Sayonara

After breakfast Tuesday I took a last power walk around the beautiful castle park, saying goodbye to the swans, turtles, coy, and lone cormorant who reside in the castle moat. We biked over to visit the community library, and I washed one last time in the public bath in the hotel. We met my new friend Tatsui at a well-known sushi restaurant near the hotel and enjoyed the whole experience, including some (maybe a little too much) sake. By end of day we were packed and ready to go home. Early the next morning S, N, and M drove us to the small Matsuyama airport where our arduous return journey began. More than 24 hours later, after an expected 3-hr layover in the Nagoya airport, crossing back over the international date line during the 12-hr flight, and then an unexpected and unwelcome 4-hr layover in Detroit due to weather back East, I was finally back home with my guys (Ben, Wally the dog, and Wolf the cat), perhaps the most tired I have ever been. Nevertheless, in spite of my initial trepidation, I'm very glad I went. Even though we stayed mostly in off-the-beaten-path Shikoku, I believe we got a lot of the Japanese experience, and it was all good - well, OK, I'm still not a fan of eating octopus, but nevermind, I enjoyed so much else, much more than I expected, including the kindness and hospitality of the Japanese people we met. To see more selected photos from the trip, see: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/107215685196650364546/albums/6032348467511677393 (You may need to copy and paste into your browser.)

Iya Valley: Mountains!

Seth had a day off, so all five of us took off by car for the Iya Valley mountains in the central part of Shikoku Island. After an hour or 2 of highway driving, we found ourselves on narrow winding mountain roads, switchbacking up green forested slopes, supposedly wide enough for 2 cars but sometimes having to backup to a pull-off when we met another car. Small villages were precariously perched on the steep hillsides. We stopped to cross a vine bridge, hundreds of years old (but maintained) over a deep gorge with a whitewater stream at the bottom. Pretty exciting and not easy - gaps between the slats across the bridge, which swayed with our weight as we gingerly stepped across and tried not to look down (or looked anyway) at the whitewater rushing far beneath us. We came across waterfalls, a quaint local soba noodle restaurant where we ate lunch, and a small museum devoted to local folk life. This area is known for growing, grinding, and producing the buckwheat soba noodles - our lunch was delicious and the elderly woman who ran the restaurant delighted us. Three women from Tokyo doing a driving tour engaged us in friendly conversation about where we were from and why we were there. We saw a number of tour buses - this area seems popular with Japanese tourists, but again we saw few other Caucasians during the trip. We enjoyed the famous statue of the "peeing boy" who appears to be doing just that out over the edge of the gorge (pix later. ..). Mountain views were nspectacular, especially for us flatlanders. These mountains are very green, too steep even for logging, and much newer than our Eastern US mountains, with sharper peaks. I took many pix the last 2 days, including a photo of a typical vending machine that has 2 rows of various canned coffee: black, light, au lait, many different blends and brands. The Japanese seem to love cold/iced coffee (as well as hot) and it is always good.