8 November 2023
Emergency hot chocolate
More Matsuyama night
I left my room and everywhere was full of tall thin white guys that looked like they could play Nazi officers in a Hollywood movie. This was highly unusual. Eventually I figured out that there is an ATP professional tennis tournament on here and many of the players and their entourages are staying in my hotel. It seems to be a B grade professional tournament, so no one anyone has ever heard of, and they are staying in a hotel for which I paid about $60 a night.
Anyway, I set off through the undercover shopping streets and suddenly got really shaky, no problem, there is a convenience store on every corner and they all sell hot chocolate in a bottle, just the thing to add some immediate sugar to your bloodstream. I felt perfectly fine within minutes of drinking it.
After that I wanted to find a hamburg steak place for dinner, but they all seemed to combine it with curry, and apparently if you eat too much curry, you will be held accountable for all the worlds woes, so I ended up with mystery deep fried strange batter meat with sauce.
Can you have hot chocolate out of a plastic bottle combined with strawberry flavoured fake chocolate? Of course you can, as long as you climbed a mountain and did over 50k steps today.
The train runs right along and through and across the streets here. Look out!
I found an underground mall, not too long, next to the Takashimaya.
Speaking of Takashimaya, time to do a few laps of the basement food hall, where I seem to make everyone working there nervous that they might have to serve me.
Tram depot. There were signs explaining this would all soon be redeveloped and the area I am standing on will be a park with the trams running down one side. I say, don't do it, the old trams are more interesting than a park no one will use.
Nearby local shrine, where people pray for bargains.
Random bar / restaurant. Matsuyama is a small place, I am running out of things to photograph.
I started looking for my dinner here, but everywhere was basically a bar.
So I ended up hanging out with tennis players drinking beer who presumably lost their matches already in the Mitsukoshi food court. I do not know what the meat was, you would assume pork, but could be chicken, but to confuse matters the sauce is tartare sauce, which normally comes with seafood, so your guess is as good as mine.
Tomorrow is not a hiking day.. but sort of will be.