We were met with a statue of two dancing girls, which was a nice greeting...
And then we made our way to the proper gate, paid our admission, and were then greeted with this. A wide expanse of sun-scorched lawn.
I know that it feels like all I do is complain about the heat in Japan, but we had probably picked the hottest day of the lot to visit this garden. And all you could see for what felt like miles was paths where there was no escape from the sun. You can just spot Okayama Castle in the distance behind us in this shot, too.
We picked a path, one that looked like it would get us into a shaded area as fast as possible, and began plodding along (you couldn't walk too fast without feeling like you'd expire). Now don't get me wrong. It was beautiful!
But it felt so much more beautiful when you were in the shade!
We made our way around the outskirts of the garden, essentially because that was where the shade was to be found, catching glimpses of the castle along the way as we drew nearer to it.
We emerged into the scorching sunlight long enough to take a picture of the little creek running through the garden...
And climb a small hill for a vantage point back over the garden. Look at that. Just paths and grass, almost as far as the eye can see!
And then we delved back into the shade again.
And found some very nice little spots in the garden.
We were intrigued by all the little pebbles that had been placed on top of the beam in this Torii Gate.
And the paths themselves were beautifully neat and tidy and well kept.
It took quite a while to make our way around the garden, given how enormous it is. And by the time we felt like we'd seen most of it, we were well and truly ready for a rest. So we found a little cafe (so to speak) on the edge of the garden, across the river from Okayama Castle.
And we bought ourselves two flavoured ices, which we then attempted to eat faster than the air could melt them. Not a bad view, wouldn't you say?
We lingered for as long as we could, and then set out to cross the river and pay a visit to Okayama Castle.
It's apparently very rare for Japanese castles to be black. It's nicknamed 'Crow Castle' because of it.
And it has very spectacular gilded gold Shahihoko statues on the roof. Apparently all of the roof tiles were once gilded in gold too, which would have been an amazing sight.
As with most of the museums inside castles, there were no photos allowed, except of this hand carriage, which we were allowed to sit in (but only if we removed our shoes). Tom made the most of it.
We made fairly short work of the stroll through the castle, since the heat had already sapped most of our energy, so we started to make our way back toward the bus stop outside the Kurakuen Gardens.
Not before enjoying the picturesque vines growing all over the castle gate though!
And that's where we have a big gap in the pictorial evidence of that day. Here's why.
It was hot.
We were tired.
We had left our luggage back at our hotel in Kurashiki, so in order to actually catch a Shinkansen to our next destination, Kyoto, we had to return to our hotel, and lug our luggage back to the train station again, which meant we had to walk the 1 kilometre or so walk to and from the Kurashiki train station three times in one morning.
When we arrived in Japan, we went to the Tokyo train station and reserved seats on all of the Shinkansen journeys that we intended to take. However, in order to have our morning exploring Okayama, we had decided to miss our reserved train, and just get in the non-reserved carriage. How bad could it be?
It was not good. Well, in the grand scheme of things, it really wasn't the worst thing in the world. But we were hot, we were tired, we were hungry (because we didn't manage to eat lunch in Okayama) and I was pretty darn grumpy. And in a non-reserved carriage on a Shinkansen, the Japanese will trample children to get a seat. There's certainly no such thing as chivalry! So, I ended up squeezing myself in between the last seats and the back wall of the carriage just so that I could have a bit of space to sit down in. And so I stayed, until a couple of seats nearby were vacated and I launched myself at them (having learned at the last stop that you had to claim a seat within 3 seconds of it being emptied, or lose it).
And so we made our way to Kyoto, our final destination in Japan, where we would be spending a luxurious four nights. We managed to find our hotel without much drama, thankfully, and were ecstatic to find that the hotel had pay-per-use washing machines on every second floor! Washing machines!!!!! If you can't understand why that excited us so much, just imagine spending all day every day out in the sun in 100% humidity in the same three outfits that you've only been able to handwash with shampoo in a basin, and surely you can understand the appeal of machine washing.
So, we spent a glorious afternoon getting our clothes un-smelly, and then wandered a few blocks away to a restaurant that our hotel recommended for dinner. Their menu was mainly different types of meat on skewers.
We decided to be a little adventurous. Tom decided to sample Sake for the first time.
The verdict? Apparently not too bad.
We were seated directly in front of a window into the kitchen, so we got to watch the chefs making all of our food. It was quite entertaining.
The menu seemed to include mostly bits of animals that we weren't usually in the habit of eating - tendons, livers, hearts, etc. As you can see from my expression in the second shot here, I was obviously a bit nervous about eating that particular skewer. It might have been the chicken heart one. From memory, it wasn't actually too bad.
We even ordered some lotus roots, which were interesting. No real taste, and very crunchy. The curled up sausage was nice.
As you can see, we made up for our grumpy non-photographic afternoon by taking way too many photos of our dinner. With strange facial expressions.
And Tom capped it all off by demonstrating appropriate chopstick technique.
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