Japan for the 10th time (Finally!) - October and November 2023 - Page 4

As I mentioned in the wall of text above, the Bullet train station at Mihara stops on top of the demolished castle. Right on the castle walls.

I had a few minutes to spare, so why not exit the station and cross the road to take a photo?

Onomichi station is not on the bullet train line, it is on the Sanyo line. A lot of trains coming from or going to Shikoku were cancelled due to heavy rain today.

There is Onomichi station, and the hill with the ropeway behind it, which I would soon climb up.

This is the official start point of the bike path across the many islands. The start is a boat ride.

On a grey day like today, Onomichi at sea level looks like some old rusty ship yards. Probably because that is what it is.

It was time to start the route for old temples. Here is a temple.

There are so many temples they had to knock one down for the ropeway station.

I think there are roughly 5000 grave stones for each inhabitant of this town. Seriously, everywhere was a graveyard. Ship building is a dangerous business.

Nice palm trees.

Time to climb the hill. It is really only about 10 minutes to the top on foot. Here is a view part way up, with a rock.

That is the local art museum, an impressive building, closed on Monday's.

I had the concrete ring of destiny to myself.

I ran up and down its full length a few times.

Here is the view towards Hiroshima. Nice clouds.

And the view in the other direction, towards Okayama I guess.

And across the inland sea. Those are mainly many small islands.

The path down goes through the main temple, Senkoji.

You can ring the bell if you want.

After descending, I wandered into the covered shopping street, and the main shop that actually sold anything other than wigs and second hand clogs was selling lemon cakes, and lemon cake related items. I did not have a lemon cake. Should have.

Here is the almost completely abandoned part of the shopping street. Some of the shops were actually being used as car parking spaces. The actual shops!

The other end of the rather long shopping street has a few shops selling clothes for old people, and right at the end, bike shops.

Right by Onomichi station is the local department store, Fukuya. It looks a bit old from the outside, but still had a bit going on inside it.

Next stop, Fukuyama. I first wandered away from the castle side of the station to look at the roses. The station signage proudly declared Fukuyama to be the city of roses.

But I guess it is all about the castle, so here is the castle.

The chrysanthemum festival is in full swing here. They had strict crowd control in place for the 5 of us looking at the flowers.

A bit more castle.

The inside of the castle was closed, it is a museum of sorts. It is a fake castle, so the inside is concrete and vending machines. However I could wander all around it, and the back is clad with iron. There was a sign explaining that it was clad with iron on one side, but not why it was clad with iron on one side.

After castle appreciation, it was time to ascend to the top of Fukuyama station and board the Nozomi Shinkansen back to Hiroshima, which is about a 25 minute ride, unreserved (there were plenty of seats). It is still not raining here.

As I left my hotel it was just stopping raining, I descended under the road by Hiroshima station and remembered there is this cavernous waste of space there.

Here is the atomic bomb dome. Handheld at night with my crap camera.

There were a few people hanging around taking photos, so I took another.

Next up, the museum. I remember thinking it needed a refresh, maybe it has had one now? Either way at night it is shut. The actual light was much darker than this. You cannot normally see clouds in the night sky.

Random blue escalator lights as a little tram goes past.

It occurred to me that on this trip I have not yet had a proper bowl of traditional pork flavoured ramen. So I picked a spot and went there. Closed on Monday's.

So instead of ramen, it was beef tendon curry demi glaze omurice with winter root vegetables. Long title. I have had beef tendon stuck in my throat ever since.
Now to find out how to catch the ferry tomorrow, it is covered by my train pass, you cannot book a seat, great.

Here I am on my never ending tram ride in Hiroshima.

I was late to the ferry terminal, so here is a shot of it from the docks. There are a couple of restaurants in there. The terminal at the Matsuyama end has a lot less to see.

That is my boat coming into port. It roars in at nearly full speed. From what I can tell there are 2 companies sharing a fleet of identical ferries. You can buy a ticket from either companies desk, or show your train pass as I did, and then you might get a red ferry, or a blue ferry.

I got a blue ferry.

This is almost the entire seating area, I think its 10 rows of 12 across seats, so 120 person capacity. Hardly anyone on here today though.

The view would have been good apart from the salt stained windows.

This is the massive steel works at Kure.

This photo came out a bit better due to the angle of the sun. We went under those red bridges.

Behold, a train I had to buy a paper ticket for!

After walking for a few hundred metres from the weird private train line, I found a coin laundry. Complete with futuristic blue lighting. Google camera helped me translate.

And now for my huge and very very good room. I think it is $60 a night. Daiwa Roynet. This will easily be the best room on this trip. The TV has all the streaming apps, a rarity in Japan.

The bathroom has 2 areas to it, the toilet area and a separate bath and shower area, which I am standing in.
That's all for now.

Here is covered shopping street 1 of 2. This one is about 100m from my hotel. It is the nicer of the 2.

The lobby area at the front of the Mitsukoshi department store is quite grand. They close at 7pm, but the great food court stays open until 10pm.

When you get to the end of covered shopping street 1, you make a 90 degree turn, and head down covered shopping street 2 of 2. The lower rent version.

It is a bit hard to see, but this is an e-sports stadium in a mall. Where you and 3 of your friends you never met in person before, can battle 4 people you have racially abused and hurled homophobic slurs at via voice chat while virtually murdering each other in person to settle some serious internet business.

Roof garden. I climbed on things I should not have to try and get a view of any kind.

Seriously, this is the best view you can get of the ferris wheel. I am not capitalising the f in Ferris.

After the disappointment of the no view roof, I descended down to the Tokyu hands to console myself. They have a stupid new logo, the old one was iconic.

They have really tried hard to hide the damn ferris wheel.

My fantastic ramen. With a pile of leeks on top of it. It was the best meal of the trip so far. More of this.

This looks like it would be a nice street during the day with those yellow trees and the trams.

Just past my hotel is the red light district. You can tell by all the 'information' places. The red lights seem to be mainly green though. Now to return to my hotel and try on all the clothes I washed today to see how much they shrunk, a fun part of any holiday.

Here is Iyo-Hojo station. I waited for the cops to clear before exiting. Despite being a JR line, it is unclear if you can use an IC card. I had a train pass so did not need a ticket, but I saw no card readers, and there were conductors on the train collecting cash. Weird.

The station is near a supermarket, but it was not open yet. Not to worry, I would soon pass a Lawson's to buy water and calorie mate (my hiking food of choice).

In the middle of some farmers fields, an English pub, garage, museum. Also weird.

My journey up the road to that mountain had me staring directly into the heart of the sun. My camera really struggled with setting exposure levels today.

After leaving the main road I had to pass some spooky rape shacks.

The trail starts here, but you go left past the shrine. Allow me to help.... 33.95924056882182, 132.8163932702691

Much of the trail was in these mini canyons, suggesting it is a very old route. No cobwebs today, so the trail is in regular use, plus as I said I passed a couple of groups of old folks making a slow ascent, and then I passed them on my way down again. I am pretty certain when there's an old man with the group he likes to tell the ladies about the foolish foreigner who is going too fast who will not make it to the top. Wrong. Also I am probably as old as you are silly little old man. I just do not need an alpine suit, hiking poles and a stove. No really, I sense they are talking shit about me.

Not too many view spots on the hike today, but when the sun broke through it was very nice.

Here is a view, squint and you can see the ocean.

Some parts were very dark and mysterious. Darker than the photo would have you believe.

The trail was almost always smooth though, I did a lot of running today.

Near the top, and it is time for a bit of colour!

Very good colour, with mossy trees.

The summit marker is below the summit. At first I thought the weather station would be fenced off and there would be no view, but I could hear people talking.

You can climb up a metal platform for a view, ruined by a wire.

As you can see, the view is between mobile phone base stations.

Down there is Iyo-Hojo, the station is right by that little bump of an island just off the coast. You will see it again below.

The very last bit of the hike joins the one lane road, apparently popular with cyclists although I saw none today. On the way down it seemed nice and colourful, so why not another leaf shot featuring a road.

I found another view spot on the way down, featuring wires.

After a very rapid descent, the bamboo signals my pending exit from the trail back onto a road.

Looking back from where I had come down from, it looks a lot further than it is in this pic. The walk through the farming areas was very nice. Great weather again today.

I still had to go all the way back to that strange island. Full zoom on this pic, it is actually about 3.5km away.

And for my final pic, I am crossing over the railroad tracks, one street back from the sea. I had no time to run down to the ocean to take a pic of that strange island as the train was coming and there would not be another one for another hour.
After more than 40,000 steps and a half marathon hike, tonight will be a short activity I am sure.

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.