A Guided Tour of Okayama City

Hi friend,

I'm extremely happy to be reliving today's anecdote, because it was easily one of my favourite days when Shane stayed. Mostly I just love hanging out in Okayama City on weekends; it's really such a fun, chilled day out in a small but exciting city. Okayama offers enough fun stuff to easily fill a full day or two. So if you're ever here, this is the kind of itinerary you can expect when I offer you a guided tour of Okayama. Buckle up; this post is another photo-heavy one.

So we spent just the one day in Okayama because we had very limited time to cross off as many adventures as we could (just two weekends, actually - four days only!). It was a Saturday and it was chilly, but the sun was warm. The weather really was lovely actually, so we were in high spirits all day. If you follow me on Instagram, all those photos of me in that little bow headband thing are from this day, so you're about to experience them all again. Sorry, not sorry.

First up, we hung around the station and took all the mandatory photos with Momotaro-kun and the dandelion fountain. Did the touristy thing. 

Then we jumped on a tram and headed up to Shiroshita, which is a short walk from Crow Castle and Korakuen. We visited Okayama-jo (the castle) first, and wandered around in there for a while. Unfortunately it was very bright at the time, so the only photo of us with the castle is a bit of a dud. Classic. Inside the castle, on the ground floor, we discovered a cute little soba restaurant that doubles as a dessert house (because of course it does), which once featured in an episode of the extremely popular crime anime "Detective Conan". They were so proud of this achievement that they had laminated stills from the episode in a decorative collage on the wall. 

The underground access to the grounds containing Okayama Castle and Korakuen has a cool colourful fountain!

Pony sneakers.

Detective Conan mural. They clearly are very proud.

We tried some of their recommended parfaits, which featured the white peaches and muscat grapes Okayama is famous for. We expected the desserts to be good, but their deliciousness somehow managed to surprise us. As I'm typing this, I'm immediately wanting to go back, but it's a) zero degrees right now; definitely not ice cream appropriate weather, and b) impossible for the next three weeks, as I'm travelling around Japan with friends. This is unfortunate.

Having had our sufficient fill of history and parfait, we wandered down the castle grounds, over the river and into the Japanese gardens at Korakuen. It was autumn, and the colours were stunning, though there's a lot of lawns to Korakuen and they were yellowy during autumn, compared to their vivid lush green during summer. So I think I actually prefer the Japanese gardens in summer time. I intend to visit at least once per season though, to get the full Korakuen experience. It rarely snows enough in Okayama to pack in and set, which is a shame because I think the gardens would be utterly stunning under a foot of snow.

Swag, swag, swag.

Anyway, so we meandered the gardens for a good while, enjoying the peace and quiet, and then we got hungry. We had to get a move on anyway - too many things to do! On the trek back towards the station we discovered a lovely white shrine near the river. After consulting with Google-sensei, it appears to be simply called "Okayama Shrine", but I'm not one hundred percent sure on that. Anyway, after paying our respects we continued on until we came across Shiroshita Burger, a tiny hole in the wall burger restaurant that seats only seven people. We had to wait a while before seats freed up, but the menu boasted Kobe beef patties (obviously Shane is vegetarian but I tried it) and it was definitely worth it. I hadn't had a legitimately excellent burger since moving here, and it was extremely satisfying. Have legitimately planned almost a month in advance to take a mate there. Parfait hunger pains have promptly transformed into burger cravings.

After lunch we explored a well-known old fashioned shopping arcade called Omotecho, which surprisingly did not disappoint, even though many of these styles of arcades are become a big antiquated across Japan and often only carry fashion stores for the elderly and usually disappointingly average izakayas. This one was big and had some interesting stuff to poke your nose in, like a kimono speciality store where a lovely gentleman helped us pick out a thick kimono jacket, which I think might be called a haori. Need a Japanese friend to confirm that for me. It is a very similar design to a kimono, but is worn over the top of the kimono or yukata, and the one we got is warm for winter. I'll add in a photo at a later date, when I've got a shot of me wearing it (still yet to have had an occasion to wear my yukata anywhere).

 

There were also an assortment of extremely irrelevant and random decorations peppering the arcade, like these oversized dinosaur models, and a bright red London telephone booth. I'm sure there's likely to be a story about the phone box, but I really can't see how anyone could feasibly explain the presence of the giant dinosaurs, even if I squint really hard. But they were fun to take photos with, so I'm not exactly complaining. I'm just very confused.

Enormous tulip constructed out of balloons? Sure, why not?

A wander along Nishigawa Canal Park in the late afternoon led us back through the city, and dropped us at AEON Mall, where we used the sudden temperature drop (that was no joke; we were both uncomfortably cold) as an excuse to go to the movies and see Thor: Ragnarok. A lot of big Hollywood films are subbed (English with Japanese subtitles) rather than dubbed (Japanese voice actors replacing the original English) so they can be released closer to the global release date. This means we should be able to see a lot of blockbusters pretty much exactly as we would back home. I am very grateful for this development - being able to enjoy the normalcy and familiarity of going to the movies on the weekend is something I'm very much looking forward to. It'll be a very long time before I'd be able to watch a movie in Japanese without English subtitles - even considering it ever a possibility is a big stretch, honestly.

After the movie we hung out at SEGA on the 6th floor and played some video games and claw machines (which they call 'UFO catchers' in Japanese), took some purikura photo booth photos, then decided we were hungry. We went for some late night Indian, which was delicious and wonderful, and offered the biggest piece of naan I have probably ever experienced in my life. It was far too enormous for me - to say it was almost twice the size of my face actually isn't that much of an exaggeration. Anyway, it was delicious and fun, and then we jumped on a train and journeyed home. 

 

Less than four days until Christmas 2017! Hope you're getting as excited as I am. Plenty more to come soon. I probably won't post again until after Christmas, so stay safe while you're enjoying the festive season, have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and hopefully I'll see some of you back home some time in 2018! Lots of love from Japan! x