About the road trip. It was me who came up with the idea, back in...I can't remember when. All I remember was Daan, Seb and I were walking down to the old couple's restaurant and I suggested it then. I remember I was wearing my big woolly coat so it must have been winter. Anyway, the idea originated from the fact that we love karaoke so much and our lives seemed to revolve around karaoke. Back in autumn/winter, our daily lives were composed of two things: going to karaoke and planning when to go to karaoke. My cousin in Hong Kong saw my photos on facebook and during a skype conversation she commented "is that all you do in Japan? karaoke, karaoke and more karaoke?". So yes we love karaoke. Then I thought, instead of walking 30 minutes to Shidax and sing for 6 hours until 3am, eat McDonald's before dragging our exhausted bodies back to campus, why not just rent a car, play our favourite music in the car and sing as much as we want to (without disturbing anyone else)?
Everyone loved the idea (yay go me), even Seb, who is our sole driver; I guess his fanatical love for karaoke trumps the prospect of driving 6 other people in a car for a whole week.
This takes me to talk about the car. We rented a "seven seater", since there are seven of us. Okay yes we knew that having seven people in a seven seater was going to be crowded, but when we saw the car Mazda gave us - oh my God. We spent a good deal of time trying to find the seventh seat! It turned out that we had to lift one of the middle seats and take out the additional seat. So now we could seat seven people. Then came the problem of the luggage. Each of us brought relatively few bags 'cause we knew there wouldn't be much space. In reality, "space" was virtually non-existent. We ended up putting the bigger bags and the tents in the "trunk space" at the back of the car, and then have the rest all around and over the laps of the two people sitting in the back seats. For the first couple of days - those two people were Morgan and I. At first we were like "we can't move!" and lyrics of Queen's Somebody to Love came into my mind - "I'm gonna break out of this prison cell, someday I'm gonna be free". We kinda got used to it (Daan switched places with me on the third day - thank you!), it's just that it takes efforts to get in and out of the car, and my back and hips ached for a while.We picked up the car from Shin-Osaka, then drove for about five hours, via the 瀬戸大橋 (Seto Oo-hashi; Great Seto Bridge) and arrived at 高松/Takamatsu (in 香川県/Kagawa prefecture) just in time for dinner.
Since we were in Kagawa prefecture,
讃岐うどん (Sanuki udon) became an obvious choice for dinner (please see my previous post on Kotohira). The shop we went to was empty, just the owner himself. He seemed to be in his 30s, and was very very friendly. He lent us a couple of guides with information of campsites. He even phoned a couple of campsites on behalf of us! But all was in vain, all the surrounding campsites were either fully booked or the reception had closed for the night.Yes - we hadn't booked anything. Absolutely nothing. Well, except for the car. It was my first time travelling so spontaneously. I usually plan and book everything at least a month in advance, such as transportation and accommodation. It's a little risky, especially it was Golden Week, but then there were seven of us, and we had a car, so nothing could really go wrong, right?
Ha, ironically, we spent our first night at Shidax in Takamatsu. I thought the whole point of the road trip was to sing in the car (thus not having the need to go to Shidax)? Well we only sang for a couple of hours, before squeezing our bodies onto the tiny sofas of the karaoke rooms. Andrew had to sleep on the floor, and even those of us who had the sofa, it was not comfortable. Another problem with sleeping at Shidax is that it closes at 0500. So we were woken up by the staff at around 4 with a "rasuto oda desu". When we left the karaoke at 5am, it was just about dawn. Routinely, we went to the nearest McDonald's for food.After breakfast, Reinout and a few
others wanted to go for a walk in the city, leaving us the Brits taking the opportunity to nap in the car, which was parked in the McDonald's carpark. And it was good.I was a little hesitant, thinking "how many more nights are we going to do this?". I simply couldn't see how we could sleep in a karaoke for the entire week...thank goodness we did not.
At around 0800 we went to 栗林公園 (Ritsurin-koen). I first knew about the park when I saw a beautiful picture in the Lonely Planet country guide. It was a bright and beautiful morning (felt a little like midday though considering how early we woke up that day) - and we were blessed with warm and glorious sunshine for the entire Golden Week. The park was peaceful and serene, and very very green.
After Ritsurin-koen we drove to Kotohira, which was about an hour away from Takamatsu. The objective was to visit 金刀比羅宮 (Kotohira-gu shrine, or more affectionaly こんぴらさん/Konpira-san). Larisa and I had already been there a couple of weeks ago so we stopped at half way of the 1368 steps, while the rest completed the challenge.
We then left Kagawa prefecture and
drove into 愛媛県/Ehime prefecture. We didn't shower the night before so we headed to the famous 道後温泉/Dogo hot spring for a bath. It was a total disappointment. Andrew told us not to get our hopes all high 'cause he and Morgan had already been there in February. Still, I was quite disappointed. It was full of tourists, the bath was tiny and there weren't enough showers for everyone so we had to wait (standing naked next to old ladies). No soap or shampoo or towel so we had to buy/rent. Totally not worth 600 yen. The building looked pretty impressive on the outside though.That night we slept somewhere other than a karaoke - we decided that karaoke is only for amusement and not for sleeping - which I shall reveal later this week.
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