Got up and said goodbye to our final tatami-mat room for the trip. Also said goodbye to the Iya Valley.
Lots of time on a bus obviously as we traversed around to different areas. We typically sat at the back of the bus (Rachel and I very often were the ones in the absolute back). Chatted a bunch but also slept it can kind of lull you to sleep riding in the bus. I also decided early on that I was going to bring a book along and read a book on the trip instead of doom-scrolling endlessly (although I did plenty of that as well unfortunately. . . need to somehow rid myself of a phone ;) ). I brought along with me "Long Road" by Steven Hyden which is a book about Pearl Jam and their history. I got it for Christmas I want to say in 2022 but I have such a large stack of books ever-growing that I just barely got to starting it on this trip. Killer book if you love Pearl Jam like I do of course but also if you grew up in the 90's and find yourself basically being stuck in that decade musically. Back in March I read a book "60 Songs That Explain the 90's" which has an accompanying podcast and I've absolutely loved reading about these bands from these times.
So anyway total sidebar there but part of my Japan experience was re-engaging with my favorite band while on these long bus rides and timing would have it that they released a new album "Dark Matter" as well right when we were on this trip (some other lesser known artist- I think her name is Taylor Swift- also released an album on the same day that seemed to get some attention even on the other side of the world in Japan).
We stopped first at the Zentsuji Temple in Kagawa. This is a Shingon School of Buddhism Temple. We got to sit and meet with a monk and ask him questions. I was quite fascinated I think we talked to him for ~40 minutes and I think nearly everyone in the group wanted to talk longer. I think in my mind I always picture monks as essentially raised that way and they were monks their whole life. This man was a book salesman until he was ~30 (now 40 years old). Said his career wasn't going the way he wanted and wanted to make some life changes and had essentially a mentor suggest he become a monk. So he did! Fascinating. The other part I learned was it can function like a job. This monk did not live on site (another new learning), he commuted in to the temple. I didn't catch if he himself was married with kids but my takeaway was there are different "schools" or sects within Buddhism and Shintoism and some have monks full-time livelihood, on-site style and some are much looser. We unfortunately couldn't take pictures inside the temple where we interviewed him. I just found on trip advisor a link to better pictures than mine below here that has a couple pics of the main inside.
These grounds were super beautiful but we were a tad rushed after our interview so I didn't see the entire grounds. I do recall having a conversation with myself as we left the grounds about how I need to do better on my dieting and really establish a healthy eating routine. Not two minutes later we were in the little gift shop and they had the ice cream cone covered ice cream bar that is so tasty and of course without even thinking I had it purchased and on it's way to my tummy!
Our next stop was to a shop where we learned how to make Udon noodles! I just looked up Kagawa Japan and the google suggestion was "What is Kagawa famous for?" and the answer was "Udon Noodles". There were a bunch of high school kids leaving the restaurant/store when we got there they were all excited to say "Hello" to us in English and give us high-fives. Pretty fun.
Udon noodles seem relatively simple to make it appears to me to be a certain type of flour mixed with water. We mashed it up and rolled out the dough and even had a big dance party stomping on the dough to flatten it out. Fun time making the noodles for sure. After we were taken upstairs to the restaurant for lunch where we cooked our own noodles in a boiling pot and had additional Japanese fare. On the ramp upstairs was a great poster of Japanese men in "Onsen" we were all laughing at it.
Downstairs on the main floor was a store and it had ice cream with little sugar balls on it. We saw this all over the place so we bought it at this store. My take was probably not worth the extra the main soft serve is where it's at.
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After noodles and ice cream we went to the Ritsurin Garden. This was a beautiful large Japanese garden with lots of ponds and waterways surrounding the various trees and gardens. I saw a big-time bonzai tree (nod to Karate Kid!) and we saw tons of koi fish. There was an area of canoes with guide-led canoe ride I thought briefly of the time in Venice where I refused to pay for a Gondola ride for myself and Rachel (80 Euro at the time . . and honestly I'm still not sure I'd want to pay 80 Euro for a canoe ride in dirty water) but this time we didn't really have an opportunity to ride them we just saw them as we moved through the garden.
We got on a ferry again and rode over an island/town called Naoshima and checked in to a museum/hotel called the Benessee House. Checking into this hotel was admittedly a breath of fresh air it was a standard bed. The previous 3 nights of tatami mats were a cool experience but we were ready to get back to a bed for sleeping. Very cool hotel we were floor level but had a little patio and view straight to the ocean.
We had been strategic in our planning that we needed to get to the Benessee house and that was our planned spot to do laundry. It had appeared pre-trip they offered laundry service so that was the target. They did have laundry service but they didn't really have dryer service. They had a single small stackable washer and dryer. The dryer took like 2.5 hours for a small load to dry. Davis' did a load first and even after 2.5 hours their stuff wasn't dry so we just took our stuff back to our room and hung it up everywhere. We did the same thing essentially in Paris in 2015 it's funny to try to find every nook and cranny opportunity in a hotel room to try and hang stuff out on.
We toured the main museum (where funny enough the washer and dryer were located instead of the hotel) that night. I missed most of dinner trying to handle the laundry but we came back late at night and toured the museum. This museum had lots of contemporary art.
My favorite piece was this massive wall of basically all the world's flags. I of course found Paraguay and snapped a pic. At first glance it's hard to understand what's going on. As we got closer we realized each flag was actually a sand farm for ants. The entire mapped area of all the flags were connected and ants had moved through all of them moving dirt and creating pathways. A unique exhibit. there were a handful of "blank" flags where dirt could be pushed through the connection tubes. I don't truly understand how the artist set this up or pulled off with the flags still being in recognizable form but it was interesting.
Last but not least of the day we were woken up around 11:15 PM (I was certainly in a dead sleep by this time) by an alarm on my phone going crazy. I thought I had mistakenly set an alarm somehow but it was an earthquake alert! I woke up and saw it and Rachel woke up too and probably within 30 seconds the earthquake started. I could feel the shaking and it seemed like it lasted 10-15 seconds. I was bracing myself for something more. . .to me it seemed like a train was moving by right next to our building and causing some shaking. A bit of a weird sensation, but it passed and nothing fell off shelves or broke or anything so I fell back right back asleep. Without the alarm blasting to notify us I'm not sure it would've woken me up. It ended up being a 6.4 earthquake in the Ehime Prefecture quite a few miles away. Unique memory!
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