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| View from my friend's terrace at 7:45am |
Oh I slept so well the night before that I was ready for a
great day. And as usual I had been very lucky in terms of weather. Not a single
cloud in the sky even though other cities in Japan some snow had fallen on the
last couple of days.
Both of us woke up quite late so we didn't have breakfast
and instead waited a bit to have a proper lunch. We drove to Okayama and parked
very close to the Okayama castle. I don't know if it doesn't look good but we
parked in a stationary shop some 300 mts away from the castle. My friend was a
bit worried but honestly, what could happen? Nothing, so we left the car and
headed towards to castle.
Just before crossing the bridge I saw this motorbike that
caught my attention because it has one particular thing that I really liked,
the happy face on the exhaust.
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| Happy-face Motorbike Exhaust in Okayama |
The Castle itself is nice but to be honest it looks better
from the distance, because it was some nice trees, bushes. The composition of
it all makes it look great from outside. It was already noon and there was this
nice restaurant just outside the castle entrance.
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| Restaurant-near-korakuen-Okayama From outside it really dind't look as beautiful as it was inside. The restaurant managed to keep both the modern touch as well as the aesthetics of the zen architecture, that can be found around the country. View Restaurant near Korakuen Garden in a larger map |
I haven't mentioned one of the things I like to most about the Japanese society and it is the fact that you can see old people working as waitress and they work with passion. Like I've said before in my previous posts Japanese kindness and customer service quality is one of Japan best assets. The lack of English normally can be forgiven due to their enormous effort.
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| Fish lunch set in Korakuen |
The meal at that restaurant (check restaurant name) as any
other was great. This time it didn't let us down. We had a typical mix plate
with plenty of local fish and rice. The other plate was tempura vegetables and
oyster. If you ask me what is the difference between the cities' food I'd lie
to you since even now when I look at the pictures, it is very difficult for me
to see the difference. I'd say the difference is the difference fish they add
to the dish or the way to arrange the fish and that at some restaurants they
put more rice on the bottom of the bowl than on the other ones, but nothing
else. Okayama food so far - tastylicious! (I've just made it up).
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| tempura vegetables at Korakuen in Okayama |
As we were about to leave the resturant I saw that the
restaurant had a mini gallery where they were selling Okayama knitting art as
well as local pottery. Outside just next to the restaurant there was a local
souvenir shop with typical food from Okayama. We looked around a bit, to see if
they had anything special but nothing that caught our eyes, at least not mine.
The Okayama Castle has a Garden which is very close to each
other. I highly recommend you to visit it rather than the castle as this one
really didn't offer much. I'll explain you a bit more about it later. But first
let me introduce you the Okayama Royal Garden, truly a beautiful garden, even
though it was winter and most of the greeness was gone.
As you enter the garden you'll go a little zoo they have,
for me the must important one was the cage where they kept some cranes. Those
birds are huge indeed as well as beautiful. They really almost as high as me
(1,69 mts).
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| crane at Korakuen Garden in Okayama |
Perhaps, you'll be like me on the next part of the castle
but the way it is organised doesn't let you see too much beyond the forest. But
once you get to the little mill that takes water from the nearby river you'll
see an opening from the trees. Right there, you can see the beauty of this
garden. The vast field opens up showing a beautiful landscape. It's hard to
describe it so instead of adding some words I'll share some pictures.
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| Korakuen Garden and Okayama Castle background |
As all japanese gardens the presence of rivers, streams,
ponds are always there. In the case of the Okayama garden you can see this
amazing pond with huge koi fish and I managed to take a picture of just one of
them.
Perhaps you think that the garden was empty but not quite, however I tried to take pictures when people moved away. In that way I took the best picture tf the garden with no human-pollution, that would spoil the pictures. I personally think that there are pictures that having humans on them are a-must but sometimes just a single person can spoil a beautiful landscape.
If you notice the deep colours, the mix of dark green,
reddish leaves from the bushes as well as the light green of some trees makes
the whole composition great. Of course, some times it is impossible to have a
picture without people, but you get my point, don't you?
The garden was over and now we where going to walk to the
Castle, although I knew that we coulnd't get in because it was winter holiday.
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| Okayama Castle - 岡山城 |
As you can see the castle is huge but rather smaller
compared to the Osaka-jo or Osaka Castle. After taking some pictures there we
went to walk around Okayama City centre, because I was looking for a new camera
lens. We walked around and saw this funny (but confusing) restaurant called
Tavola Tapas. I wonder if this mismatch of country food was done on purpose,
regardless I decided to take a picture.
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| Italian Spanish Restaurant in Okayama |
On the way way to the electronic shop "Bic Camera"
we had a hilarious "lost in translation" moment. There were two young
men walking towards us and I was talking to my friend as I saw that one of them
dropped one of his gloves. Since I didn't know what to do what I did was to say
"oi, oi!" to what they looked at my like saying "wtf?" then
I pointed to the floor and one of them realised that he's dropped his glove so
he thanked me with a smile.
However, my friend was really scared because she thought
that I wanted to start a fight, since "oi, oi" in Japanese is what
men say to each other when they're trying to pick up a fight. LOL! Well, at
least I am a gai-jin and I was just trying to help the lad.
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| Bus stop in Okayama City |
As we got to BIC camera my friend told me that she now
wanted to buy an iPhone4. That was a surprise because the other phone she had
was a bit old but she didn't tell me that she wanted to buy a new mobile.
Brilliant! anyway that was going to take long so I went upstairs to look at all
photography gadgets they had. Oh my gooooD! Bic Camera could easily become my
second home if I ever move to Japan, that's for sure.
Anyway, after 30 mins I was done, the lens I wanted was not
in stock and the next was a Tamron which I still have mixed feelings about. 50
mins had passed but she was still there dealing with the lady. In the end, I
coulnd't believe when they gave her the mobile and she didn't have
iMessage..apparently it was dissable by the mobile provider and it was going to
be available this year in May, but sadly that's not the case because she still
has the same system. Bullocks!
Time to go back home and we had to walk a bit but it was
nice and the temperature had cooled down a bit. More people were on the streets
since it was 18.45 and everyone was leaving work by then. All of a sudden a
very nicely decorated tram passed acrossed the street. I have never been in the
US during Xmas and I suppose they must have something like this in one of two
cities, but seeing it in Okayama was brilliant.
When we were going around the Okayama Castle we came across
this interesting cat who was sitting on top of a floor lamp.
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| Creepy Cat in Okayama |
And so it was going to finish this great day in Okayama.
Tomorrow we were going to go to another place, out in the country side. In my
opinion the best of a city or a prefecture can't be found within the city but
outside of it. I was going to confirm this the following day when we were going
to visit a temple and shrine in the mountains.
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