We had previously made plans to meet Asuka again on this day. Her family lives in Akashi so we made our way over there. She was right on time. The plan for the day was to go to Himeji so we caught the train over there.
Our first stop was Himeji-jo. Charles had been to Himeji-jo before but it was my first time. We explored the grounds a bit. I was wearing a shirt that said “Zetsurin Pawaa!” (which is a little on the rude side in Japanese) so a lot of old women were giving me the evil eye. I would giggle whenever someone gave me a dirty look.
The castle grounds were a little sparse because spring was not in full force yet so the trees were not as full as they could have been. The inside of the castle was as small museum. Climbing the stairs was a chore. The steps were very small and the headroom was almost non existant. Charles and I had to squish occasionally to get through some places.
After Himeji-jo we went for lunch. We started walking down the street hoping to find somewhere to eat. We stumbled across a place called Dreams Cafe, a devision of Study Light Corporation. It was their grand opening that day. We decided to go there for lunch. They were still trying to figure out how everything worked so the service was terrible. Also the food was not anything too great. We were their first foreign guests. Whee!
With the disappointing lunch behind us we caught a bus over to the base of a mountain to get a cable car up to Shoshazen Engyo Ji. Basically this place is a giant temple on top of the maountain. It is divided up into a bunch of smaller buildings, each with it's own purpose. Different shrines dedicated to different things.
From the cable car landing point we had to walk uphill for a long time until we got to the interesting part. There is a bus that does the trip but we decided to walk it.
At one of the buildings we had a surreal moment. We were in the dormitories for student priests and up on the balcony over-looking a courtyard, when we suddenly noticed that the area was totally silent. No wind, no rustling trees, no bird, no animals, no insects. Nothing. We stood for a few moments to listen to the nothing.
We explored the whole complex for a while and then headed back. The walk down was a lot easier than the walk up. The ride down the cable car went by with nothing to say about it. Charles and I have a friend who comes from the area that we were in and he said we should try the peaches because the area is famous for them. In his honour we got some peach juice from a vending machine.
We caught the bus to Himeji eki. There was a mix up with the bus fare but the driver was scared of Charles and I so so he didn't say anything to us but he forced Asuka to pay extra.
From the station we walked down a covered shopping street and went to a Mister Doughnut. MisDo (as the Japanese call it) has a point card system where every time you buy something you get points. You can trade the points in for various things. Free coffee, discounts, small trinkets etc. At the time they had a special on where you could get a vibrating cushion for 150 points. Asuka really wanted one of these cushions. We were poking fun at her for obvious reasons.
We got our doughnuts and by the end we had 50 points to give to her as a starter. She only needed to get 100 more points on her own. She was crushed. That is a lot of doughnuts for a Japanese person to try to eat. The cushions were a limited item. Only 144,00 were available for all of Japan.
We went to a Yoshinoya for dinner and went back to the station to head back to Akashi. We said goodbye to her there and left. She said she wants to visit Ottawa some day but she never gave us her contact information so even if she comes to town, we will never know.
After she left we made a vow not to get so attached to the people we meet again.
We got back to the hotel and got everything packed up ready to go to Hiroshima the next day.
We were both exhausted. I barely had the energy to go to the washroom before going to bed.
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