Day 17: Bike Riding

 Today got off to a good start with a delicious breakfast buffet made up of 'squash lemon juice', coffee, sweet potato tarts, rice, eggplant in miso, mochi?, tofu miso soup, pork stew, persimmons, and various other things I found. It was delicious.



Then I made my way to Kurashikishi, the 'Venice of Japan'. It s a town with some canals and and is known for is historic trade routes and its denim. So much fun denim. These yellow jeans had bananas and monkeys on them and I wanted them so bad. 











While there I was talking to a Japanese lady in a shop and she took me to coffee and toast. Japanese toast is amazing. The slice was like 2 inches thick, and fluffy like cotton candy, but not sweet. It's like eating a delicious cloud, with strawberry jam. 

After wandering through the town and temples I took the train to Kibitsu where I would do a 18-km bike ride through the rice paddies in the countryside. It was really beautiful, and also difficult to figure out where to go. There were signs, but not at every intersection. Luckily, I was not the only lost tourist, and I teamed up with a Lithuanian girl and an Australian couple to navigate together. It was a lot of fun getting repeatedly lost and laughing at our misadventures. The countryside was incredibly gorgeous, but it was a bit smokey. They seem to burn their rice paddies before planting in the fall? I'm unsure about why, but it was very smokey, but pretty.





 

We got to our train station 15 minutes before our bikes were due, and hopped back on the train to Okayama and split ways. It was nice to have some friends to mis-adventure with. 

On my way home I stopped at the grocery store and bought and entire feast of food. I thought the cashier was being dramatic when they gave me 3 pairs of chopsticks with my food, but I struggled to eat half the food I bought over the entire night, so I suppose it was a fair assessment lol. 

After eating a portion of my feast I went to the public bath for a soak and threw my laundry in the machine. Their washing machines here do both wash and dry. I would like to know why ours don't do that? Especially in small apartments it would be so nice to have a combination washer/dryer. We are doing it incorrectly in the US. That being said, the dryer did not get my stuff completely dry, but I also could have picked the wrong setting cause it was all in japanese and I was using google translate, but they are hanging around my room and will finish drying by morning. 

I returned to my room to continue with my feast and get some sleep, overall a great day. 

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