Adventures in Japan

Nine Ladies Dancing

That was sort of the view from our hotel room. Best part of our stay there. It weren't the breakfast.

After breakfast we walked a couple blocks over to the sex museum. I think the sex museum broke Carla's fragile little mind. She can't look at Japanese art anymore without seeing something filthy. There were a lot of filthy pictures. And carvings. And etchings. And it was everywhere: on the walls, on the roof, on the floor, everywhere. And a lot of it seemed to be the work of one man. Freaky. He just travelled the world looking for dirty stuff. Here's something you might not know: everywhere is perverted. It's true. I'd show you pictures, but I didn't take any. I didn't take any because it costs an extra 200 bucks to tour the sex museum with a camera.

In lieu of filthy pornography, I give you a picture of a mountainside graveyard. We walked through this graveyard on on way to the bull fights. The walk was about as steep as you would expect a walk up the side of a mountain to be.

The bull fights were bull fights. Which is to say they were not what you think of when you think of bull fights. These bull fights did not involve greasy men in too-tight pants and poofy shirts cut way too low sticking majestic animals with pointy things to make up for their own shortcomings. There was none of that.

This bull fighting was just a couple of bulls fighting each other. With shivs! No.

I'm so tired.


Two bulls entered this ring... only one left! No. They both left. But one of them left with a trophy. Well, the bull didn't get the trophy, but someone who had something to do with the bull did.


As you can see in that picture up there, the bulls are not alone in the ring. They do all the fighting, but their... owners(?) cheer them on.


But what I failed to capture in these photos is just how close the dudes get to their bulls. They pat them on the head as the other bull's sharp head is flailing about. Sometimes these bulls charge or retreat. They move pretty fast is what I'm getting at. I wouldn't want to be anywhere near them. One dude got knocked down and nearly trampled. One bull cracked the bamboo barrier around the ring. Good times.

After that we hopped on a train for Matsuyama.


There was some nice scenery along the way. But Carla and I were looking forward to the coastal section of this train ride. These tickets we have, they were dirt cheap. We've done all this traveling for less than one shinkansen ticket. But the trains aren't fast. And they stop a lot. Sometimes they stop for a really long time. So that people can get off the train to go to the bathroom. The really fast trains have lots of bathrooms but the really slow ones don't have any at all, that just doesn't make any sense. Or maybe it does, I'm really quite tired.

What I was trying to get at is this: we got to the most scenic part of this leg of the trip just after sundown. There was a glimmer of light left in the sky. Enough, barely, to give us a hint of what we had missed. The glorious scenery was out the there in the dimly dark dimness, like a hot chick in a parka. You know it's amazing, but you can't see it.

We made it into Matsuyama, caught a tram to near our hostel,walked up the hill to our hostel, checked in to our hostel and then started planning where else we could stay other than our hostel.