Hotel Town Honmachi Kochi

Luckily for us we were invited by Vicky, one of the head JETs in Matsuyama, to an event that would turn out to be one of the best experiences of my life: hiking to the top of Mount Ishizuchi. Ishizuchi is the highest mountain on Shikoku as well as in all of western Japan. It is an impressively jagged horn shapped mountain surrounded by beautiful forested mountains. The mountain is actually more of a ridge and at its highest peak is 1982m high ( which also happens to be ...

... than blah. From Okayama took the express down to Kochi, on the south face of Shikoku. We passed through some of the best scenery I've seen to date, mostly because Shikoku is not really developed or inhabited especially in the Iya valley region in the middle of the island. I was sleeping on and off and woke up to use traveling along a massive gorge and strung across it was a string of carp banners and windsocks (around Koboke I guess ...

... mentre fuori diluviava. E prima di arrivare li sono stata in un onsen con vasca all'aperto vista fiume, e pioggia. Un tantino stile decadente e malinconico come panorama, ma bellissimo. Ora sono diretta a Muroto misaki, il capo a sud di Shikoku. volo a prendere il treno. Baci a tutti!

Primo traghetto che personalmente a me da una particolare libidine caricarci la moto e navigare per mare ogni tanto. Fiondo nell' isola di Shikoku , l' isola di un pellegrinaggio Zen da 1500 km attraverso 88 templi . Io la taglio a meta' naturalmente per montagne e dormo a Kochi altra citta' di mare e naruralmente si cena a base di sushi freschissimo . Sto viaggiando un po in fretta un mio amico a Shizuoka mi ha invitato ad andare ad Iwata a visitare la fabbrica della Yamaha .Potevo dire di no?

brianne made the mistake of NOT coming home and sitting right down to enter these details.... so now she barely recalls them :( ~but to make a long story short.... my friend shannon copp (a shiga JET) invited myself and two other shiga JETs (Nan, and Anna) to ...

... labour and a number of American prisoner of war soldiers who were not known to be in the area.They burn a flame at the site and it is supposed to be extinguished when the last nuclear device is destroyed. I guess unfortunately it might as well be an eternal flame.From Hiroshima I bulleted my way to Okayama.

... how they all managed to stay afloat because there weren't that many tourists there. I got my answer when I actually went to buy something from one of the shacks. The little old lady behind the counter tried to force me into buying a Hello Kitty cheesecake as well. I politely declined but I doubt that everyone else would have the heart to do the same. Miyajima is really famous for its floating tori, a Shinto shrine gate which stands in the sea. It's one of the ...

... one is on wheels, and the other is carried by a lot of people underneath it. Both are elaborately carved, heavy, and really big. They're also surrounded by drunken men dragging them thru the streets. We parked the car after we'd found where a bunch of them were sitting still. There were apparently quite a few starting points, especially since this small town had to hold approximately 80 of these shrines. We parked in ...

... stunning scenery my skills improved. We saw some gorgeous terrain, walked across local vine bridges, & folded in mirrors many times for crawling past oncoming cars. Upon returning the car and being politely informed that there was no insurance, 7000Yen please ($65) for damaged hubcap, the otherwise great day ended. I told Masaki, (this is how I speak every day), "You know sometimes fisherman go to sea and there is typhoon?" "When they come ...

... dog controlling the match or the other yelping or turning to get away, the top dog is declared the winner. Other research says that there is supposedly full tournaments, similar to the Sumo ones that they have here. The top dog is given the rank of Yokozuna, just like in sumo. They even have small posters that are similar to the sumo ones showing the names of the dogs and their rankings as ozeki. The matches have a 30 min time limit, and the matches sometimes end up bloody, and deaths ...