They had what was essentially a bakery downstairs, but upstairs was this gorgeous timber-filled cafe!
Not very traditional Japanese, but we figured we'd been quite loyal to Japanese food thus far, one little trip to French cuisine couldn't hurt.
Tom's coffee had a panda design in the milk!! Adorable.
We may have gone a little bit nuts with our order. We got a salmon sandwich, honey toast and little fruit scones. It was all incredible.
And then we made our way to the train station for the day's sightseeing. Unfortunately Tom had chosen to wear jeans for the day, which he promptly had to roll up as much as possible in order to save himself from expiring in the heat. It was an attractive look.
The other occupants of the train didn't seem to care. Love the business man with the hot pink phone.
We had had a friend recommend that we make a day trip out from Okayama to the island of Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four main islands. We took a local train from Kurashiki to Okayama, then switched to a train headed for Takamatsu, which crosses over to Shikoku via the Great Seto bridge, which is the longest bridge I think I've ever seen. It was incredible.
I think I probably took about 50 photos just on that train journey, trying to snap the view without the bars of the bridge in the way. I managed to get a few fairly unblocked shots!
Isn't that just incredible?
The crossing took about 20 minutes (that's 20 minutes on a bridge!!), and we decided to treat ourselves to some lunch at Takamatsu train station. We decided that we couldn't resist a lunch of fresh sashimi and udon noodles for the bargain price of 890 yen. That's the equivalent of roughly $11 AUD. Love it!
And the little restaurant (if you can call it that) was pretty cute. Not fancy, just friendly and comfortable.
Needless to say, we settled in for a delicious meal.
Tom decided to order some extremely fancy-looking sushi, which we watched being made in front of us.
Once we'd rolled ourselves out of the place (with the rest of Tom's sushi in a takeaway container - certainly couldn't complain about the portion sizes!), we decided to kill some time until our next train was due to arrive in a nearby supermarket. Thankfully we weren't in the market for soy sauce, because if we were, how on earth could we have decided with this kind of range to choose from!
That's the Japanese for you. Giant bottles of soy sauce, teeny tiny cans of beer.
We stocked up on some snacks for the rest of our journey, and then made our way back to the train, to board for our final destination, Kotohira.
This train journey was again picturesque, although nothing could quite beat that earlier trip over the water.
And then we arrived at Kotohira station. I'm not actually sure what the story of this building is. It was quite close to the train station, so we just snapped a picture and walked on by. It's pretty though, right?
Our main reason for coming to Kotohira was to visit Konpira-san, one of the oldest Shinto shrines in Japan, we were told. It was a little walk from the train station to the actual steps up to the shrine though, so we kept our eyes open for interesting sights on the way there. Like this incredibly narrow building! Isn't it crazy?!
This is it from the front. You wouldn't know that it's only about 1m wide!
A few blocks away was the start of the steps up to the shrine, lined on both sides with shops.
We seriously considered purchasing this hat, since the in-built cooling device would certainly be welcome in the crazy afternoon heat!
There are apparently 785 steps up to the main shrine at Konpira-san. So we climbed. And climbed. And climbed.
This wasn't the main shrine, just the end of the shopping sector, and the start of the proper shrine-y sector.
And it was beautiful!
All of those stones with carvings on them represent donations.
And there are a lot of them!
We climbed some more...
Found a dog to pat part of the way up...
And some lions...
This one seemed to enjoy Tom's attentions a bit more than the other one did.
And then we climbed more.
We were incredibly relieved that the bulk of the climb was shaded, since it was difficult enough in the heat and humidity without adding sunshine into the mix.
This was the final ascent to the main shrine, so we powered on. That guy on the left there ended up racing us to the top.
And we had made it! That's the main shrine behind us.
The view was pretty amazing, certainly made the climb worthwhile.
There was even a solar powered boat called Malt's Mermaid in pride of place in the centre of the little pavilion! Considering we were half way up a mountain we were a little surprised to see so many boats around the place!
We perched ourselves in a nice spot to cool down and enjoy the view and some fruit...
And then, because we're crazy and suckers for punishment, we decided to keep climbing. There's an additional 583 steps (or so we're told) up to the inner shrine, from the main shrine. With little baby shrines dotted along the path on the way up.
So we climbed...
And looked back at the way we'd come... and climbed and climbed and climbed.
Until we eventually reached the inner shrine at the top.
And could enjoy the spectacular view.
As you can see, the view of ourselves was slightly less spectacular after climbing in what must have been 100% humidity.
So we took a bit of time to enjoy our achievement (Donald Duck included) and cool down, before setting out for the trip down.
I'm very pleased to report that the route down was extremely civilised, unlike our Mt Fuji experience.
And we had a few opportunities to amuse ourselves taking photos along the way. We couldn't decide if this was a propeller or a flower. Whatever it was, it was big!!
I made friends with a stone elephant...
And eventually, we were back in the town of Kotohira at ground level, admiring the beginnings of the sunset.
And the extremely short doors!
And small cars that looked like they were grinning at you.
I think perhaps the more exhausted we were, the more easily amused we were. But there's no denying that the sunset from the train was beautiful!
So we headed back to our hotel at Kurashiki, finding something to eat for dinner along the way (I can't even remember what), and I managed to brave the communal showers since I desperately needed to wash the day off me (and my hair).
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