A Castle and a Festival

Very full day! We can't believe we've only been here 3 days. We walked to the Matsuyama Castle, the main tourist site in the city, as much a fort as a castle, originally built in 1600s, added to or reconstructed each century since, sitting on top of a hill, now in the middle of a beautiful park with numerous walking trails, and around which the original city was built. It was about 98% humidity as we slowly trudged up the hill along with numerous Japanese tourists. It was a pleasant surprise to find English translations on many of the displays. At the top one can see views of the city out the windows of the main building, and tour a small museum about the various lords of the castle. Back at the bottom we visited the Shinonome shrine, so beautiful, quiet, and peaceful. Hot and tired, we looked for lunch places and stopped at one of the very few we have seen that had English signage outside: "fish and chips". The woman at the counter enthusiastically greeted us, and seemed incredibly grateful for our patronage, as there was no one else there. My fish sandwich and Sue's fried chicken were pretty awful, but we had great iced coffee and enjoyed people-watching and were apparently much appreciated. After a brief recovery enjoying the hotel's A/C, we set out for a Saturday festival which takes place along 2 long streets in an L shape which are permanently closed to traffic, covered, and lined with many shops and eating establishments on either side, with special food kiosks and entertainment for the festival in the middle, offering a variety of local delicacies and wares. Perhaps the most interesting, and, frankly, creepy, was a kiosk filled with small cages and open boxes containing live, 3-5 inch long black beetles. One assumes people buy them for pets. The Japanese certainly have a complicated relationship with nature (think shark fin soup, dolphins and whales, and what I recently read in the guidebook about captive "trained" cormorants that catch fish but can't swallow them so that the fishermen who have ringed their necks make them cough up the fish into the boat). Later we had a delicious dinner at home at the compact apartment of the "kids", during which Great-Aunt Cathy got to dance with 3-month-old Minato. What a sweetheart!