The Touristy Thing With The Jenns

The day after carolling in Mineyama, Jen in Ine invited English JET Jenni and I to her place for FMA (Fullmetal Alchemist), Indian flat bread and whiskey night. Well the whiskey turned into umeshu but we more or less stuck to our plans. Jen picked me up and we drove the 40 minutes to Ine after stocking up on food at Otokoyama (Man Mountain, which seems to have more old women than anything) to meet up with Jenni. It was a good old fashioned girls night with the conversation constantly slipping towards politics and society both of which I know next to nothing but my own, but they found it interesting to hear what race relations were like in NZ (for some weird reason). Then it was anime watching well into the night before collapsing into bed in a umeshued heap while ushering gejigeji outside.

The next day dawned bright and sunny so we headed to the one thing we hadn't done that the area was famous for – viewing Amanohashidate from the mountains. As we left her house I looked up to the mountains around the town and noticed a waterfall descending off of the face of the hill. This waterfall only appears after a heavy rain and there was even a viewing point a little down the road which gave the best view of it.

The cloud never disappears from the hills. Ever.

The famous Ass station at Ine. It was an ugly morning...

... But cleared up as we hit Hioki.

We drove to Kasamatsu a place I pass nearly everyday to work, where I always see tourists but have never bothered to stop, and climbed the narrow streets past the small souvenir shops to the cable car that would take us to the top. There is a chairlift that also goes up and it's an extreme chairlift – no safety bars – but that was unfortunately out of order that day. The cables cars ride the same track but at a point in the middle the track diverges into two and the cars pass each other.

It's coming straight for us!

At the top we did the touristy thing with the photo of the head between the knees (this is the way to view the land bridge so it looks like it's namesake, Amanohashidate – bridge to the Heavens, and it does kind of look like it's ascending to the clouds when viewed upside down), and throwing things through the hoop that stands on the side of the hill for good luck. We met many families here and a group of old men going on an excursion, and tasted the famous dango of the area which tasted like it was soaked in beer flavoured caramel.

Take that Hashidate!

The autumn leaves were on full display and as there were periods of showers a full semi-circle rainbow appeared.

Rainbow!

We wanted to finish off our day with some ramen so we headed for the ramen place Jen and I pass to go to work but on that particular night we walked in and found a group of people surrounding a little platform with a guitarist and drummer jamming. There would be no ramen that night but we were invited to stay and listen which we politely refused and went in search for ramen in Miyazu. We found a tiny little place in the old cobbled area of Miyazu owned by an old man who made us some curry ramen which was good but the noodles needed to have had more time to soften in the water before making it great. Jenni left us at some stage before our food was ready as she needed to be home but this day struck one more thing off of the Miyazu tourist circuit we had yet to do.