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Tottori. I'm in the Toyoko Inn in Yonago City right now. Wheeeee.
Let's see. Today started with Benoit and I taking the shinkansen to Himeji so we could go to the castle. I've only actually ever gone through the castle once, in 2001 on my first trip to Japan, so my recollection of the history and whatnot is getting fuzzy and I could use a refresher.
Tokyo 9:50 -> 12:59 Himeji
Basically, after the Seishun 18 fuckup, today was a free-for-all anyway... my goal was just to spend the night in Tottori prefecture to cross it off my list, and Yonago is the closest you can get to being in Tottori yet being a stone's throw from Shimane. Shinkansen to Okayama would have been more direct, but I figured Himeji would be great for Benoit to see...
...until we actually got there and found out that it has been under constuction since October 2009, to renovate some parts of it, a 5-year project. I last stopped by in August 2009, which was right before it started, I suppose, and I didn't actually go in the castle then, just took a photo outside of it. Whoops.
So it turns out that the main deal is, you can only go through the west tower, aka Princess Sen's tower. You can't go through the main tower all the way up to the top and see the nice view of the city. That was a huge disappointment as it is, but even more disappointing was what the construction looked like -- they built this huge shack around the castle with a fake castle drawn on it. WTF.
I can already hear Carl going "WTF?"
So I had to settle for this shot of one of the guard towers by the moat to look all castle-like and not construction-like.
And for amusement value I took this picture. It was outside a department store and basically says "Please use this picture to take a commemorative photo! And while you are at it please come shop at our store! Welcome to Himeji!"
Shrug. We still walked around the castle area for a good 2-3 hours and that was with no castle to go through. Doesn't bode well for Matsue tomorrow... we'll actually be on a real timeframe then.
Himeji 16:36 -> 16:55 Aioi
Aioi 16:58 -> 18:08 Okayama
Actually, this was more like 18:15 Okayama -- there was this GIGANTIC signal light failure outside the station and a ton of trains got held up for several minutes. The downside was, it pretty much meant we weren't going to take the express train from Okayama to Yonago at 19:05. Which isn't really THAT big a deal, I suppose. (It would have cost 5300 yen each instead of 2500 yen each.)
I insisted on going to find an udon place for dinner because we could get some decent sanuki udon in the area (it's close enough), and I figured there had to be a vegetarian option. So we did. I think I'd actually been to that restaurant before on another trip through Okayama, but whatever -- it was really good! I had niku udon and Benoit had a veggie udon dish.
Okayama 19:48 -> 23:16 Yonago
Yes, this was a 3 and a half hour local train ride through the middle of nowhere, on the Hakubi line. Hooray. The train was actually really crowded for the first 5-6 stops, maybe the first 45 minutes of the ride. But between Bichu-Takahashi and Niimi, the ENTIRE train emptied out, except for us. We were literally the only people on the train for the last 2 hours of the ride. It was dark, but we could see the huge piles of snow on the side of the road and on the platforms.
Honestly, though, this train was really a nice one for a local -- it had booth seats, and there was even a toilet on the train. Aside from taking almost twice as long as the express, I can't find any faults with it. We were able to stretch out and go to sleep easily. Well, Benoit went to sleep and I amused myself by going around taking funny pictures with my camera's timer. Like this one, of me lying down on the shelf by the place where wheelchairs would theoretically go if anyone in the sticks had one:
Finally we got to Yonago and checked in to the Toyoko Inn. I'm assuming Benoit is already asleep. We're gonna try to be on a train at 9:30am to Matsue so we can see a snow-covered castle there too.
SEE I AM REALLY IN TOTTORI PREFECTURE.
Hmm.
Yeah, I should go to sleep... I didn't really sleep that much on the trains, relatively.
Oh, one last bonus shot. I kinda sorta made up for my Mountain FAIL from the other week:
Except that unlike the local trains, where you get a clear shot of Fuji for like 20 minutes or more, on the shinkansen, you get to see it for like 2 minutes.
Oh, and one more thing...
I forgot to try to get yatsuhashi when we were in Himeji -- it slipped my mind that it was a Kansai thing and I think Benoit would really like it. Oops. So in Okayama I poked my head into some of the omiyage places like "I know Kyoto is relatively far, but do you have yatsuhashi??" Instead I found something I had never heard of before, murasuzume...
Japanese wiki: Murasuzume
It's basically a crepe-like pancake around red bean paste (or other stuff I suppose). They explained to me that it's supposed to be a variation on dorayaki. So I bought a box of 5 and we tried them on the train, and they're REALLY GOOD! OMG! I'm not sure I'd say they're better than dorayaki or better than yatsuhashi, (and totally not better than the dorayaki-yatsuhashi combo I've found a few times), but it was a really tasty surprise. Benoit loves red bean paste so he's had a good day, we also found him anpan in the morning in Tokyo station as well, and in the afternoon he got to try curry bread for the first time too.
In more of my love-hate relationship with the country I can't help but just note again how damn GOOD the food here is. Sigh.
Let's see. Today started with Benoit and I taking the shinkansen to Himeji so we could go to the castle. I've only actually ever gone through the castle once, in 2001 on my first trip to Japan, so my recollection of the history and whatnot is getting fuzzy and I could use a refresher.
Tokyo 9:50 -> 12:59 Himeji
Basically, after the Seishun 18 fuckup, today was a free-for-all anyway... my goal was just to spend the night in Tottori prefecture to cross it off my list, and Yonago is the closest you can get to being in Tottori yet being a stone's throw from Shimane. Shinkansen to Okayama would have been more direct, but I figured Himeji would be great for Benoit to see...
...until we actually got there and found out that it has been under constuction since October 2009, to renovate some parts of it, a 5-year project. I last stopped by in August 2009, which was right before it started, I suppose, and I didn't actually go in the castle then, just took a photo outside of it. Whoops.
So it turns out that the main deal is, you can only go through the west tower, aka Princess Sen's tower. You can't go through the main tower all the way up to the top and see the nice view of the city. That was a huge disappointment as it is, but even more disappointing was what the construction looked like -- they built this huge shack around the castle with a fake castle drawn on it. WTF.
I can already hear Carl going "WTF?"
So I had to settle for this shot of one of the guard towers by the moat to look all castle-like and not construction-like.
And for amusement value I took this picture. It was outside a department store and basically says "Please use this picture to take a commemorative photo! And while you are at it please come shop at our store! Welcome to Himeji!"
Shrug. We still walked around the castle area for a good 2-3 hours and that was with no castle to go through. Doesn't bode well for Matsue tomorrow... we'll actually be on a real timeframe then.
Himeji 16:36 -> 16:55 Aioi
Aioi 16:58 -> 18:08 Okayama
Actually, this was more like 18:15 Okayama -- there was this GIGANTIC signal light failure outside the station and a ton of trains got held up for several minutes. The downside was, it pretty much meant we weren't going to take the express train from Okayama to Yonago at 19:05. Which isn't really THAT big a deal, I suppose. (It would have cost 5300 yen each instead of 2500 yen each.)
I insisted on going to find an udon place for dinner because we could get some decent sanuki udon in the area (it's close enough), and I figured there had to be a vegetarian option. So we did. I think I'd actually been to that restaurant before on another trip through Okayama, but whatever -- it was really good! I had niku udon and Benoit had a veggie udon dish.
Okayama 19:48 -> 23:16 Yonago
Yes, this was a 3 and a half hour local train ride through the middle of nowhere, on the Hakubi line. Hooray. The train was actually really crowded for the first 5-6 stops, maybe the first 45 minutes of the ride. But between Bichu-Takahashi and Niimi, the ENTIRE train emptied out, except for us. We were literally the only people on the train for the last 2 hours of the ride. It was dark, but we could see the huge piles of snow on the side of the road and on the platforms.
Honestly, though, this train was really a nice one for a local -- it had booth seats, and there was even a toilet on the train. Aside from taking almost twice as long as the express, I can't find any faults with it. We were able to stretch out and go to sleep easily. Well, Benoit went to sleep and I amused myself by going around taking funny pictures with my camera's timer. Like this one, of me lying down on the shelf by the place where wheelchairs would theoretically go if anyone in the sticks had one:
Finally we got to Yonago and checked in to the Toyoko Inn. I'm assuming Benoit is already asleep. We're gonna try to be on a train at 9:30am to Matsue so we can see a snow-covered castle there too.
SEE I AM REALLY IN TOTTORI PREFECTURE.
Hmm.
Yeah, I should go to sleep... I didn't really sleep that much on the trains, relatively.
Oh, one last bonus shot. I kinda sorta made up for my Mountain FAIL from the other week:
Except that unlike the local trains, where you get a clear shot of Fuji for like 20 minutes or more, on the shinkansen, you get to see it for like 2 minutes.
Oh, and one more thing...
I forgot to try to get yatsuhashi when we were in Himeji -- it slipped my mind that it was a Kansai thing and I think Benoit would really like it. Oops. So in Okayama I poked my head into some of the omiyage places like "I know Kyoto is relatively far, but do you have yatsuhashi??" Instead I found something I had never heard of before, murasuzume...
Japanese wiki: Murasuzume
It's basically a crepe-like pancake around red bean paste (or other stuff I suppose). They explained to me that it's supposed to be a variation on dorayaki. So I bought a box of 5 and we tried them on the train, and they're REALLY GOOD! OMG! I'm not sure I'd say they're better than dorayaki or better than yatsuhashi, (and totally not better than the dorayaki-yatsuhashi combo I've found a few times), but it was a really tasty surprise. Benoit loves red bean paste so he's had a good day, we also found him anpan in the morning in Tokyo station as well, and in the afternoon he got to try curry bread for the first time too.
In more of my love-hate relationship with the country I can't help but just note again how damn GOOD the food here is. Sigh.
