Trip 13 to Japan - October and November 2025 - Page 7

Behold, the coin laundry. Cheap too. I think the washing machine was 300 yen, and the giant dryer I only used 300 yen on too. If you squint you can see my underpants.

Here is my train, the marine liner. The front carriage is a double decker green car, the other 5 are just normal train cars with no reservation.

As you can see, the normal cars are very normal. You can see my bag on top of the rack. I did not forget to take it with me when I got off.

I will now attempt photos from a moving train. As you go over the bridge, it crosses a couple of small islands. You can exit the bridge (if you are in a car) and go hang out at a mid sea convenience store. There is no way to walk over the bridge though.

Another mid sea island and exit ramps.

Here you can see the mainland, and the bridge structure. Steel I reckon.

After I dropped my bags off at the hotel, it was time to wander around, but not take any real photos. I made an exception for the station, because that was kind of part of the journey.

My no photos rule on travel day is so that I do not ruin everyone's favourite, the hotel photos. This is the smallest room yet. Via Inn Okayama. Literally on top of the station. When I booked you could choose room with desk or room with couch. I chose desk. A plus for this hotel is they don't clutter the desk with hundreds of useless advertisements.

No series of hotel pics is complete without the pre fabricated modular plastic bathroom pic. I think we should embrace these in Australia, seriously.

And finally, my room has a fantastic view. I can see the bullet trains coming into the station on the left. This is actually the quiet side of the city, the other side of the station has a lot of bigger buildings.

First up, lets go down Old Sanyo Do.

Not a huge amount going on, more than Tokushima, less than Takamatsu.

The situation gets worse as you go on. People were smoking along this corridor in front of the no smoking signs.

I followed this river for a while, the lights make it hard to see stairs.

Okayama has quite an extensive tram system, featuring trams between 50 and 150 years old, probably.

Now it is time to walk the length of Omotecho. It has trees. I have portrayed it as unfairly quiet.

Now I will have to look up how to spell terror dack tall. Pterodactyl. I do not know why there were dinosaurs, this is not Fukui (refer to Japan11 trip).

As you go along, the floor tiles changed.

Someone has rented a store to accuse the city of bullying them, in great detail. This is only half of it, they have actually rented 2 store fronts alongside each other. The English says, "Town of Bulling" with the fun typo, but also "Don't Bullying Me!".

There is also a crossing Shotengei if you get bored of the main one.

Back near the station, and this is an underground area near the station. A combination of closed restaurants and restaurants with lines, but I had decided to find my dinner in this chunk of underground street.

And so ramen it was. I added numerous vegetable based extras. Not bad, the Tokushima ramen is still the winner on this trip.
Tomorrow is a kind of hiking day, I will start my watch and do the stats, but there is a castle along the way.

Here is the train I rode on from Okayama to Bitchu-Takahashi station in Takahashi. It takes just over an hour on the local train and costs about 800 yen ($8) in each direction, IC card accepted. Takahashi is popular with tourists, there is a Starbucks, and limited express trains stop at the station, but cost more than double to save 20 minutes.

The town is actually nice, this is not necessarily its best angle.

There are a lot of historic buildings in and around town, generally labelled as Samurai houses. I do not think Samurai lived here though.

On the way up to the hiking trail I wandered into a shrine, but prayers were going on so I took this photo from the gate and left.

Nice streets, the gloomy weather adds to the vibe. Yeah, vibe. A word who's meaning is changing lately.

A couple of things about getting to the castle. There are buses and mini bus van things in town. There is a shuttle bus that takes you near the castle. Google reviews are very critical that the shuttle bus does not always run, and even when it does the 'hike' from the car park is excruciating and ruined their entire trip etc.
Alternatively, you can hike all the way up, which is not very far at all to the castle. People complain they can't find the trailhead, well here it is. I had no issues.

The lower bits of the hike before the car park and shuttle bus stop are a proper hike. Very lonely.

I think this is where the shuttle bus drops you off, as it is all paved with stairs after this point, for 500m max.

Approaching the destroyed lower castle.

I presume there used to be a structure here.

The views down to Takahashi are not that great, and basically non existent from the castle itself.

The walls are substantial, and probably old.

Here is the most autumn I have seen so far on this trip. I do notice that the peak autumn stuff is near castles and shrines, so I suspect they are deliberately planted.

Admission to this area is $5 (500 yen), credit card NOT accepted, but they take Alipay and Paypay.

As I was buying my ticket I was looking over my shoulder at the famous cat, Sanjuro, who was sitting here on his throne, when his guard picked him up and took him away! Now what. I wanted to see (photograph) the cat!

There is what may be the castle but may not be the old bit, with more cat furniture in the foreground.

The bit you are allowed inside of (after removing your shoes) does not appear to be that old. I am confused by all of this, the wikipedia article which I read twice does not properly explain how old which bits of it are, possibly 1331, but somehow it qualifies as one of the twelve remaining original castles.

It is only 2 levels high, but it is the highest castle in Japan, despite not being that high. That sounds confusing, what I mean is, I am surprised there is no castle on any proper mountain.

This is the best view you can get of the city below from the castle itself, and it is not a clear view, I had to feed my camera through wooden louvres, and it got a better view than I did.

I will now continue around that ridge to get a view of the castle, but not what is often a sea of clouds below. Another thing this castle is famous for is floating on a sea of clouds.

OK, so behind the bit you can go inside, is this. You cannot go inside this part. I am wondering if this is actually the old castle. It is however very small and from the outside at least, looks the same as the bit you can go inside of.

I found the cat! His guard takes him to several spots throughout the day to be adored by his fans. There are people either side of me taking photos too. He is definitely under constant guard, I am not making that up, someone is employed to look after the cat.

Close up. I think he is quite old, and not really interested in much of anything.

I hunted around a while for a view.

Now I will head around the back of the castle and rejoin a hiking trail to go beyond the shuttle bus tourism zone.

There is that possibly old bit of castle again from the back. I have zoomed in, the wood looks older. I am still confused though.

Up the hill a bit, there are some rocks where more castle used to be.

As you go down the hill for a while, you get to the old castle swimming pool. Is that what this is? What else could it be?

Then you get to a suspension bridge. It is substantial, you cannot bounce up and down on it.

The view from the bridge is quite nice though.

Then you get to a car park. But you are not allowed to use it. The road is blocked before this point as you head back towards town, thus forcing people onto the shuttle bus that possibly is not running (the castle website actually talks about it not running some of the time).

A few hundred metres down the road and you get to the castle observation deck, where you can view the castle floating in the clouds when the conditions are right (not today). I believe you can drive to this point as there were a couple of cars parked nearby.

Behold the view of the city and the castle (on the right). I turned around and retraced my steps at this point.

There were some nice bits of hiking trail between castle and castle lookout and car parks and roads and forest access roads.

Back at the castle, and it was time for a bit more autumn leaf colour.

I arrived back at the station 30 minutes early for the train, so I had time to wander the city. This is what they call a Shotengei here, they covered an actual road, with full speed traffic coming along it. I suspect it was once closed off to traffic, but has now reverted to being a regular road.

I even had time to admire the local river / drain. Not bad.

Unfortunately the view in the other direction was blocked by the road. They built 2 bridges alongside one another, one for bikes and pedestrians that I am on, and one for cars only.

The local taxi company uses Lord Sanjuro as there official mascot. That is enough photos for today.

First I did some overpass time. You can see part of the Aeon on the right.

Next overpass.. and here is more of the Aeon.

I wandered away from the Aeon, looking for brightly lit neon areas. I am starting to think that other than the station, there are none in Okayama, which seems a bit weird. Anyway, this line is for a ramen restaurant. Impressive. I made sure it wasn't a soup kitchen for the well dressed homeless before taking the photo, I have made that mistake before in Gifu (I think).

After completing my loop of darkly lit streets, I am back at the Aeon. It has many levels, the lower levels are just shops, with carpet.

First food court. I was tempted.

But first I will keep going up above the atrium.

There is a roof garden, with no view. Schoolgirls were practising their dance moves, photographing that is too risky for me, I did not have my passport on me.

The upper levels have multiple restaurant 'streets' which generally had no lines.

That is not pork, it is pumpkin. Pumpkin omurice doria to be precise. So omurice with pumpkin on top, then cheese, then they put it in the oven for a while and serve it in a casserole dish hot enough to melt steel beams more effectively than jet fuel.

But wait, there is a food street above the food street. I will probably go here on another night.

And in further good news, basement level 2 of the Aeon is joined onto basement level 1 of the JR train station and my hotel is joined onto the JR train station. So no need to breathe fresh air at all.
Tomorrow, more castles, but without hiking.

Obviously I walked from my hotel at the station to the garden and castle area (and back again). There is also a tram for those with money to burn. Approaching the area was nice, but the sun is so very very bright today. It gets brighter from here on in too.

I was here right at opening time of course, after pacing around waiting for opening time.

The garden is right across from the castle, there is the castle.

As I mentioned, I was about 10 minutes early, so I wandered down to steal a swan boat. Locks were impenetrable. So instead, here is another castle photo. More of those to come.

Entering the garden and it is a lot of grass, covered in umbrellas. People just left them here?

I think this garden suffers from being too, 'open', it is too much grass in every shot.

Also, they seem to have a farm on the go.

Not a lot of people around yet.

Here is the plum grove, no garden is complete without one.

This is another source of frustration. There is a tea plantation, which looks nice, but all the spots where you might be able to get a decent shot of it from are roped off. There is a path up the middle of it that would be perfect, but it is off limits.

Too far away from the action for a great photo.

A lot of sun, brown water and grass.

I really do think they have tried to make it a bit less grassy by adding the umbrellas.

All of that area, off limits.

A bit of colour with dirty water.

Cool bridge, lets hope it is not off limits.

This is probably the best shot I got of the garden. The bridge was not off limits.

Perhaps this is a septic tank? It was sort of fenced off from the other areas.

I now did another lap in the reverse direction. This little hut with the creek running through it had confusing signs, one advised you how to put your feet in the water, the other told you not to put your feet in the water. There actually was no water in the bit running through the hut so it was a moot point.

You can walk on this bridge, it requires a lot of concentration.

The best I can do for a photo of that little bridge.

Now it is time to go to the castle, I will enter from the garden entrance.

Possibly this is where the original castle was located.

There it is, a black castle. It looks brand spanking new. This side is a bit flat and boring compared to the back side.

Inside is a museum, cafe, gift shops etc.

This is actually a game where you shoot birds. Unexpected.

There are 5 levels, they have no photo signs on the swords. Photos of Samurai suit were ok though. I would get a sore neck wearing that.

Rather predictably, you cannot get outside at the top level, so this and the next photo are shot through dirty glass.

Groups of school kids were arriving. The glass was really dirty here, like someone spilled coffee on it and tried to wipe it off with a snotty tissue.

After walking back to the station and taking a 30 minute train, I arrived at Kurashiki. Here is the view in the direction away from the tourist zone.

I will go this way, but I will not go outside.

There is a Shotengai that takes you all the way there, it starts off looking very abandoned.

It gets a bit better as you go on, but still 50% vacant stores.

Before doing canal appreciation, I discovered that there is a hill to climb, with a shrine of course. So climb I did.

The shrine is famous for its rope.

Down there is the historic quarter. Which means 3/4 of Kurashiki is not historic. They need to cut a tree down.

This is the best I could find for a view of the historic quarter roof tops.

Before hitting the canals, it was time to explore the ice cream shops. There are a lot.

There were less tourists than I was expecting.

And now for the canal, the boat tours were sold out, so I missed out.

I think I saved shot of the day for last. The sun today was out of control!

Here are the large buildings and some of the department stores near the station area. There is also a lot of construction going on. I suspect the main bus terminal which is currently in the old part of town, is now moving to the station area too.

Back near the famous garden I found an underground fountain. There is also a cactus garden terrarium (not pictured), and public toilets. What more could you ask for?

Back at the main Omotecho Shotengai, and all those lit up signs in a row look impressive, but most of them have empty shops below.

I found the guitar shop! Cheap guitars only, nothing I was interested in looking at. There were also numerous saxophone stores, including one called 'windy passage'.

Apparently this is a busy restaurant street. Hmmm.

Right back by the station I did find a slightly busy area, here it is. This is the busiest corner I can find in all of Okayama.

Alternatively, here is another large department store. Closing at 7pm.

And so it was back to the station for Tonkatsu from famous chain brand Saboten. Slightly more expensive than other similar places, but you get to do a lot of extra steps for your dinner and watch tables full of people smash plates and fire chopsticks across the restaurant (4 separate incidents while I was there). You see when you sit down they bring you sesame seeds in a mortar and pestle that you have to grind up. They also bring a pile of cabbage that you have to distribute into another bowl and add dressing to. There are also teapots of different sauces, and the cabbage dressing choices in big bottles. Then there is also the miso soup, rice, pickled vegatables, cup of tea. For me at a table for 2 on my own, I could manage, just. But when they put 4x as much stuff at a table for a group of 4, there is not enough room, and people grinding their sesame seeds and juggling sauces send a lot of crockery flying.
Tomorrow, you guessed it, is a hiking day.