Okayama

Today was our final morning for staying in a ryokan, or Japanese style accommodation, and I guess we will no longer be served a Japanese style breakfast. So here it is. I thought it was pretty good, especially the salmon and the chicken cooking in the hotpot. The floating barely cooked egg defeated me. All I had was chopsticks, but it just kept slipping off. Maybe I was supposed to bring the bowl to my mouth and let the whole gooey egg slide in like I might do with an oyster in its shell. I never found out half of what I was eating, but it was fun, if not also filling.

One of our hosts drove us 15 minutes into town to the railway station. We had to wait about an hour for our first train, a limited express to Nagoya. At Nagoya we had to hurry. From the time we arrived, we had to get to an escalator and take it down to a lower level, then locate a sign indicating our next platform, make our way through the crowd to another elevator and ride it up to the new platform. Once there, we had to locate the exact spot on the platform where our specific numbered carriage would stop and form a queue there with our luggage. We had ten minutes between trains, and made it with just a couple of minutes to spare. I laughed because the first thing I read when I boarded this train was a sign saying ‘Do not rush to catch a train’. Our second train was due to arrive at Shin-Osaka with 23 minutes to spare before we caught our third and final one for the day, but a long delay at Kyoto caused it to come in late, leaving us only about ten minutes again to find the next platform and prepare to board the next train. We finally arrived at Okayama, on the eastern side of Japan, at about 1.10 pm, almost four hours after we caught our first train for the day. Travelling on the trains here has been very restful and enjoyable, even if there might be a frantic rush between trains. In an otherwise busy itinerary, a 90-minute train journey is quite blissful. Just the rhythm of the rails, the scenery and a silent carriage (talking loudly or on phones is considered very bad manners).

After checking in to our hotel, we went out for a walk through Okayama. One of the first things that caught my attention was the statue of a man with a dog, a monkey and a bird on his shoulder. I immediately thought it might be linked to a folktale about the foundation of the city of Okayama or something similar, and resolved to find out about it later when I got back to the hotel.

It was about 1.30 pm and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so we walked through the food court and shopping precinct connected to the railway station, looking for somewhere we could grab something to eat. Most of the signage at the food places was Japanese only, and only some of them displayed photos of the menu items, so we just figured our best bet would be to find a place with a table for four, sit down and then try to find out what sort of food could be ordered. We spotted a place with an empty booth, so we moved in and took our seats around the table. It was hot in there, so I took off my puffer jacket while a lady came over and showed us how to find an English menu on the ipad on our table. We looked at all the menu options. Most of it was sushi or sashimi and almost all of the fillings were seafood. Three of us eat seafood, but Marg doesn’t, so we grabbed our gear and left in search of another place with an empty table and a broader range of menu options. As we were leaving, I noticed Marg had left her sunhat on the seat, so I grabbed it and carried it to the next place, thinking I’d have a little fun with it. We walked quite some distance before we found what we were looking for – a cafe with an empty table, and a range of cakes, sandwiches and even hot dogs on the menu. At this point, I produced Marg’s hat, and, trying to be a smartarse, I asked her when she was planning to go back to the sushi place to get it. She was not amused.

The food and the coffee were good. We left the cafe and stepped out of the food court into the sunshine, preparing to walk across town to a famous garden. I figured I’d need my camera at hand in case I saw something worth taking a photo of. I put my hand into my pocket and it wasn’t there. I searched my other pocket, then my backpack. No camera. I began to worry. I bought that camera only about six months ago and paid a thousand bucks for it. I started thinking rationally. I hadn’t left it at the hotel, because I’d taken a photo of the statue after we left. We only sat down in two eating places. I ducked back into the cafe where we’d just eaten. A new couple were sitting at the table where I’d eaten. I looked all around them and I could see they thought I was acting strangely. Clearly it wasn’t there. It could only be at the sushi place. I left my companions and headed back there. It took about five minutes. I stopped just outside and typed ‘I think I lost my camera here. Did you find it? Thank you.’ into Google Translate. I went into the sushi place, where a couple was dining in the booth where we’d sat and looked around but could see no camera there. I waited at the entrance until a waiter emerged from the kitchen. I showed him the Japanese text on my phone. I could see his expression change as he read it. He motioned for me to wait and disappeared into the kitchen. A very small, very old lady came out, looked at me, broke into a huge grin, bent over and produced my camera from behind the counter. I thanked them several times in Japanese and bowed my head in gratitude. The lady’s grin grew even bigger and she bowed to me multiple times. She seemed even happier than I was, if that’s possible. She certainly made my day, but it seems I may have made hers as well. What a relief. I guess I put the camera down when I took off my puffer jacket and stuffed it into my backpack. Then we decided to leave in a hurry when we couldn’t find what we wanted on the menu, and I’ve got up from my seat, seen the hat Marg left behind, grabbed it and hurried off to catch up with the rest of my group. Minus my camera, which must have been pushed to one end of the table and out of my mind. Needless to say, I had egg all over my face when I got back to Marg and the others after trying to have an earlier laugh at her expense about the hat. If she’d felt a bit silly over the hat, I felt like an absolute goose about the camera. I hope I never do that again.

As we walked through Okayama, I kept noticing the manhole covers also featured a man, a dog, a monkey and a bird, so clearly that statue I’d seen earlier was connected to a story of great importance to this town. I looked it up this evening. It’s the story of Momotaro, a famous character from a well known Japanese folktale. He was born in Okayama from a giant peach. (We saw a giant pale pink peach on a building opposite his statue, prompting me to wonder aloud why anyone would want to put a giant bum on the side of their building.) Momotaro grew up to be a very brave warrior. He travelled far and wide with his animal companions – a dog, a monkey and a pheasant – defeating the evil demons that got in his way. His statue represents courage and friendship, and his story is revered by the people of this city. Another thing I recognised as I walked through Okayama was the bridge designed in the shape of a red-crowned crane, which also figures prominently in Japanese folklore.

I was glad to see Momotaro’s dog standing on all four legs beside him, not wearing a jacket, pants, hat or nappy, and not poking his head out of a pram. Good on you, Momotaro, for treating a dog the way I think a dog ought to be treated – as a faithful companion who walks, or runs, alongside you. It left me hopeful that the good people of Okayama were different to the pooch pamperers of Tokyo and Takayama with respect to the way they treat their dogs. And then I turned a corner and saw this through a window. I had to look twice to realise that that giant white fluffy object being lovingly fussed over by three devoted attendants, was actually a dog getting a pedicure. Of course. I should have known. Maybe even Momotaro pampered his dog too. At the end of the street, though it’s hard to see in the third photo here, we passed the feline equivalent of the dog salon. Look closely and you’ll spot lots of cats, and a lady in the background who looked as though she was blow drying a fluffy tabby as I walked past! I know Japan was cut off from the west for over 200 years, and that must have made them different in many ways, but I think the simple pleasure of having an animal companion that retains some of its natural behaviours such as walking on all fours, chasing after a stick and rolling in the mud somehow passed Japan by. Of course, I’m sure they love their pets just as much as we do back home – just differently.

We spent about an hour walking around the landscaped garden of Korakuen, which has been designated one of the three most beautiful gardens in Japan (the one we visited in Kanazawa was another). There were some red-crowned cranes in an aviary. I love seeing photos of them in the wild. They’re such a beautiful bird. I felt a bit sad to see them in such a restricted space. I guess it’s fitting that my photo shows an encaged crane, because that’s exactly what it was. Surely someone could design a better space to keep these magnificent creatures in. The garden lawns were quite expansive, and dotted with umbrellas. Marg discovered that there is to be a night time light show some time soon, I guess a bit like the way they light up the giant trees in Singapore, and it seems the umbrellas will feature in that. It’s hard to spot, but if you look closely at the photo below, you will see Okayama Castle in the backdrop beyond the trees. There was a couple being photographed, perhaps in preparation for a wedding, and also a family being followed around by another photographer. They certainly picked an appropriate setting to be photographed in traditional Japanese dress. We stopped for an ice cream and watched the koi fish for a while, before leaving the garden and heading in the direction of Okayama Castle.

We crossed the bridge over the river and walked to the castle entrance. It was a sunny afternoon with a clear blue sky, and the sun illuminated all the gold leaf tiles on the otherwise black castle. Okayama Castle was built by a feudal lord named Ukita Hideie in the late 1500s, but the tower was destroyed by an air raid during World War II. In 1966, it was reconstructed in concrete. Today, the main purpose the castle serves is as a museum. Visitors enter at ground level and walk around the interior walls viewing exhibits, before ascending stairs to the next level, and so on all the way to the sixth floor. On each level the floor space is smaller than the previous one, so the display space is also reduced. Each level has a different focus. One the first floor level, we could learn about the Sengoku period of Japanese history, though most of the text was in Japanese characters, so I satisfied myself with looking at a few artefacts and illustrations, whereas Marg and Theresa thought it would be fun to squeeze into a palanquin together or test out how they measured up against a shogun of the day. The third floor level features the Battle of Sekigahara, one of the most famous battles in Japanese history. Ukita Hideie, who built the original castle, is the figure below with the circular horns on his helmet. It was interesting to visit the castle, often referred to as the Crow Castle because of its colour, but I’m looking forward to seeing an authentic one rather than a reconstruction.

We found a nice little yakitori eating place just a couple of blocks from our hotel. Yakitori is a popular style of Japanese dining where bite sized pieces of meat are often grilled on skewers over a charcoal fire. We ordered a few plates of bite sized items like edamame, fried camembert, corn fritters, pork skewers and fried chicken and washed it all down with some refreshing drinks while we reflected on another enjoyable day and started making plans for tomorrow.