Adventures in Japan

Still Swimming

After The Anpanman stuff, we bussed over to the Ryugado caves.

Caves are caves. I, myself, happen to like caves. I like getting into the earth and looking around, seeing all the weird stuff that happens underground. I like the fact that it takes one hundred years for things to grow by a centimeter.

But it ain't all that easy to take pictures in that environment. They're all dark and blurry and stuff.


That one turned out okay. These caves were fairly cave-like. Which is to say that there weren't any super wow bits to it. An average cave. Built(?) with average Japanese people in mind. Which is to say that we were ducking a lot. And I had to suck in my gut more than usual.

After that there were the chickens. The famous chickens. Roosters, to be more specific. They are famous for their tails.


That is a real live rooster in there in the upper left. And that is his actual tail on the right. I coulda maybe framed that one better.

The other thing of note out there at the caves is this:


That is a phone booth with some cave persons on top of it.

After that we went back to our hotel and had a nap. Then we got up and went out for New Year's Eve. Kochi is cool, man. I like it. It's got a young vibe. There's a lot of young folks around and they seem to like to have fun.


Anyhoo, there was this building at the end of the shopping arcade that housed many many eating and drinking establishments and a lot of common seating in between. That is where we went for New Year's. On the way there we passed a dance competition that had sprung up in the middle of the street.

We ate a bit (including toshikoshi, soba noodles eaten right after the new year starts. Their length symbolizes your longevity) and drank a lot and talked to a bunch of cool people. But Carla started to crash at around 2 in the morning so we decided to call it a night. On the way back to our hotel (much nicer than our first hotel), we ran into some people we had met earlier in the evening. They were with some other people we hadn't seen before. Soon, we saw a lot more of them:


Happy New Year, y'all!