Heading north to Kyoto

The next day we were up early to catch a bus to San Dan Kyo. Got there by 9:30 and walked the length of the gorge to the car park, then back again. It is 11.4 km of great walking - very beautiful - with cascades, rapids, camellias, mosses, and fantastic views all the way along the gorge. There was almost no-one there - maybe a dozen other people in four hours. It rained on and off, but never enough to make it unpleasant. We had to wait for the return bus, so we walked around the village for a while, getting a good idea of how the irrigation system worked for the rice paddies.

The next day we had another early start, taking the local train to Iwakuni, then the bus out to Kintaikyo bridge. It is as magical as the photos suggest. We took the ropeway (cable car) up to the castle - somewhat disappointing, a bit plastic, with lots of swords on display but no attempt to show how the inhabitants lived. The gardens and the view were better then the castle.

Back at the foot of the hill we walked around the gardens near the cable car station - they were fantastic. A side trail to a cemetery wandered through a bamboo grove, quiet and mystical. The most spectacular flowers were the peonies - I had no idea that they could be so huge, and cover themselves in such colourful blossoms. We looked all around the base of the hill, then went back over the bridge after lunch of an ice-cream from a stall that offered 100 flavours.

On the way to Kintaikyo bridge we had seen a flag-adorned temple high up on a hill, so we walked back down the road to find it before taking the bus back to the station and catching a local train down to Miyajima-guchi.

We caught a ferry over to Miyajima, with a little sail-by of the Itsukushima-jinja torii gate on the way. It was sitting high and dry at low tide, surrounded by sand flats and lots of people. Once off the ferry I collected a map and some info, only to have my map partly eaten by a deer. They roam around the port and waterfront scavenging. We did the obligatory things - walked along the streets of souvenirs and food that line the way to the shrine, then walked out to the torii. We visited the shrine and the treasure house, then we went up the hill to a much more architecturally-interesting temple complex with buddhism, shinto and hindu influences. Lovely prayer-wheels on the way up. One of the gods was dressed in a "Sponge-Bob Square-Pants" t-shirt!

Walked back to a small pagoda, then down to the 5-level pagoda, taking time out for coffee, then another walk up to a shrine that had closed up for the night. By this time the sun was low, the tide had come in, and we took our last photos of the torii gate which was by now surrounded by water and the shrine reflected in the sea.

We dedicated a day for seeing Hiroshima city and doing some administration and housekeeping. Sightseeing included the A-bomb dome, Hiroshima castle and Shukkeien Garden. More okonomiyaki for dinner, but at a very small place run by a single woman who spoke good english, with six english-speaking customers to start. I tried the seafood version - really good. Photos were taken all round.

We left Hiroshima with a lazy start to a wet day - no pressure to get going. Took the train to Okayama, then despite the rain we found time to walk around the town close to the railway station. At yet another wonderful Bic Camera store we bought an ethernet to USB converter - useful for hotel rooms where they only provide a LAN connection to the internet. Then we caught the train to Takamatsu, all in the drizzling rain. Had a very long stroll around town - down to the jetty, then up through town to the malls, which seem to run for kilometres.

We had read about the island of Naoshima in the inland sea, where the fishing industry had failed, but the economy was being rebuilt by creating a centre for modern art. We took the slow ferry to Naoshima in the fuggy haze of what looked very much like smog. If we could have seen the sky it would have been fine with light clouds, but visibility was terrible. The run-down and rather dirty port we arrived at looked very unlikely for an entrance to an art place. We walked over the other side of the island, visited a couple of shrines to spin out the time to 10am, then got tickets and set off to find the six houses of the House project, where old buildings had been taken over as art venues.

• The first "house" was a box where we sat in the total (and I mean total) dark until they introduced a little bit of light, then we walked around. I was totally blind and Geoff had to lead me. That was it. It was lost on us both.
• The next place was a minimalist garden - one tree and a rock with bamboo on it, on a bed of moss, surrounded by a stone garden you could walk on.
• This was followed by a rusted tin shed with the statue of liberty inside of it, along with a strange floor and some painted rooms.
• Next came a house with some painted walls and a stone in the lawn.
• Another house, this time with a pond full of digital numbers, some glass that became opaque or clear to form digital numbers and some printed digital numbers.
• Lastly an old shrine with glass steps and an underground bunker where the steps started.

While wandering around waiting for the ferry we stood watching some men building a house out of charred boards. They very kindly invited us in. Inside there was a man and some children building a huge mammoth out of straw, to fill the house. In truth, this was the best work of art we had seen all day.

The hazy, smoggy air had cleared, and we had a much more scenic ferry trip across the inland sea to Takamatsu.

After a lot of trouble we finally caught a train to Zentsu-ji to visit Zetsu-ji Temple - we missed the first one because we didn't understand the system, where we had to get a local train first to somewhere else, then catch the express. The shrine was well worth the bother - quite spectacular. It is part of the 88-temple pilgrimage walk, and there were people dressed as pilgrims, but we felt they were really day-trippers - there may have been real pilgrims there.

We caught the train back to Takamatsu and went to Ritsurin Garden for the rest of the afternoon. They are wonderful, with new views at every turn.

We had decided to spend two nights in Himeji, but we wanted to stop at Okayama as we passed through. We left our bags stuffed into two small lockers at the railway station, booked a ticket to Himeji for sometime after 3pm, and went to look at the Korakuen Garden. These were small gardens, said to be one of the three best in Japan, but they weren't anywhere near as good as Takamatsu. Nevertheless they were nice gardens. Also walked over to the castle, but didn't go inside - it is new and looks plastic. In the afternoon we caught the train to Himeji and had lots of trouble getting a hotel room. Tried a guest house and a large hotel and finally got a room for one night only at the Comfort Inn. Hmm... may as well go to Kobe the next day - at least we might be able to get accommodation there.

We left our luggage with the hotel and went to Himeji castle. It was in the midst of major restoration work, with a huge multi-storey building erected around and over it, complete with its own lifts, air-conditioning and services. This building had a painting of the real castle on its exterior, so you could get a glimpse of what you were missing. Despite the repairs and the crowds it was well worth it - a much more interesting castle. We had a guide who spoke good english for all of the visit to the "egret's eye" viewing of the restoration. Also visited the building where the princess and her family and her 40 female servants lived, and the gardens, including a beautiful peony garden.

Down in the city we saw an amazing sugar scale model of the castle - it had won first prize in a confectioner's competition, and gave us the best idea of what the castle actually looks like.

Kobe was only 20 minutes away. The train dropped us at Shin-Kobe, somewhat north of the down-town area. We tried a couple of hotels - no rooms. Finally tried "Super Hotel" and could only get a smoker's room. Took it - accommodation was proving difficult in this part of Japan The hotel wasn't super, but they showered us with gifts, and they bowed excessively, and the room didn't smell as bad as it might have.

We walked all around the waterways - the park where the earthquake had caused devastation was now rebuilt, with multi-story high-flying roadways soaring overhead - scary. In the morning we left our luggage at the hotel and explored a bit of the city, searching out two shrines marked on the map. One was a glorious vermilion shinto shrine where a ceremony was performed for a baby while we were there. The other was Chinese - good carvings and lots of dragons. Walked back to Shin-kobe and took the cable-car up to the herb garden. Great view of Kobe from up the hill. Lunched on "rice on a stick" and German beer and sausage, at a very Bavarian-looking building at the top of the park then walked down the hill through the garden. They have fantastic flowers, including roses and fuchsias.

We took the cable car down the hill and stopped for coffee at the large, expensive hotel alongside the station. Geoff's cafe au lait came in a large beer stein - OK, that's cool. My orange juice came in a large fruit bowl. I thought it must come with a ladle, so that I could share it with the rest of the clients in the cafe, but no - just a stirring spoon and a straw. To be fair, quite a bit of it was ice. I drank it just to spite them. Back to the (locked) hotel. Buzzed them, picked up the luggage, and it was off to Kyoto.