When Shane came to Soja

Hey friend. Hope you're surviving the Australian heat; I've heard Melbourne's pretty brutal at the moment. It's 6 degrees with a low of 0 over here today, so we really could not be more opposite at the moment. It's actually even snowed a few times lately.

So Shane arrived in early November and stayed with me in Soja for two weeks. Unfortunately he contracted some sort of virus on the plane, which he promptly gifted to me, so both of us spent most of the time together completely miserable. My cold eventually morphed into a horrific monster illness, including tonsillitis and a sinus infection, which knocked me around for about three weeks and involved a hospital trip. Good fun. November was a difficult month, but it wasn't all terrible, and I'm going to share the highlights here with you. I'm probably going to have to split it up into a couple of posts, so let's just start with hanging out and exploring Soja. 

To be honest, I'd been pretty timid about going out and eating alone in Soja, so I was excited to finally have someone to share the experience with. Shane would go out adventuring during the day, then we'd spend most evenings after I'd come home from school exploring the eateries in my town - and we found a few gems! The first is my current fave, Cerchio, which is an utterly adorable pizzeria that offers delicious, authentic Italian pizza and pasta. If any of you end up travelling to Japan and visiting me in Okayama, we will definitely eat here. It's wonderful, and the owners are so lovely. 

The second place is this great udon (thick noodles) restaurant, where you can get an enormous set meal really inexpensively, and the food is yummy. We loved their tempura (battered seafood and vegetables) set. My parents are coming to visit me in a few months and I'm already planning to take them to eat there one night. I think it's hard to go wrong with tempura udon, honestly. It's so delicious.

Classic. His eyes are always bigger than his stomach.

Another of my favourite eateries in Soja is a bakehouse called Industry. It's really close to one of my visit schools, so I visit every Tuesday for lunch. They make an amazing latte - actually like a good coffee from Melbourne, rather than the American-style black death poison they usually try to pass off as coffee at Japanese cafes. Industry has a bakery downstairs that sells rustic homemade breads, rolls, pastries, cakes, bagels and other assorted baked goods. Upstairs is a cute restaurant with pretty town and mountain views. I love the decor, especially the low-hanging light bulbs. You're allowed to grab some baked stuff from downstairs and enjoy it in the restaurant, which is usually what I do (they have the best bacon and rucola ciabatta sandwich). Hands down one of my favourite places in Soja. Probably my favourite spot, actually. It's right next to Higashi-Soja Station, too, which is very convenient.

Next up is a fantastic little place which, to my understanding, is called something along the lines of "Boon". It's a tiny hole-in-the-wall local favourite, run by a father-son duo who serve up huge, delicious, steaming dishes, with big glasses of beer on the side. The place is on the corner opposite City Hall - you honestly almost miss it. We absolutely loved it there. The menu is huge, offering mostly curries and seafood plates and other donburi (rice bowl) dishes, and they had a tiny little TV mounted on the wall, showing the evening news. It only had maybe three tables in total. I'm excited to go back there again soon. Funnily enough, many of the teachers at my base school in Soja regularly eat there, and some of them told me the chefs had since asked about me. Small town life!

Actually, I can see on the door that it says "Bu-n". I should have just used my eyes at the time.

One night, I took Shane to my favourite bar in Soja. You might remember it - I mentioned it in this post a few weeks ago. It's literally just called "Soja Bar", and it's got such a great atmosphere. Really relaxed and trendy, with cheap but delicious drinks, and some excellent food. We definitely enjoyed the desserts we tried - the cheesecake was heaven. One of my teacher's friends runs this bar, and he's so friendly and welcoming. Apparently he was a scary troublemaker in their youth, which I can't imagine; he definitely doesn't come across as a gangster to me.

Ooh! I almost forgot to tell you about another of my local pizzerias, Ciccio. This place is also cute and serves a wide range of yummy, woodfire-style pizzas. I was so happy when I discovered this place early on; I'm sure you can imagine! Again, the owners are very friendly, and it's inexpensive. There's actually quite a few good places to eat in my sleepy town. I'm pretty lucky! I know for a fact that there's still stacks of places that I haven't even gotten around to trying yet, so I have that to look forward to over the next few months.

Anyway, as well as spending all our time eating our way around Soja, Shane and I jumped on our bikes (my friend, who runs a bicycle parking lot near Soja Station, was so kind and lent Shane one of her bikes for the duration of his stay) and went on an adventure to find Iyama Hofuku-ji. It's a local Zen temple, built in 1232, that's actually quite famous in the prefecture. It was utterly breathtaking in autumn, with all the Japanese maple trees in full, fiery colour. I absolutely loved it there.

We also visited my local shrine, Soja-gu (which you can also read about here), which - to be fair - was also very lovely in autumn and deserves its own special mention.

Okay, that's all for today! I'm glad to have finally shared some pictures of Soja with you; I realised I've been posting a lot about Okayama and travelling to other places in Japan, but not a lot about what life is like in this town. So I'm glad you finally got a small glimpse. Plenty more to come soon. Hope you're enjoying the holiday season! x