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Published: September 4th 2009
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Well, this journey could have started with better circumstances, but in the end it turned out great and a fun time was had. With companion in hand, we set out to the last big island for me, Shikoku.
The shinkansen rolled out of Sendai at 7:15 in the morning for the start of a 7 hour train journey across Japan. I could tell you how beautiful the scenery was as the train moved from prefecture to prefecture. I could tel you about how entertaining with was to be in a train with a bunch of high schoolers going on their summer trip. What I am going to tell you, though, is that traveling in a typhoon is NOT fun. Those in hurricane ridden parts of the world will understand this fairly well, those in others...well, maybe no so much. It rained. It rained a lot. It rained so much that the owner of the minshuku called me to make sure we were a) still coming and b) actually knew what we were getting ourselves into. Since we were already aware that the typhoon was coming and we weren't about to change our plans anytime soon, I assured him that we
would be there that afternoon. Well, that never happened.
Got into Takamatsu station and decided to eat lunch there before going on to the minshuku. The rain is pouring out the window while my companion and I were enjoying our lunch when I got yet another phone call from the minshuku owner; only this time it was his sister-in-law who was either a foreigner or spoke very good English. She informed me that the highway that connects Takamatsu to Tokushima had been closed and that, more likely than not, the train line had been as well. See, our minshuku was on that train line and without it, we weren't getting anywhere. Needles to say, my adventure to ask if the trains were running and were going to be running at all were fruitless in information and my companion and I headed out to the tourist information center, found us a decently cheap ryokan, or traditional Japanese inn. Luckily for us it was really close to the station and I am pretty sure that we were the only visitors there.
I set out to see what I could see in the rain because I wasn't going to be there
without seeing SOMETHING. Even if it was just 1 thing, why waste the day just sitting in my ryokan doing nothing but reading or something. Even in the rain, Takamatsu-jo, the castle was still fun to walk around and I was basically all by myself the whole time I was there. The castle was a large moat that, I believe, you can rent boats and have a nice jaunt around the moat. The outlying building of the castle are very nice and the castle itself is pretty tiny, but it was a nice 45 minutes of my day, even in the rain. I ventured over to the pier after that and attempted to get to the lighthouse. In the end, the struggle between umbrella and the elements. Needless to say, the elements were the victor on that day.
I retrieved my companion from her sleep to get dinner and walk around for a little while. We had a very relaxing bath back at the ryokan and settled ourselves into sleep for an early morning the next morning.
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