Japan Day 5, Leaving Miyajima and Onward to Kurashiki!

This will be a short post., since this was probably our least eventful day. I also didn't have the use of my camera this day, because my computer wasn't allowing me to copy all the pictures I'd taken on to it. So really, this entery will be quiet boring, but I'm going to borrow some of the pictures that Megan took to try and liven it up a bit

Anyway, the next morning we got up really early to beat the rush to the ferry dock. We had a quick (delicious) breakfast and took cabs down to the station. This was partially because it was fastest and partly because otherwise Dr. Huang was afraid we'd get distracted by the deer again. (A valid concern.)

After we said bye to Miyajima and took the ferry across the way. we set our for our tour of the Mazda museum, where we would see the history and making of the well know Japanese brand of cars. This was probably the leg of the trip I was least excited about, since I don't have much interest in cars at all. But it was an alright tour.

Some of the cars on display. You could even go inside these particular one's if you wanted too.

Mazda's first ever vehicle.

One of Mazda's "future cars"!

After we left the Museum we headed back to Hiroshima station to pick up our stored luggage and went to our hotel in Kurashiki to store it until we came back that night for check in. After that, we headed to Okayama Castle, a re-constructed Shougun's home in Okayama.

After we toured the castle, which had been turned into a museum inside, we explored the vast garden park nearby. The garden would have been more of a site to see if it hadn't been in the middle of early spring renovations. But Megan and I did find one small, seemingly abandoned shrine in the woods there. We spent a good portion of our time hanging out beside it.

The little shrine.

After that, we headed back to our hotel in Kurashiki and were set free to do whatever we wanted. We ended up finding a mall not far from out hotel and the train station, and we ventured there to find dinner at the food court. While there, we met some friendly locals around our age who tried to talk to me about sports, since I was American. I had no idea how to contribute to the conversation, both because of my limited Japanese and my lack of sports knowledge, but it was nice of them to try.

After eating, Megan found a shop with a really cool-looking coat in it. The only young woman working there spoke almost no English, but she still conversed with us and helped Megan try the coat on as if there was no language barrier at all. (This was actually a pretty common reaction from retail workers we met. More on that in a later post.) She was very sweet and Megan did ended up buying the coat from her, for the record.

We headed back to the hotel after that, and most of the group hung around in our room for a while to chat. It was a nice easy-going sort of night that was perfect to prepare us for our four hour train ride to Tokyo the next day. =D

I'm on a roll tonight, now that I'm home and feeling the effects of jet lag. Lets see if I can't get one more post out before I crash tonight.

Ja ne~