Today we traveled first to Onomichi where we rode a cable car to the top of a mountain to an overlook where you can see the whole city. It was really neat to see from way up there. After riding the cable car down we walked around a bit and stopped and had Onomichi Ramen for lunch. I guess it’s a special ramen that Corey said we had to have. We couldn’t spend a lot of time here because we had a train to catch for Kurashiki where we were meeting up with some friends. We boarded the bus to take us to the station only to find out that it was taking us to the wrong station and we were going the wrong way. We ended up missing our train and just taking the local train to where we needed to be. It was OK because we were still able to meet up with our friends.

We met up with Yuma again and I got to meet another friend of Corey’s from his mission, Akiko. Yuma showed us the old town of Kurashiki. The buildings and streets were so interesting. Most of them are white with black burnt wood as accents. It was beautiful. He took us to the shopping area and we went in and out of all these little shops. We ended up finding a Tonari No Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro) shop. That is one of our family’s favorite movies. Corey ended up getting some souvenirs from there. When we came out we had a couple of bags and Yuma and Akiko thought it was funny that out of all the things we had seen that day that was what we ended up with. I hadn’t gotten any souvenirs for myself and we saw a cool little shop that had this beautiful string art there. I thought it was really neat but Corey was afraid we couldn’t get it home in one piece. So we didn’t get it.

We went to dinner at a shabu shabu/sukiyaki all-you-can-eat place. Sukiyaki is one of the things I’ve been wanting to have since we got here. I’m so glad that we got to have some tonight. You cook the meat and veggies in front of yourself in a broth and then take it out and dip it in either a sauce or raw egg. Corey and I have had it at home but the store that sold our sukiyaki sauce stopped selling it so it’s been a while. It was all-you-can-eat for 2 hours. I got full pretty quickly. Yuma had a lot and I asked him if he ate this way all the time. He said yes. I then asked how he stayed healthy and skinny he said “yoga”, which is so funny because he’s the one who lead us in our yoga class the other night. It was a really fun day and not too strenuous. As we said goodbye to our friends at the train station Yuma and Akiko pulled out a present for me. They had bought me that string art that I liked so much. It was such a sweet gesture for them to do this for me. I’m going to be extra careful with it so I can get it home. I’ll always treasure it.