The Travels of Dude.: Okayama & Kyoto

For the last couple days that Jason was in Japan we decided to take some time away from walking the Henro, and do a little sightseeing. Even being on the most remote side of Shikoku, the public transportation is fairly efficient. We started our day at 6am walking 16.5 miles arriving at temple 38. In order to get to Kyoto, we had to take a bus for two hours arriving at a train station in Nakamura. Fifteen minutes later we were on a train for two hours arriving back in Kochi. We immediately transferred to another train out of Kochi heading towards Okayama.

Okayama is on a different island than Shikoku (Honshu). To get there, the train crosses the Great Seto Bridge which was incredible. We spent a short evening in Okayama and hopped on a train moving 200 miles an hour to Kyoto. During all of this with no exaggeration, we passed through at least 200 tunnels with a total distance of more than 40 miles under ground. This bridge was built in 1988 and spans over 8 miles

Torii Gates

After touring around Kyoto all day, I decided to treat myself to a massage. While laying there half asleep, every phone around started screaming Earthquake….. Earthquake 😳

Being on the 5th floor of a building at the time, you could feel the building moving like crazy. After about 20 seconds, everyone went about their business like nothing happened. It was an experience I won’t ever forget.

Kyoto at night

This was a creative way to design a bathroom. It was actually quite functional as well. As you can see, the shower/tub faucet works for either the tub, or the sink. The tank for the toilet was also incorporated into the countertop.

I contemplated going to measure the depth of these apartments. It took more width of this building to build the stairway and breezeway than it did for the living space.