Having selected Okayama-ken as my destination for a weekend jaunt, I caught the 7.15 am bus to Okayama on the Friday morning, having duly deprived myself of sleep for most of the previous night. When I got to Okayama, I ditched my bag in the station, grabbed some breakfast, then hopped on a train to Fukuyama, as recommended by my guide book. Once I'd travelled about halfway to Fukuyama, I realised that I'd made a bit of a cock-up reading my guide book. In fact, the only recommendation it made about Fukuyama was to stay the hell away from there. It turned out that I'd actually meant to go to Bitchu Takahashi, which was in a totally different direction, inevitably. I retraced my steps and caught a different train. This didn't turn out to be such a big problem, although I'd wasted about an hour and a half with my tomfoolerous detour, so I figured I was going to have to get cracking if I wanted to make it up to the castle and back down before night fell. This first page is pictures of Takahashi. To be honest, photography can't really do justice to how quiet the place was- the absolute opposite of Osaka. As well as the castle, Takahashi has a number of temples. Having wasted a load of time changing trains around the countryside, I didn't get the chance to check these out. They looked pretty naff in any case. Even so, Takahashi has to rank along with Nikko as one of the most beautiful towns I've visited in Japan. |
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