Adventures in Japan

Eight Maids A Milking

We woke up tired. With mouths that belonged to dead people. Happy New Year.

We somehow made it onto the train and set off for Uwajima. I crashed pretty hard, but Carla snapped some good shots of the loveliness we sped through.

That is a gorgeous looking day I slept through.

I woke up to this:


I woke up to a gorgeous day. Just a little snowier. Seriously - what a lovely day to start of the year with. Freshly fallen snow, mountains, sunshine, big fluffy snowflakes: it was awesome.

When we stopped for lunch, we spent more time wandering around town than eating. Most everything was closed, but the air was crisp the melting snow was falling off of roofs and street lamps with loud plops all over the place, I could've wandered around for hours.


But we had to get back on that train. It started to snow a bit harder as we did so. The snow came down harder and harder until this is what we saw out the window:


This is what it looked like inside the window:


Everyone either looking out the windows at the gorgeous scenery or napping. There was this one guy who had a real expensive looking camera hanging around his neck but took all his pictures with his cell phone. There was also a couple who seemed to be taking pictures only of all the small footbridges the train passed. Odd. But they seemed very happy.

We weren't all that happy when we finally checked into our hotel. It's not as good as the one we left in Kochi. Plus the wind had picked up. Still, we poked around town. Japan is dead on New Year's Day. Except the temples and shrines. Which is where we went.


We ate some carny food and then poked around town some more. We ended up at a yakiniku restaurant. Which is great prep for tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Bull fights! And a sex museum.

Also of note: we've seen watching a lot more Japanese television during this trip. Japanese TV gets even more crazy around New Year's. Tonight was some kind of surreal talent contest. There was extreme cooking, trampoline kanji writing, oil drum balloon popping, a woman peeled a cucumber using a chainsaw, and much more. Crazy.