Day 17, April 17th, Takamatsu

7:00 Breakfast at the Hotel Los Kochi

I took a pass on the raw egg and the natto (fermented soy beans).  Mom chided me saying the natto is very, very, VERY healthy for me and would help me get well.

Ummmmm....

No... maybe next time.

It was an easier morning.  We caught the 9:15 train for Takamatsu.

It was hard to believe that we would be leaving for Hawaii the following day!

Train staff provided ramps for our wheelchair.




We arrived at the Takamatsu JR train station.  Dennis and Art took our luggage and backpacks to the Toyoko Inn while mom and I talked to the train staff to make sure our transportation would all go smoothy the following day with all our train transfers to Narita.

When the guys returned we grabbed lunch at the Tsuya Tsuya restaurant and enjoyed sanuki udon noodles again.  Then we were on our way to the Ritsurin Garden.

Young Japanese often put up the V sign when they take photos.  We decided to try it for fun.

This was supposed to be the matsu (pine) tree with the best form in the garden.

There were the biggest koi we've ever seen at that garden.

It was amazing to see how many different kinds of matsu there were.

Mom loves matsu and she had a great time seeing the beauty of each new shape.

I must have been feeling better.

These two matsus were called husband and wife trees so Dennis had us pose in front of them.

So what are we taking at least 50 photos of?

It was a bird.  We still don't know what kind of bird it is. Do you know?

It must have thought we were pretty incompetent bird photographers because it stayed there for the longest time without moving.

And yes!  We did have a soft serve.  It was the matcha tea flavor that Dennis had earlier and it really was very good... even though it cost 400 yen.  That's about $4.80 a cone!

This blue heron was on his way  to finding his lunch in the pond.

What is it about bridges that make you want to go over them?  There were no railings.  Aren't they afraid somebody will fall in?

In the U.S. they'd be afraid of a law suit.

Loved the light on these iris.

As we were leaving we saw this grove of double petaled cherry blossom trees.

I couldn't get over how pretty they were.

We also saw the remains of all the cherry blossoms who had given their all for this spring season.

There was a little stand where you could brush the dust off your shoes.  Or maybe it's to dust off the flower petals.

It was time to walk back to the hotel.

Mom wanted to walk so I sat on the wheelchair and let Dennis push me so I could see what it was like.

However, before we started walking, Art and Dennis thought it would be fun to take this photo.

I discovered that:

#1:  Riding on the wheelchair is very bumpy and not all that comfortable.

#2:  That loss of control over where you're going is not pleasant.

It's something to think about as we age.

We grabbed our last sanuki udon for dinner at the Hyogomachi Arcade shopping area.

There's the Toyoko Inn right next to the Hyogomachi Arcade. 

We uploaded our photos to our laptop and the flash drives.  Would you believe we had about 25 GB of photos between our three cameras?

Tomorrow:  Time to go home