Day 10 - Katsurahama, Kochi castle and surrounds

Sakamoto Ryoma is a famous figure in Kochi. This Southern samurai was a prominent figure in trying to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate. At that time, Japan was still relatively closed off to foreigners and he came to the view that Japan should embrace modernization. He was responsible for negotiating a treaty between two powerful Southern provinces to overthrow the government and create a non-feudal, more equal Japan. Successful? Yes, but he paid the price of it with is life.

History lesson over!

In my last post I showed you what Tosa-Yamada looked like outside of our hotel window at night. Well here it is during the early morning. Young primary school kid walking to school with her yellow hat. Just like in anime!

In the distance you can see the mountain regions of Kochi. 

After breakfast, we got picked up by our Kochi University of Technology friend for a day of sight seeing. First off, the beach to see a famous shrine.

Rather overcast (but still hot). You can see the shrine perched on the rock in the distance.

Apparently Katsurahama shrine is famous, but it is terribly tiny (and the doors to the shrine was closed when we got there). Lots of people go there. We were told if we came a bit later there would be bus loads of people. Around Katsurahama is the Sakamoto Ryoma statue, an aquarium and the Tosa-dog centre, which is a dog fighting centre. I was not remotely interested in seeing anything like that.

Back into the car to Kochi Castle. This is one of the few original castles in Japan. Majority of the other castles have been rebuilt, but this is still an original. It is actually quite a small castle, but that was actually good for us, we would have gotten bored not being able to understand everything if the place was too big.

 Entry costs 420yen and you buy your ticket using a vending machine and hand it in to the lady at the counter. They are right next to each other, wonder why she can't just accept the payment herself?  Be prepared to walk around barefoot, no shoes allowed inside.

There aren't many signs and the few that are there are in Japanese. You just get to walk around and get the feel of something that has been standing around since the 1600s

Tiny palaquin

You can climb to the top of the castle and get quite a good view of Kochi city with the mountain backdrop

An interesting diorama

Not sure why I took this. Looked interesting. Europeans have gargoyles, Japanese have fish I guess.

We the took a rather long drive to the country side. Here you get to see rural Japan a bit more. It's so lush and green and I'm sure we passed by a big tree that looked exactly like the tree from Totoro.

Lots of rivers.

The water takes on a blue/green hue in certain light.

By then it was time for us to catch our train back to Osaka. We were taken back to Tosa-Yamada, whereupon we collected our bags and went to the platform. As I said in the last post, small train stations do not have displays of the upcoming trains and all announcements are made in Japanese. I went to the opposite platform that we arrived in (makes sense right? We were going back so we take the opposite platform). Apparently there was an announcement in Japanese that our train would be arriving on the other (wrong!) platform, but we were blissfully unaware and sitting like dolts on the wrong platform. Until the attendant that checked our tickets ran up to us to tell us of the change in plan. Good thing he saw where we were going!

Just in time, we caught the train and rumbled our way back up to Okayama and then on to Shin-Osaka. Again we stayed at the Garden Palace and we chose the same room type. Because it was a weekday, the room was cheaper, but to me, it seemed bigger than last time. Thankfully no cigarette smoke in this room.

For dinner that night, we just visited the basement of the deparment stores to get yummy sushi and other Japanese goodness!

Next we were off to Kanazawa. A city on the North coast of Japan and well known for it's seafood. Yum yum