The Howl & Moon: June 2015

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Kochi Is Cosy

After a couple hours visit at the Anpanman Museum, we drove into Kochi city, checked into our hotel, and headed out to see a little bit of town while looking for dinner. And it turns out Kochi is charming, quaint, and home to some serious eats. (famous for fish)

Perhaps our food radar is finely honed, or maybe we're just lucky, or most likely that it's just difficult to find a bad meal in Japan, but we just scored on our choice of dining establishments. We ended up in a cosy izakaya (a kind of informal bar/restaurant) that serves rice bowls with toppings, gyoza, noodle soups, snacky things, etc and smooth cold drinks to wash them down. Hopper gets to eat with his special chopsticks, daddy gets his draft beer, and I get to indulge in new found favorite drink Yuzu Chu-Hi while eating cucumbers with sauce. (It's a bit like a wine cooler, with usually only about 4% alcohol, a total wuss drink.)

But our main goal in Kochi was to stock up on produce to take with us to Shimanto, where we booked a 4 night stay at the beach. The Sunday market is famous and we had been hearing about it for months so decided it was well worth a little peek, especially as there's a castle at the far end where you can climb to the top and fantasize about the samurai warriors that tried to scale the walls and were pelted by stones and fiery tar.

The market certainly didn't disappoint, everything is local and fresh and at times wondrous to behold. The atmosphere is merry and having a small child always breaks the ice, so we get little extras here and there, special smiles, approving nods. It would be nice if he would be extra charming back, but perhaps his shyness is appealing afterall.

After loading our cargo on board, we were off to Shimanto through mountain after mountain after mountain after mountain...

snacks on the bed after a long day

with Sumo on the telly

not sure whose sick idea it is to name a company after a very dangerous creature: Mukade! (but the logo is kinda beautiful) and i will do an upcoming post dedicated solely to these critters

alley street

bigger street, people from a wedding being escorted across the street by event staff

tram spotting

gah! get out of the way mama!

cool tram (minus coke logo) and one of my fave cars: Hustler

family fun at izakaya

Hopper took this photo

we hung out here for a while, such a good vibe, such good food, wish I could remember the name

cutest parking lot EVER (that's a pond back there, with a bench and manicured bushes)

cool whale at covered shopping arcade

eggs

yuzu juice and ginger (famous in Kochi)

so many people, so much food

dried fish and such

innately a boy thing: making a gun out of a straw and flower, to "pachoo" me

pickled/fermented things

pretty old trees

knife shop

for your scything needs

Nik loves a good knife ogle

shall we go find the samurai?

spinach and other greens I've never seen before

Samurai! (protecting the entrance to the park around the castle grounds)

mini entrance meltdown

ready with our walking sticks, I mean swords

follow the path..

up there! let's go!

watch your head

the very top

view from the top

how did samurai fighters traverse these stairs wearing armor and fighting to the death?

path to some of the nicest public toilets I've ever seen (reason #n why I love Japan, public toilets are clean and have toilet paper!)

lunch at indoor market food court

many purveyors, many patrons, only one spot interested us...

...quick grilled tuna with sauces and condiments, like nothing else I've eaten

That flame blackens the fish, leaving it with a unique smoke flavor and a rare center. The line stretched around the corner. Totally worth it.

back in the car... to the beach!

you can drive for miles and miles when it all looks like this

Roadtrip to Anpanman Museum

During our last stint in Japan in 2013, we managed to travel around a little but were quite busy with the residency schedule so didn't get loads of time to wander further afield than Ikumi Beach in the next prefecture (county). This time, we knew we wanted to see more of the island, this breathtaking, mountainous, rivery, sinewy swath of forest and jungle called Shikoku.

We had been checking weather forecasts and hotel options and found a perfect sunny window to hop in the Cube and head southwest to the beach in Shimanto but first, a little detour for Hopper-chan.

No trip through the area of Kochi, about 2 1/2 hrs drive, can go without visiting the shrine to all things Anpanman: The Anpanman Museum in Kami, the hometown of the creator Takashi Yanase. The whole area looks a lot like Kamiyama, and there is very little around, well except breathtaking views and windy roads. Of course.

Anpanman is beloved by children and adults alike, he's a super hero whose head is made of bread (with red bean jam filling!- like almost every freakin desert in Japan) who saves creatures from his nemesis Baikinman (and when they're starving, by offering them bits of his head, only to return to his creator and baker Uncle Jam who bakes him a new head and makes him whole again). He has lots of friends and foes, the list of characters is astonishing (1768 to be exact), but his biggest enemy is Baikinman, who is always up to dastardly deeds.

Hopper was introduced to him a couple of years ago so knew him by name. But now that he's a fully cognizant nearly-4 year old, and fascinated with "super heros" and super powers, he's really into it and knows quite a few of the characters names. (This is all without having seen a single cartoon, just flipping through books, seeing them on "healthy" cookie boxes, toys, shirts, dolls, toothbrushes.) We were excited to go but mostly overjoyed at seeing the excitement in his eyes in the car.

Then, we were off to Kochi, a lovely little city beach hamlet with a taste for superb fish and a big Sunday market. Stay tuned...