We had a quick look around the umi-no-eki that we stayed at last night. Risa wanted to see the dolphins that were in pool near where we were parked. After that, we were on our way to Kochi City.
It was overcast, and windy. But, at least the driving was nice and easy thanks to the empty-ish, straight and flat roads. We were in Kochi City before lunch, and we headed straight to look at Kochi Castle. It’s quite old; the last time it burnt down and was subsequently rebuilt was in the 1700s. Though, a lot of the surrounding buildings were destroyed and converted into parkland…
We were planning on spending the night in/around Kochi City and visiting the markets that take place on Sunday morning, but we didn’t have the motivation to spend the rest of the day here, so we decided to head to our friends place in southwest Kochi. Before we left, we quickly went to check out Katsurahama and the statue of Sakamoto Ryoma (who is kind of a big deal to people around here).
They have dog fighting tournaments here (and the dogs are even dressed up like sumo fighters before the event), but it’s not the kind of thing that I’m interested in seeing so we stayed well clear. We did try a local speciality an icier version of ice-cream with a hint of banana called アイスクリン (Ice kurin), which I thought was a typo at first… It wasn’t bad, I guess in a hot place (like Kochi) the extra ice is probably quite pleasant.
From here it was a three-or-so hour drive to Tosashimizu. Driving was easy, just like driving in Hokkaido again. Driving around Kansai area was so slow, it’s nice to be able to average 60kph again.
We were about an hour away from Tosashimizu when we finally entered the storm that we’d seen on the horizon all day. The rain was heavy and killed off what little light was left in the sky. We were staying at a friend’s house, but he was out of town having dinner with a friend, so we had a challenge to find his house in the dark and with heavy rain. Didn’t quite find it (his was the back of the house that we did find), so we went to dinner at an izakaya that he’d recommended and waited for further instructions on how to get to his house.
The food at the izakaya 魚田 (uoden) was pretty good. And fresh. We had some bonito, nigiri, stewed beef tail and yaki-onigiri. And a beer, for some reason I was craving a beer, and it was delicious. As was the food. Except for maybe the bonito, which I find too dry for my liking.
We went back to my friend’s house where Risa enjoyed some Japanese TV while we patiently waited for him to return.
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