OK, weird pictures today because we were going from the middle of nowhere (Yuda Onsen at the edge of Yamaguchi City) to the middle of nowhere (Hikari City, where my grandma’s house used to be) to visit my cousin. As an added bonus her daughter was in town with her two kids! I finally got to meet her husband, whose name I forgot TWICE. He seems really nice.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. First we had breakfast and I kept it light since I knew we were having lunch with my cousin and because I did NOT sleep well last night because I ate a bunch of garlic and that made my stomach hurt. Oddly enough, I felt less tired than yesterday and my stomachache went away when I got up.
Checking google I noticed it was quicker to take the slow train than the Shinkansen because of wait times between the trains. We wasted the extra high-speed fare between two stations but that was only ¥970! Some of the Shinkansen stations are pretty close together.
I noticed that the first train stop abandoned the second rail and the second platform. A lot of people in the rural areas have purchased cars and rail use is falling.
You can see that it’s a diesel train, and not an electric train like most of the busier lines.
The local train that we took instead of the Shinkansen is electric.
We met for lunch and most of us had the daily special of tandoori chicken. It came with a small slice of quiche and sweet potato with mustard seeds.
My sister doesn’t like fatty chicken and was also afraid it might have onions so she had the mentaiko pasta with shiso leaves on top.
Most of the afternoon we spent with our cousin and we also got to shop at Jusco. This is the first time my sister didn’t buy anything at the Tamura Craft Store!
We’re staying at a very old school hotel and they finally upgraded to cardkey doorlocks! It was physical keys for years. I like it but my sister is kind of over the place. At least the toilet seats are sanitarized.
We were going to go to Joyfull for dinner but we’d just been to a family restaurant. We decided to try the Donk cafe. I had the hamburg steak with shaved daikon and it came with some goya tempura.
Mariko got the tempura donburi.
It wasn’t great but it was good. We hit the Family Mart on the way back and I got some pumpkin pudding that I didn’t take a picture of. It was really tasty. Oh and today’s bonus pic is a tiny camper van we saw on a back street.
