it all to fit in with the natural mountain backdrop - they have over 1000 pines manicured precisely, streams, bridges, tea houses, a duck blind (!), and vistas everywhere. It was quite lovely. Then we had tea in a tea house - the bitter Japanese powdered green tea, which you always drink after a sweet so it doesn't taste so bad.
We drove to Kotohira, where there is the very famous Kompira shrine (Shinto). Sean saw it, because you have to go up 785 steps. Dave and I wandered around the shops in the little village instead.
Then Mike (the owner of the tour company, who had joined us the night before) drove us through the mountain gorge, a lot of it on single lane road with mirrors on the corners, and spaces where one vehicle or the other would back up to if you met oncoming traffic. We ended up at a ryokan (guesthouse) / onsen (hot springs baths) perched on a cliff. Dave and I slept on futons on the floor. Unfortunately, neither of us sleep through the night, and the rising to go to the bathroom was not done with grace by either of us.
We did have a meal served by the guest house that went on for course after course, causing us to eat a lot of things we had never heard of before. But it was all very tasty (or, mostly very tasty!)
This morning the ryokan served us a great breakfast, and then we carried on down the Iya Valley road until we arrived at the Kazurabashi Vine Bridge.  This is a suspension bridge made of vines that is 15 meters above the river - it has large spaces between the planks, so once again we let Sean do the exciting part, and we watched and took photos. At this stop we also saw a lovely waterfall rushing down the cliff.
Next we drove to Oboke Gorge (we got onto real two lane roads) where we took a 30 minute boat ride through the steep-sided narrow gorge created by the Yoshino River. This would have been lovely on a summer day, but was cold and chilly today, and we all almost froze to death out on the water. Still interesting, as the rocks had obviously been thrust up at a 45 degree angle by earthquakes, there were waterfalls, and ducks.
Then we carried on driving to Matsuyama, the biggest city on the island of Shikoku. Here Dave and I got a palatial room, with western beds in a separate bedroom. There is a traditional wooden soaking tub in the bathroom (and luckily, a shower as well). The toilet room includes a urinal as well as a western toilet - this is the first bathroom I've ever had with a urinal included. They served us some of that powdered green tea when we arrived. In this ryokan we had to leave our outdoor shoes in the lobby, and wear slippers to our room. When you enter the bathroom, you put on your bathroom slippers - Dave thinks we should start doing this at home, because it keeps your feet warm.
We went out for supper, and had sashimi and nigiri sushi, so are pretty happy campers right now.

RItsurin garden - Mar 10

For some reason my keyboard is not functioning so I have to use this on tablet mode.
I hate typing on the screen so will just post a couple of photos.

Whirlpools - Mar 9

Today we first traveled by local bus to Naruto Straits. Here, due to the narrow straits between the island of Shikoku and the main island of Honshu, as well as the underwater geography of the sea beds, giant whirlpools are created by the tides. A bridge has been built across the strait, and constructed on the girders under the bridge is a walkway to observe the whirlpools, through windows in the floor (photo on right) and on the walls (photo on left) over the main area for whirlpools. The walkway out to the viewing area has wire mesh, so you can feel the sea breezes. On a cold, rainy day like today that really meant so that the floor will be wet and slippery and a cold, damp wind blows on you.
We had lunch in a very small restaurant by the whirlpools. Then we took the bus back to Naruto, where we caught the train to Takamatsu where we are staying tonight. We had to switch trains partway, at a station with one empty little waiting room and no railway employees at all - also no convenience stores or any other sign of life nearby (except for a few schoolgirls there to catch a train). Travelling on all the local modes of transportation is quite interesting. You get in a lot of people watching, and now we can personally attest to the greying of Japan. We can also pick out the old style school uniforms (very Prussian military) and the new style uniforms (more business suit inspired). You see all types of housing and commercial activity.
When we arrived in Takamatsu we met Mike, the owner of the Samuri tour company, who is joining us for the next few days, and will drive the van we will be travelling around in. Tonight the group of us went out for an udon noodle supper, as the area is famous for udon noodles. We also tried seared bonito, cooked the way ahi tuna is cooked.
Dave is now in his robe for the night. Our Japanese hotel in Tokyo provided white cotton Japanese styled pajamas, which Dave loved. The hotel in Osaka gave us an open robe and tie. The last two nights the hotel has given us a button front robe. The pajamas we brought with us are staying clean. Unfortunately most of the slipper provided aren't wide enough for our feet.

Pilgrimage day - Mar 8

Today we were pilgrims, or almost pilgrims, on the Shinkoku pilgrimage route, following the footsteps of the Japanese Buddhist saint, Kobo Daishi. We didn't wear the white jacket and cone shaped straw hats (like the pilgrims in the photo), nor did we start at the first temple (out of 88 temples).
We took a local bus to temple number 13 - Dainichiji - (pilgrim photo) and then walked to the three following temples, a distance of about 5 miles. Each temple had a nearby Shinto shrine - Dainichiji had a large shrine across the street with two torii gates.
Between the temples we walked on a paved path through fields and gardens, past some lovely houses with manicured trees, along a highway, across a bridge, by cemeteries and through towns. We also passed a roadside shrine to dead babies and unborn babies (small photo at bottom) - the red bibs on the markers indicate babies.

The photo (left) with the large tree is temple 14 - Jorakuji, which was just past a lake and up a hill.
The photo (centre) with the weathered grey temple and "dry garden" is #15, Kokubunji. We ate our lunch looking at this view.
The photo (right) with Sean ringing the gong is #16, Kanonji.
By this time Dave and I and Debbie were wearing out, so we took a local bus back to our hotel in Tokushima.
For dinner tonight we went to a restaurant and ate lots of sashimi (raw tuna, salmon and red snapper), plus a tomato and mozzarella salad (the balsamic vinegar looked green but tasted right), crab fried rice and gyozo. Yum!

Travel to Tokushima - Mar 7

We began with a Japanese breakfast at the hotel - green tea, miso soup, rice, salmon, eggs (in a kind of cake form) and unidentifiable bits and pieces, some of which were pickles.
After breakfast we met up with our tour group, which consists of the 3 of us, a couple (Blaine and Debbie) from Ohio, and May, our guide.
We took off for Tokushima, which began with an hour on a train, then a couple of hours on a ferry, then a 20 minute bus ride.
We dropped our luggage at the hotel and went to visit the Awa Odori museum. Awa Odori is a dance festival held every year from August 12 - 15 with performances everyplace, and dance troupes from everywhere. We saw an Awa dance, then were invited to take part. Dave and Sean didn't even try - I gave it a shot, but my dancing skills are minimal.
Finally, we took the ropeway (aka gondola or cable car) up Bizan mountain for a view over the area.
For supper the group went to a ramen noodle joint.
I'm now tired and ready to crawl into my Western style bed.