Takamatsu for Golden Week!

me putting on a show for the Japanese people to watch...nothing new!

Takamatsu Castle

The guy who takes your ticket to get into the castle

Jessica and I spent today (part of Golden Week) in Takamatsu.  What is the closest of the big cities here on Shikoku.  It was a ton of fun, we caught the train in the morning, rode in style on the express train and arrived before noon.  After wandering around the station for a bit, we decided to go to Takamatsu Castle..pictured above.  It was a lot of fun, I kept being a goof-ball.  Jessica has pictures of me climbing all over stuff..in a lantern..hanging out the castle window..scaling the wall.  I might post them later..they are very entertaining. 

After we had explored probably every square inch of the castle and gardens we decided to hunt down some food...well since this was Golden week there are tons of festival like activities going on.  The local park had food stands with delicious yakisoba and takitori that I couldn't resist.  Jess and I each bought one of each and found our way to the public picnic eating area and partook of our feast.

After eating we watched a bit of an Awa Odori dance performance, and one that looked like someone merged tradition Japanese folk dancing with pop-in-locking...was kinda weird.  My friend said it was probably the traditional dance from the Kobe area.  No idea, I didn't really like it.  Jess and I then collectively decided that shopping was a great idea to do next and hopped on the next bus to Youme Town...a huge shopping mall that took us hours to go everywhere..and we didn't even go inside all of the stores!  I'm planning on going back as soon as I can to explore some other shopping areas in town!

The train ride back was uneventful, other than we got to the station near seconds before the train left and were forced to litterally run to catch it (or else have to wait around for an hour).  When we got back to Tokushima..we got on the wrong transfer train, going to our station (Yoshinari) usually takes only minutes...we went in the wrong direction and ended up taking a cab instead of waiting the hour and a half it would have taken to get home via train.  Wise decision right?