After finishing the Shimanami Kaido in Imabari, we took the train to a small onsen town called Kotohira.
Kotohira was a cute little town with a main street of interesting shops leading to a large set of stairs to the main shrine complex. There was also a sake museum where you could learn about the traditional process for making sake, and then a sake tasting in the attached shop, which was pretty fun!
We were staying at a Ryokan hotel with in-room baths as well as public baths and a foot bath! Of course we made use of all of them for most of the afternoon before dinner, and they had a nice view over the town and the mountains in the distance.
We also had dinner provided, which was a pretty yummy kaiseki meal. Before bed I took advantage of one of the private outdoor baths, which had a (kind of creepy if I'm honest) view of the forest at night.
We were only staying there one night and hadn't made it up the stairs to the main shrine, so I wanted to do that in the morning before we left. Unfortunately Henry started not not feel very well that day, but I really wanted to see the shrine, and because my sleep patterns were messed up and I kept waking up at 6am anyway, I decided to trek up there in the morning before breakfast.
Despite the hundreds of steps to the top, it was really nice to explore the shrine complex before most people were up and about, with some really nice morning sunlight.
On the way back down I heard some rustling next to me and realised it was a snake! I am still not sure what kind this was.
Unfortunately it was on the way back from this morning walk that I started to feel a bit under the weather too, and we had a big travel day ahead of us to make our way to our next destination: Osaka. Luckily there was a nice big breakfast waiting for me at our hotel before we checked out.
Osaka
We were too early to check into our hotel, so we had lunch at a nearby kissaten which was really cute.
We have been to Osaka 3 times now and I still haven't quite seen the appeal of it compared to other cities I've been to in Japan. Unfortunately again, this time we weren't able to explore much more of Osaka due to being sick and trying to not push ourselves too much.
Henry sadly spent most of Osaka sick in the hotel room, 0nly venturing out to to nearby chain restaurants for refueling.
Kobe day trip
Despite still feeling not 100%, I wanted to try to meet up with our exchange student Manami in her home city of Kobe (sadly Henry was too sick to make it). We had a lovely day out of temple exploring and seeing some cute kids dressed up for Shichi-Go-San festivities, and then went for a fancy Kobe Beef lunch before exploring Kobe Port until I completely ran out of energy and had to head back to the hotel to rest.
If you look closely at the photos you can progressively see the light fade from my eyes as my sick body reaches the limits of it's capacity.
Other Osaka adventures
I ventured out with Henry's sisters to do some vintage shopping in a nearby shopping centre one day, and headed off on my own on another day to check out a cool shop I had heard about that is only in Kyoto and Osaka: Nuunu. The concept of the store is that you can dig for original artworks similar to digging for records, which was a fun way to kill some time, and I got some interesting original pieces. I also got to have my first shrimp burger from Mos Burger (one of many on this trip).
On our last evening in Osaka we managed to have a nice Okonomiyaki dinner with Manami and Henry's family before we all parted ways.
We also managed to fit in going to a late night dessert place with some crazy shaved ice creations.
The next day, it was my turn to take it easy in the morning to try to get over being sick while Henry tried to fit in going to the Takenaka Carpentry Museum before we had to head off on a train to our next destination. The Nakanoshima Museum of Art was right next to our hotel so I thought I would check out the exhibitions there, but it seems like I was there when a lot of the exhibitions were changing over, so only got to see one thing which was a little underwhelming, but there were a few interesting works.
I then had to get a taxi to carry all our bags to the station we had to get our next train from. I was a bit worried because the taxi driver kept trying to confirm the station name with me, and then dropped me at street level next to a set of stairs down to the station. After wandering around a while at street level to try to find a lift, I pulled out some of my beginner Japanese to ask some young women if there was a lift anywhere, and they ended up just carrying my very heavy suitcases down the stairs for me! So sweet! Next trip I need to have some gifts to give to kind people like that.
That's all for this post, I am back home now and sick (again!) so I am trying to catch up on the backlog of posts for Japan.
Tune in next time for: Japan's empty Spain-themed theme park, pretty views, a lonely mailbox, retro ryokans from the bubble era, temples and dolphin showers.
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