Adventures in Japan

Six Geese A Laying

Every Sunday in this here town they have a Sunday market. You know what you need when going to market? Money. We woke up early and went around to all the banks Carla found last night and tried to take out some money. No luck. Feeling discouraged, we went back to the hotel to call a support line to figure out what was up. As it turns out, Carla's card only starts working in these particular bank machines at nine in the morning. I know, this country does not make any sense to me either.

Money freshly in hand, we set out for the market. We ended up not buying anything. But we did find a cool coffee shop.


That is indeed coffee Mephistopheles. Located right next to coffee house Spoon. Mephistopheles had decent coffee and the world's smallest muffin.

After a bit more wandering, we caught a bus to Katsurahama Beach. It was a bit of a blustery day to go to the beach. This may have been the coldest day of the trip. I'm pretty sure the temperature dipped into the single digits! In December! What kind of madness is this?

So it was a bit cool, but still quite nice to look at. Lots of sky and trees and water. It wasn't all that nice to listen to though. There were loudspeakers every where and there were constantly announcements being made. Hard to dig on the nature when you can't escape the ABBA muzak.


Still, surf sand and sun are an excellent combination and we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit. There were numerous informative signs scattered about the area, telling of famous people from the region. Most of them were drunks. I am not making that up, the signs told me.

The most famous resident is a chap by the name of Ryoma Sakamoto. He was one of the main movers and shakers during the Meiji Restoration era. He wanted Japan to become a more open society, join the rest of the world. He raised all sorts of ruckuses. He kinda caused a revolution. He got assassinated real good.


All the gift shops were dirty with his merchandise. Including cute little super deformed versions of him. (super deformed- an exaggerated style of drawing: very short and fat with very big heads) Super deformed Ryoma with a sword and a gun was so cool!


They were also full of dog related merchandise because, in addition to drunken poets and rabble rousers, this place is known for dog fights.

No joke.

We weren't really interested in seeing any of that, but it turns out we didn't have to worry. Some NFL player came through town just the other week and bought up all their dogs.


After the beach, we caught a bus up to the top of a mountain to go poke around.


We found statues wearing neon beanies.

We also found a coffee shop with a great view.


The place also had pretty good coffee. And pornographic comic books.